Shelley on Your Shoulder
Hosted by Shelley Saeger, founder of Seven Big Coaching & Consulting, Shelley on Your Shoulder is the leadership podcast that delivers practical tips, empowering affirmations, and real-world advice to help you lead with clarity, confidence, and purpose, because leadership is a choice, and how you choose to show up matters.
Shelley on Your Shoulder
Clarity to Lead
The Power of Clarity in Leadership
Clarity is the foundation of exceptional leadership, yet it’s one of the most overlooked skills in today’s fast-paced workplaces. Too often, leaders and teams get lost in assumptions, personal stories, and the busyness of daily tasks—leading to confusion, wasted time, and unnecessary frustration. In this episode of Shelly on Your Shoulder, Shelly Saeger explores how clear communication not only prevents misunderstandings but also empowers teams to succeed.
Key insights from the episode:
- Meanings aren’t in words, they’re in people. A phrase like “have it by Friday” can mean very different things depending on who hears it.
- Three major barriers to clarity: assumptions and biases, the stories we tell ourselves, and the distraction of busyness.
- Define success up front. Leaders should clearly articulate what success looks like so team members know exactly what’s expected.
- Take 30 seconds now, save hours later. Confirming understanding upfront prevents wasted effort, rework, and frustration.
- Clear is kind, unclear is unkind. Vague directions create anxiety, hesitation, and second-guessing.
- Clarity begins with self-awareness. Great leaders start by knowing what kind of leader they want to be.
- People want to succeed. Most employees genuinely want to do good work—they just need clarity about what that looks like.
Clarity isn’t just about efficiency—it’s about respect. When leaders take time to communicate with precision, they build trust, reduce stress, and empower their teams to thrive.
If you found today’s episode helpful, don’t forget to subscribe, share, and encourage someone who’s ready to gain the clarity to lead and the confidence to succeed.
Welcome to Shelly on your Shoulder. With Shelly Sager, founder of Seven Big Coaching and Consulting, shelly on your Shoulder is the leadership podcast that delivers practical tips, empowering affirmations and real world advice to help you lead with clarity, confidence and purpose, because leadership is a choice and how you choose to show up matters. And now here's Shelly on your Shoulder. Hey, shelly, how are you doing today?
Speaker 2:I am fantastic. How are you Drew?
Speaker 1:I'm doing great Now. What's great mean we're going to talk about clarity right. Great to you is like well, he didn't say fantastic right Now. This is my two bits on clarity.
Speaker 1:I've been on both ends, as a manager and a staff person, where I'll use the example have that to me by Friday, and to you, friday might mean close of business, it might be even after close of business Friday at some point.
Speaker 1:But to me, when I asked you to do that, I meant I want it on my desk at 8 am, and now I'm guilty of doing this both ways. Like I said, you know I've heard a manager say that have that to me by such and such day, and then I don't have it there first thing, and then I'm getting an earful or I've asked someone else to do it. Have that to me by Friday, and then I'm frustrated on Friday morning because it's not sitting in my inbox. One of my great mentors in my life told me meanings aren't in words, they're in people, and I think we all fall into this trap. All fall into this trap, and that's what I kept coming back to in terms of clarity how that can really impact you as a leader or a staff person and as a leader, all different kinds of ways, because you might say I want you to be this as someone in this role, but I'm not really diving into what are the specifics? What do you think?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm curious. I love this saying about meanings are in people, not words, right? Can you explain that just a little bit more? What does that mean? That meanings are in people?
