S1E14 - Clarity Isn’t Communication – Why Your Message Still Isn’t Landing

In this episode of Leadership Matters, Glenn Price and Terry Reynolds dive into the first of two amplifiers that sit across all 12 execution drivers: clarity and communication. They explore why most leaders mistake “communicating” for “being clear” — and why people don’t actually want more emails or town halls, but simple, human messages that tell them what’s happening, why it matters, and what they need to do differently.

Glenn and Terry unpack the difference between broadcasting and true clarity. Leaders often tick the communication box, but behaviour inside the business reveals the truth: people heard the message, but didn’t understand it. They discuss why clarity is the ultimate leadership discipline — harder than strategy, harder than planning — because it demands decisions, simplicity and the courage to cut the jargon. They also talk about the power of BLUF (bottom line up front), creating feedback loops, and helping leaders interpret strategy in real terms for their teams.

Transcript

Welcome to Leadership Matters, a podcast recorded by LeaderShape Consulting to help leaders take a vision and deliver results. My name is Glenn Price, one of the directors at LeaderShape Consulting, and I'm joined as always by my business partner and co-host, Terry Reynolds. So in this episode and the next one coming up, it's a little bit different. Let me tell you for why. Is that in the previous episodes, we've gone through 12 drivers separated into four steps, the first of which was set direction and we talked about vision strategy and alignment. We talked about how do you engage and excite your teams and your customers. And we touched on the drivers of experience, believability and desirability. We then went, hey, that sets up the context for performance, but now we need to enable and execute in step three, where we looked at structural resources and action planning. And then last of all, once you get that giant flywheel working, how do we continue to sustain momentum and actually drive results? And we looked at subjects like development and the importance of accountability and co-elevation. Now, when we did the original research, there were two things, two items that cut all the way through those 12 drivers, the first of which was clarity and communication, the second of which was energy and visibility. And so in this episode, we want to really dive in underneath clarity and communication. And I think what stands out for me is that in the book, we say clarity isn't soft. It's the ultimate leadership discipline.

But I can imagine for our listeners, if I listen to what you're hearing, is that you're going, what's the difference between those two words? And often in an engagement survey, the number one thing that comes out, whether it be in Australia or across the globe, is that they say, hey, we want more communication. But when I challenge them on that, they actually don't want any more communication. Ask yourself this question. Do you want more emails, more meetings, more town halls? Probably not.

What people are looking for is clarity. I want it simple. I want to understand it and I want it to connect. And so we talk about clarity like it's a whiteboard exercise, right? But it's not. It's really hard stuff. It's about making decisions and drawing lines and communicating them so clearly that confusion has nowhere to hide. My dad says sometimes clarity is a little bit like being a priest. You've got to help people believe in something that they can't see, feel or touch.

And so I often think leaders believe that they're delivering clarity, but what they're doing is just communicating. What are your thoughts, You know, I just wonder whether those leaders that you mention, whether they are going into that communication thinking about I need to communicate or I need to focus on clarity of my communication because I think they're two very, very different things. Communication really is just a tick box exercise. I'm going to run the town hall. I do that every month. You're not measuring the outcome or the success of the communication. You're just doing the do, You're just doing the do.

And you talk about engagement surveys. We have a bit of a laugh about engagement surveys because the two things that always appear is communication and salary. I'm underpaid for what I do, et cetera. But the question itself in the engagement survey is never around the clarity of the communication because you're asking people, are you communicated enough? Do you know what's going on? We're not actually measuring the success of the communication. I wonder whether that's a key thing as well.

Well, it also begs for me in the absence of communication or clarity, people make it up. And so, yes, I've attended the launch. I've listened to the podcast. I've read the PDF. I've got the company magazine. But if I can't get the red line that helps me understand role and goal clarity, that I understand the vision, strategy and how my role is valued and contributes towards us achieving that.

Then I would just say that leaders have mistaken broadcasting or cascading that message and going, hey, I've done it. Tick the box. And then the assumption is, is that people have clarity. And then there's that horrible moment normally on a webinar or on a live team's call where they go, is there any questions? I want to make sure that everybody's clear. And then you just get that tumbleweed moment where nobody really wants to step up and going, I don't understand a word of what you've just said.

I understand it intellectually but I don't understand what you want us to do different. I think that's quite challenging. You know, it's one of those things that you don't control because you don't control what the receiver is receiving. And that is that, you know, I've stood in town halls where there is discussions about, I don't know, an M &A piece or a change of structure or… And my feeling is the audience are actually listening to what they want to hear. How's it going to impact me? What does that mean to me? more work, less work, whatever the case would be, I'm out of a job. Because I've talked to people when they've come out of those types of meetings or town halls and you talk to two or three people and actually what they've received is very, very different between each person you speak to. So people are almost getting to a stage where they put their own meaning associated with whatever's being said. And that's because clarity is not checked. Now that's a hard thing to do, isn't it? I mean, how do you check clarity? How do you check that your message has been understood exactly as you need it to be? Well, I think… Look, firstly, whether it be a team's call, a town hall, a broadcast, a cascade, a launch, a leadership conference.

