#116 Clarity Culture

In this episode, Wendy Brand unpacks why clarity and focus are the quickest wins for CEOs and culture leaders. Without them, even the best teams slip into misalignment, decision fatigue, and constant firefighting. With them, leaders reclaim their energy, teams align around what matters, and culture becomes the system that drives results.

You’ll hear:

• Why clarity is the foundation of every thriving culture
• The difference between clarity and focus—and why you need both
• The hidden costs of operating without clarity (and how to stop paying them)
• A simple 3-step practice to reclaim clarity and focus in just 30 days

If you’ve ever felt like you’re carrying the weight of your business alone, this episode will show you how clarity creates momentum and focus protects it.

✨ Ready to put this into action?
 At the end of September, I kick off two programs designed to help you operationalize culture and lead with energy, clarity, and confidence. 

Sign up today!

• The Empowered CEO – A 6-month accelerator for women CEOs ready to stop being the bottleneck and start building a self-managing culture. https://culturecoachwendy.com/ceo/
• Culture Strategy Lab – A quarterly implementation community for CEOs, HR leaders, and founders who are done talking about culture and ready to build it into their systems. https://culturecoachwendy.com/strategylab/

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With 25+ years of leadership experience, spanning multiple roles across corporations and non-profits, I have gained a wealth of experience in understanding what makes organizations successful.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:10