Speaker 1:So one of my favorite words fine.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah. To me as a service provider, a lot of times when I hear somebody say, yeah, it's fine, that's like saying I've got a stick in the eye. It's better than a stick in the eye. Yeah, but it's not. This is just awesome, this is fantastic, thank you, great job, right yeah. I'm left to kind of wonder what did they mean by fine? It's like the example I used I want it on Friday. That phrase, I want it on Friday. What does it mean? Does it mean I want it in my inbox Friday morning? We have a staff meeting on Friday. I want it by that. What does it mean? And if you don't ask, you don't know, because you know what it means in your own mind, but you don't know what it means in their mind interpretation of that word.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so when I think about clarity, I think there's two points that you mentioned that always stick in my head. When I think about clarity, there's me being clear about what I think I'm saying and what I want. But there's another level of clarity, which is the other person. So am I being clear, pushing information out, but also am I getting the clarity I need when I'm receiving information from other people? So it's twofold. It's kind of my favorite terms. It's a both and. So when I think about clarity and examples of clarity, I have a couple, but my all-time favorite is actually the reason why my business is called Seven Big.
Speaker 2:You can see the details on the website, but you have to imagine this little girl with bright red hair seven, six, maybe. My husband and I said hey, how big is that box? She looked at it and studied it and studied it and she very confidently said seven. And my husband and I looked at each other like what is that? That's not an answer. And so I remember saying to her seven, what like this is crazy. And she looked at me like it was the most ridiculous question in the world. She said seven big? I mean, that is exactly the question how big is it? And I still fun fact I have.
Speaker 2:I just recently caught myself asking her almost exactly the same question how big is it? And I went, ah, bad question, right, bad question right. So I knew what I was asking. I was expecting that is for a little kid, right. For a five or six year old. I was expecting her to say it's so big, or it's really small, not seven big, so that I mean I hold onto that all the time and think what can I do to be more clear so I'm not getting a seven big answer when what I'm expecting is something very different.
Speaker 1:So, shelly, give me the definition of clarity as you find it in a dictionary.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, Drew, you know that you and I have talked, and I'm a bit of a word nerd comes from my writing background, and so when I am stuck with what a word means, my writing background, and so when I am stuck with what a word means, I go to the root what does the definition actually mean of the word? And it helps me to better understand how to interpret it, what to do with it. And so when I think about the word clarity, I looked it up in a couple of different dictionaries Merriam-Webster, Cambridge and Oxford and essentially they all say exactly the same thing Clarity is the quality of being clear and easy to understand, to see or to hear.
Speaker 1:So all of those dictionaries are very clear on what clarity is.
Speaker 2:They are very clear. Makes my life so much easier.
Speaker 1:All right. So if we could just take that definition and use that as the basis of our conversation as it relates to leadership skills, what gets in the way of clarity? What makes something really not easy to understand, see or hear?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a couple of things, and even as we're talking about this, I have more ideas coming to the surface. But there's there's three things top of mind for me about what gets in the way of clarity, why it is challenging when a leader is talking to somebody, they work with a peer, their boss, what prevents it from being easy to understand, see or hear? And the first thing that comes to mind is always assumptions and biases, because everybody has them. It's how our brain functions, right, and so an assumption or a bias is something like the example that you gave earlier, right? So assuming that get this to me by end of day Friday means exactly the same thing to everyone. But that's not life.
Speaker 2:And so I think about personally my Myers-Briggs personality type. I'm an INTP, introvert, intuition, thinking and perception, and so what does that mean? I can totally see that, yeah, you're so funny. Well, what does that mean to the average person, right? If you don't know, myers-briggs, I'm an internal logical processor who happens to love flexibility and gray space. So when I say end of day, I literally mean until 1159 PM and 59 seconds that day and all the space leading up to it. So I'm not going to get stressed out if I don't have something up until that moment, as long as I have it exactly when I need it.
Speaker 1:Right. But not everybody is like that If you were my manager and you said have it to me by Friday, and we didn't have any further conversation on it. Yeah, it's 3.30 on Friday afternoon. I'm starting to stress out because I got to get it done by five.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And nothing was ever said about it. You know like you know, if it's not by five, just get it to me before the end of today.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and so I mean we'll talk about how to manage that. But that's such a common challenge and people get so frustrated. And it's not that somebody is wrong or somebody is bad, it's a lack of clarity. You just didn't set really clear expectations. But assumptions like we make assumptions all the time we assume people think like us, we assume people have the same values. We assume that when I say I want to eat healthy for lunch, that everybody eats the same way. When we say things like that, and it's just again, it's not wrong. It's an opportunity to get more clear.
Speaker 2:So the first trap or the first barrier to clarity is really, in my mind, the assumptions and biases.
Speaker 2:And there's two more, and the second one is probably the one that I see that does the most damage to individual people when they think about this, and it's the stories that we tell ourselves, because everybody is a storyteller on some level and some of our stories are great and we're the hero of our stories.
Speaker 2:But oftentimes what I hear in my coaching and working with leaders is we don't tell ourselves really nice stories about ourselves and sometimes they're not great stories about other people either, and so the way that our brain works is we fill in the gaps of information that we don't have and we pull from prior experience and we basically create stories in our head, sometimes without much evidence, and that becomes a real problem when we're making decisions about those stories. So stories like I'm not good enough, I am leading a group of people with more experience than me. They're not going to like me, somebody hasn't been here long enough, they haven't worked in this industry long enough to know the answer to the problem, right, those are all stories that aren't necessarily true, and so we lose clarity when we make decisions based on those stories instead of finding out the facts.
Speaker 1:I can tell you, as a kid playing ball I had to work really hard to get good with a glove and early on that you know, there were a couple of the superstar kids in the neighborhood who I was on their team and they would just rail on me about the fact that I couldn't make a catch or whatever, or make a throw. So that always wound in my head. Beyond just playing baseball as a kid, I took that into my working life. That man, I'm going to be the grinder. I'm going to be the guy that's here and working the hardest. On the one hand that was good. On the other hand, that caused me a lot of stress and over time I was able to get it down and perform well as a professional in the field that I'm in, but it took a long time.
Speaker 2:Drew, I love the story about baseball and how that impacted how you show up in the workplace and what's really interesting about that is this level of self-awareness to ask the questions. And so when we get into, like when we start talking about, what do you do with these barriers? Pausing and asking yourself questions like where did this story come from? Like why, why do I think the things that I'm thinking and how do I move forward and tell myself a different story is such a powerful strategy to overcome some of the barriers to clarity. So I mentioned assumptions and biases, right? So we tend to think that other people think the way we do. We make snap decisions based on assumptions and biases. The second is the stories we tell ourselves that aren't necessarily true, but we allow them to shape how we behave and show up.
Speaker 2:The third one is, frankly, it's just being busy. It's this idea of busyness that we are too busy to stop and question Wait, did I hear that right? Are we on the same page? I heard end of day Friday. I just want to check that. So it's investing an extra 30 seconds in a conversation to pause and say hold on. I just want to make sure you and I are on the same page. When you say end of day Friday, what does that mean to you? And get that clarity I promise it saves so much time down the line. So those are.
Speaker 1:In my experience, three of the most common barriers to clarity of seven big coaching and consulting. In your corner, shelly helps real people executives, entrepreneurs and ambitious professionals get unstuck, get aligned and lead with purpose. Through personalized coaching and powerful workshops, shelly helps you quiet the noise, define what matters and take bold, intentional action. With Shelly on your side, it's not about doing more. It's about doing what matters, with purpose and with confidence. So if you're tired of spinning your wheels and ready to lead from a place of clarity and confidence, visit sevenbigconsultingcom and schedule your free discovery call today. You were built for this. Make it happen with seven big coaching and consulting.