You are listening to the Culture Coach Podcast. This is the place where CEOs and people first leaders come to boost productivity, extinguish burnout, and cultivate a vibrant culture that reflects a fully integrated mission, vision, and core values. Get ready to take your culture to the next level. I am your host, Wendy Brandon. Welcome back to The Culture Coach. I hope you're having the best week. Um, here in Texas, it is starting to cool off a little bit. We're in the first part of September and the weather is starting to feel good. Um, so hope you're having a great week. Hope you had a great weekend. I'm excited about the topic today. We're going to talk about clarity, a little bit about focus, but I want to talk about clarity because I think it's such an important part to your role as whether you're a CEO, founder, HR leader, or individual contributor, manager, really, really any role that you're in, and even as an individual, um, you know, in your personal life, having clarity around what's important to you, what your values are, is really crucial to ensuring that you're on the right path for yourself or that your team is on the right path, that your team understands the path and has visibility to what you want to share with them. And so I, you know, I think if you think about a time maybe where you have ever felt like your energy is drained, and it's not by big decisions, but by constant noise pulling you in different directions or small, tiny little decisions that have to be made all the time. It can be exhausting. It's the same way that people talk about in order to have clarity or really have mental space, is to have a clean house. So if you if you work out of your house, you know what I'm talking about. When things are messy and cluttered, it kind of feels like life and work is cluttered. But if you're able to keep a clean room, or some people say, you know, leaders make their beds first thing in the morning, right? Because it's that discipline, um, it's consistency, it's it's clarity, cleanliness. And so I relate that just because I think as leaders, when we're not clear with ourselves first about what needs to happen or where the business is headed, where we want the team to go. Um, the team isn't clear. And then decision making isn't easy. So let's talk about a couple things that that can really help with that. And it's not about having the perfect plan. It's not about even really having all the answers for your team, but it's about setting a North Star, about making it clear where you're headed, so that then you can create this path for them or they can create the path to move in that direction. It's about knowing what matters most and then making it visible to your team. And so then you're not firefighting instead of leading or having decision fatigue and reactivity, reacting to everything instead of being prepared or being able to easily make decisions. And it also can cause team misalignment. So when you're not clear, everyone is moving. Everyone is always moving, but if they're not moving in the same direction, they might be bumping into each other. And so that's why in one of the programs that that I work with clients on is the the tribal, um, I'm sorry, is the Thrive framework. And in every single situation, in every area of the Thrive Culture framework, it's about creating clarity. It's about creating clarity of what your values are. Um, that's the T in Thrive is tribal values. It's about creating clarity in the processes and procedures. So it's that helpful processes and procedures and programs for employees is the H in Thrive. And so the really the foundation is clarity, not just for yourself, but for others. One of the things I'm doing in the CEO group that I'm working with, the empowered CEO, it's this six-month program. It starts at the end of September. So if you haven't gotten in yet and you're interested, you can sign up now. It's culturecoachwindy.com forward slash CEO. But we're starting with clarity, clarity and then energy and ownership. And that first part of clarity for CEOs is really becoming clear on what they want for themselves, what their leadership philosophy is, so that they're creating an environment for their team that is just crystal clear on what's expected of them. And the way that the CEO gets to that is by creating clarity for themselves. So for HR leaders, it's about getting clarity on where, if you're focused on a culture transformation, which is where I connect with HR leaders or in larger organizations, um, you know, someone working on employee experience or engagement, that clarity is about understanding where in the employee life cycle you may have opportunities for improvement in the culture. So if that's HR speak to you, I'll break it down for you. What I'm talking about is those culture touch points in the employee experience. What I mean by that is areas in the time that the employee is in your organization that they are impacted by culture. One of the very first things is in your hiring practices and how you attract employees, what your, what values are you putting on the job descriptions? How are you, how is the interview process? Is it sticky and difficult? Or is it, does it flow easily and seamless? Is it a good customer experience for those for those candidates? Everything from that hiring practice to how you onboard your employees, the orientation that they get, how clear is that for them on the role they're stepping into and how it impacts the mission of the organization? How clear is the vision of the organization? All of these things impact your culture. And so as HR leaders, you can look across that employee lifecycle from hire to onboard perform reward to exit. You can look across each of those phases and say, where is it crystal clear what's expected of them? Where is it crystal clear what our culture is, what our values are, how we expect employees to behave? And where are there gaps or opportunities in those touch points for us to do better? Maybe an employee gets hired and they're thrown right into the role. There's no job shadowing, there's no handbook to share, nothing to provide clarity to that new employee. And so while you want them to get to work straight away, I'm sure, it's still important to have some type of onboarding or orientation so they get clarity not only around their role, but how the organization works. So when I talk about clarity for a CEO, it's really their individual clarity and then the vision for the organization so that they can then communicate that clearly to employees. And then when I talk to HR leaders, it's really let's get clear on where are there opportunities in your culture. And if you're a small organization of five to 10 employees and you're the CEO or founder, you're wearing all of these hats. So you also need to be thinking about culture and where there may be gaps across that employee experience or the employee life cycle, those culture touch points. And then if you're a leader of a team or a manager of a team, it's the same thing, helping to have clarity in the vision of the organization, but then also the vision for your department or for your team, no matter how small your team, even if you just have one person that reports to you, getting crystal clear on what's expected of them is crucial. And then the piece that I'll add on to that, um, in addition to clarity, kind of the companion to clarity is focus. So once you have clarity on where you're headed, you have created a vision, you understand where those opportunities are on those culture touch points, where you can do better, where there are gaps, then it's time to focus and to take action. Because clarity without focus really is diluted and leads to wasted energy. It's like a leaky bucket. You've identified the problem, but if you're not acting on it, then there's just holes in your bucket. And it's like you're leaking energy. You have, you, you know where you're headed, but without action, it's not going to come to fruition. And so if you've outgrown the culture that you've built and the old ways of working is burning your energy instead of building freedom and clarity in the organization, it's time to really take that clarity and create consistency and focus. And so, speaking of putting it into action, there's a couple things that you can do today to get started. You know, I have talked on this show many times and in the programs that I teach, your culture compass is your mission, your vision, and your core values. If your organization is in business, I mean, if you've been in business for any period of time, you should have a mission statement. If you have any employees, you should have a mission statement so that they know the purpose of your organization. You should also have a vision for the year, for the quarter, for the next 10 years, some North Star that allows employees to know where they're headed. Now, again, that can be at the organization level, it can be at the department level, it can be at the team level. Giving a North Star, providing a North Star helps with clarity. Second, so once you clarify your compass, that mission, the vision, um core values, if you can, then you really need to identify your focus. So here's a little homework for you. I want you to determine what area in your culture compass needs work. Is it your mission? If it hasn't been defined yet, you need to get started. Is it a vision? Do your employees have a clear vision for where they're headed? Get it sorted, write it down, share it with your team, and then identify at least one cultural or leadership behavior that you're going to amplify this month. So, what's one thing, what's one area to focus on this month, whether it is an area in the employee life cycle, the onboarding, the hiring, performance management, a recognition program, how you exit employees. Think carefully about those processes. Pick one and really focus in on it this month. Bring clarity to that, make it crystal clear for employees to understand your culture, your values, make sure it's embedded into each of those employee or culture touch points. And finally, protect your energy, decide what you are gonna say no to so that you can lead with clarity. And if there are things that that are draining you, employees that are draining you, if you are constantly having to defend their behavior or continuously give direction to high-level leaders, they're probably in the wrong role. And I like to remind leaders that if you're feeling that they're uncomfortable in the role and they're not delivering the value that you need them to deliver, and you've worked with them over time and they're still not delivering that value, they're feeling it. And so letting an employee go sometimes isn't just best for the organization and for you, but it is a lot of times the best thing for the individual to find a place where they really can thrive and that their true authentic skills and strengths can shine. It may not be in the role that they're in today in your organization. It could be another role within your organization, but if it's not in your organization, it will be in another, and they may even be better off for it. So those are three things I task you with this week. Clarify your compass, what's your mission, your vision, get clear on it, share it with your employees, name your focus, what's one area of your leadership or your culture that you want to amplify this month and really focus on. And then finally protect your energy, decide what you're gonna say no to so that you can really lead with clarity. And that's it. Hopefully, this has been helpful. I know it's a short one. And if you're ready to stop solving the same people problems and start building a culture that works harder than you do, you can join me inside the culture strategy lab or for CEOs, the empowered CEO. Both programs are open at the end of this month. You can sign up today for CEOs. Go to culturecoachwindy.com forward slash CEO. Or if you're interested in the Culture Strategy Lab, which is for anyone that is tasked with culture, whether a founder, CEO, HR leader, go to culturecoachwindy.com forward strategy lab. Forward slash strategy lab. That's it. I hope you'll join us again here next week. Join us in any of these programs in the first 30 days. We're gonna get you crystal clear and laser focused. Um, so please join us if you can. That's it. Thanks so much. We'll see you next week.