Speaker 1:I can't imagine anyone listening to this who can't relate to those three things, because we've all been there, whether it's in the workplace, whether it's in a group that you're working with to do some community work. Wherever it's there, it's present in all of those, and I think we all trip over those things. Yeah, in all of those, and I think we all trip over those things. You know and we're like you said. You just take 30 more seconds and ask the question yeah, if you've given a directive to somebody, that somebody can say well, shelly, tell me, is there a specific time during the day that you're looking for this. Likewise, if you're the leader to say, shelly, I just told you to have that by Friday and I just want you to know that it's this that I'm looking for specifically, talk to me about why you chose clarity as the focus for the first podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and my inclination is you have to start somewhere.
Speaker 1:Right?
Speaker 2:Well, you do, but yeah, because in my experience working with leaders in so many facets as a leader myself, partnering with leaders, myself partnering with leaders I have found that the root cause of so many challenges, disagreements, pain points, performance issues is genuinely a lack of clarity. And it can be solved so easily by having a quick conversation. And sometimes it's not a quick conversation, sometimes it requires a little bit more effort to get to clarity. But I always think about advice that I heard early on in my career and somebody told me this and I've told so many leaders this since then Most people, most people, want to do a good job. People don't show up to work and think today I am going to destroy this process, today I am going to be mediocre. They don't. Most people want to do a good job. They want to be successful, and in order for people to be successful, you have to know what success looks like and have those conversations.
Speaker 1:And so when I think about this podcast and starting this leadership community of people coming together to be growth minded and impact oriented. What better place to start than with clarity and getting clear about what success looks like you mentioned? I don't want to go down the rabbit hole, so to speak, but Alice in Wonderland.
Speaker 2:What does Alice in Wonderland have to do with clarity. I've used this quote often as well. When people don't have a lot of clarity, when they're not sure what success looks like, then they grapple with what's the right approach to take. And so, even when I'm coaching leaders and working with or teaching leaders, the question I get asked often is what do I do? And what I ask them is what does success look like to you? And so it reminds me of Alice in Wonderland, lost in the forest.
Speaker 2:She's lost and she comes to a fork in the road and there is the caterpillar and she asks the caterpillar what direction to take, and the caterpillar says in the road. And there is the caterpillar. And she asks the caterpillar what direction to take, and the caterpillar says where do you want to go? And she says it doesn't matter much. And his response is if you don't know where you want to go, it doesn't matter which path you take. And that's as true in life as it is in Alice in Wonderland. So if you're not clear, if you don't have clarity about what success looks like for you, about what it looks like for your leadership or it looks like for your team, or if your team isn't clear what success looks like for them. That is always the starting point.
Speaker 1:What advice do you commonly share with leaders that help them gain clarity in their leadership? I mean, we talked about these three things. We talked about you know why you think this is a key topic, but we're sitting in a session, a coaching session, or whatever. What are you telling me?
Speaker 2:So if I go back to the beginning of our conversation, drew, and we think about clarity from two perspectives, right, there's me being clear when I am giving direction or taking action or pushing forward, and there's also clarity of other people when you're on the receiving end of direction or guidance or working together. So there's two things. So, if you are looking for clarity for yourself together, so there's two things. So, if you are looking for clarity for yourself, what I talk to leaders about is choose your path as a leader. So you have to be really clear, first and foremost, what type of leader you want to be, what do you want your legacy to be, who are you as a leader, how do you want to show up, how do you want people to be perceived and what is your personal vision of success as a leader? Now, this takes time, this takes a quiet place, it takes some experience, it takes an opportunity for leaders to really reflect and think deeply about those questions, because if you're not careful with your answers, you become a version of a leader that's not who you want to be, and so the first thing, first piece of advice, is get really clear as a leader, pick your path. The second is to challenge the stories you may be telling yourself. So if you are telling yourself you don't have enough experience yet to be a great leader, you're going to behave in that way. Ask yourself what kind of leader do you want to be and how do you become the leader that you want to be If you feel like you're telling yourself a story that, as a leader, you don't want to be a micromanager and so you stop giving people direction? That's not great either. So really challenge the stories that you're telling yourself and how you want to show up. When you're trying to gain clarity with others.
Speaker 2:As a leader, when you're trying to confirm that somebody else your team, your peers, your boss that you are both clear, you have the clarity you need. The first thing that you need to do is pay attention, and this is where the busyness becomes a blocker, right? So when you delegate a task, when you give some direction, when you ask somebody a question, pay attention. Pay attention to how they show up. Remember, clarity is about easily understood in terms of seeing, understanding and hearing. So pay attention with your eyes, pay attention with your ears, listen for tone, look at body language to confirm that somebody is on the same page as you, so just show up and pay attention.
Speaker 2:The second is to lean in and ask. This has happened and become a barrier so often, where somebody is so eager to do a great job, they just take what their leaders say at face value and they run off. And I've had this happen so many times where I say do you have any questions? So this is what you're doing, do you have any questions? And the individual will say, nope, I got it, but I can feel that there's a question. I can feel that there's something not quite in alignment. Lean into that feeling and ask the questions.
Speaker 2:Instead of do you understand, Do you have any questions, you can open the door with questions around, tell me about what you think your next steps are going to be, tell me about what success looks like for you, and just create the space again, 30 seconds to a minute to gain that sense of clarity. One of my favorite quotes is by Brene Brown, and it is clear as kindar is unkind. And it's this notion of we think that we're saving time, we think that we're being gracious in giving people flexibility or giving them vague, soft answers, but what happens is there's this swirl that not having clarity creates and people start to second guess and start to think and wonder. And so, as a leader, the more clear you can be early, the more kind you actually are to your team members and employees. So clear is kind, unclear is unkind.
Speaker 1:You know, one of the things that I think about, and all the stops I've made along the way and things that I've seen and client companies that I've worked with, is you can almost spot those people in the group who may not be in the leadership, had the leader's title, but you can tell they're leaders because you can see how they interact with other people and that is what people want. I'm a history nerd and I think about Eisenhower in World War II. Why was he the Supreme Allied Commander? Because he had that ability to connect with people and engage with them and talk to them and to clearly talk about what his goals and desires were. Right, you can see those people around you if you really know how to find them and look for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you can see them because there's confidence in them.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And I'm just thinking. Lack of clarity is a real barrier to confidence, because if you don't know what you're going after, how can you confidently pursue that? So, whether it's scary or not, whatever you're going after, be clear about what it is and you can be so much more confident.
Speaker 1:Right, and speaking of confidence, that's our next episode, right.
Speaker 2:I believe it is. I mean yes.
Speaker 1:Drew, it is Okay. Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode of Shelley on your Shoulder and that you'll tune in next time to hear Shelley talk about confidence and peel that onion for us, and I really enjoyed the conversation with you today, shelley, and I'm looking forward to the next one.
Speaker 1:Thanks, Drew you today, shelly, and I'm looking forward to the next one. Thanks, drew. Thanks for listening to this episode of Shelly on your Shoulder. If you found today's episode helpful, be sure to subscribe and share it with someone who's ready to find the clarity to lead and the confidence to succeed. You can listen to Shelly on your Shoulder at 7bigconsultingcom or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can reach Shelly via the contact page at seven big consultingcom on LinkedIn, by searching for Shelly Sager that's S H E L L E Y S A E G E R or by clicking on the send us feedback link at the top of the episode description and your favorite podcast app. Until next time, lead with vision, act with purpose and inspire with heart.
Speaker 1:Appearance or mention of individuals, products or services on Shelly on your Shoulder does not constitute an endorsement. Shelly on your Shoulder is copyrighted by Seven Big Coaching and Consulting, all rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the content is prohibited without express written consent from 7 Big Coaching and Consulting. Shelling on your Shoulder is a production of 7 Big Coaching and Consulting in partnership with Left Brain, right Brain Marketing. You can find 7 Big Coaching and Consulting at 7bigconsultingcom and Left Brain, right Brain at lbrbmcom.