All of those mediums need to be there. We're not saying turn those off. What resonates for me is your challenge to go, well, how do you know that it's landed, that the message has landed? And the only way that I know of is to check in one on one. Is that the leaders at whatever level inside of an organisation go, hey, we've just listened to that. What part's jumped out for you? Did you have questions over what that means for our team? And I don't think many leaders have the skills to do that. Once again, it's a little bit more emotional. What if my team member raises a question I don't have an answer to and I wasn't even the one that was communicating? Or worse, I'm only 70 % brought in. So how am I meant to stand and provide clarity to my team? Is that authentic? Is it not? I'm being told to hold the company line. How does that get in the way of people saying that it's genuine? this with tongue in cheek, but in a nice way,

You need to dumb down the message, don't you? Strip the jargon, right? Just get rid of it, right? And part of that means that maybe the message is delivered and then there needs to be some level of follow-up. So whether that be that every department head, leader, et cetera, you almost need to give them the three talking points, the clarity points, the things that must understand pieces and go, hey going forward in your meetings, need you to raise these three things. It's something we do a lot of, you know, at the end of that, and I think I've talked about this in one of the earlier podcasts, is the idea around at the end of that two day off site, to be able to go, what are we communicating? Those six or seven people around the table need exactly the same message. Because if you get people a bit rogue and they start going off in different directions, all of a sudden the messaging becomes very diluted.

Very different understandings. want to explore this because I agree with you. When you get a hundred leaders all sticking to the same three, four points, then then my my experience suggests that clarity goes up. Right. However, I do think going back to what you said before around the listener to those messages, you need to give leaders the ability to sort of move a little bit left and right or at least say those messages in their own words.

Otherwise, you're not taking the listener into consideration. So the only way that I've seen that is, that great firms who communicate and, and absolutely measure the degree of clarity, they approach this a little bit like media training. They do have the three or four speaking points. They allow leaders to move left or right, but they set up some guide rails. And in fact, they even have a detailed communication plan that's attached to the strategy that goes, these are the messages that are being sent by these people.

at this level, at this time, through what medium? So when I say one-on-one, that's great if you can do it on the front line, but sometimes it might be a recording that enables people to listen and just being smart enough to put subtitles and captions on so that people when they're traveling can actually see the message that's being done. Do you have a forum that enables you to loop back and ask questions? So I'm with you in terms of going, these are the messages that need to be communicated. I just think you need to give leaders the autonomy to go, how do I bring that alive for the people in my team considering what they do, their style? You know, it's funny because when you talk to leaders about this idea around clarity, communication, et cetera, they feel like they do a good job. I agree. They feel like they do a good job. And then they tell me what they've done and I think, yeah, that's pretty good. Good for you. Where it falls over often is within the workplace your teams are not actually engaged with the messaging. I.e. I don't know. I know this is bad example but you've sent the email… …you've made sure…tried to make sure that people…they haven't read it. So you think, well what I'll do is I'll do a video or a podcast. They haven't listened to it or they haven't watched it. So you almost get to this stage where it's like… …I could just imagine how frustrated you become because you're going, I'm trying all of these various mediums, but actually the receiver's not choosing to engage in it at all. So is that a cultural thing where we need to reset expectations around communication in order to get clarity? So we go, maybe we share or better still, we invite the wider, some section of the wider organisation to go, how would you like to be communicated with? And this is the importance of doing it. So, you know, often when I look and I review executive communication, it's incredibly informative, but it's not persuasive. It doesn't ask me to do anything different. And so after about the third one, I just file the email, go, when I've got time, I'll look back at that. There was no necessity for me to do anything different in my job role. If all of a sudden I was getting some sort of persuasive messaging and I heard it through multiple times.

And it's not just the CEO, but my leader, my direct leader is almost a interpreter of that strategy, I mean, this is how your role fits. We've made an adjustment here. You need to be aware of that so you make the right decisions for our customers. Then I'd probably more likely tune in. I know lots of time spent in financial services. We used to have a huddle, right? Every single morning or every single week there was you know, the CEO TV and everybody would tune in and listen to the update of progress and whether there needed to be anything adjusted. Our defence forces do this really well. And they have this saying that I've learnt called bluff, which means bottom line up front. And when I first asked about that, coming, well, why would you just blurt out the answer at the top of a communication is that they don't know when bullets are going to start flying, right?

So at least they're able to give what the mission is and what your role is and how it's going to be valued quite fast at the top. And then if there's no action in the theatre, they can continue to give you the why and the what and the how and really involve you in a two-way conversation. I think that adds clarity. And more and more since I've been introduced to that, I look at executive communication and go, I wonder whether it's as simple as the bluff tool, putting the bottom line up front and give people a reason to listen.

Yeah, look, I don't think many leaders spend a lot of time working on their ability to persuasively communicate. And I think if they had a template or a little bit of coaching, we follow the same format, they got better at it, they place emphasis on it, then I think it's going to make a huge difference. I think maybe as a skill we…you know, people undervalue that ability to be able to get your message across. Could you imagine…

If you'd done all the work on the strategy, you'd followed all of those steps, then you're unable to communicate it. I mean, that's problematic. Well, the biggest challenge that I've seen is often the person that it falls on. And it's not always the CEO, right, or a country head. But the person that it lands on to communicate is often the extrovert, the person with the loudest voice. And what worries me is that they don't see it as a discipline. They go, I'll be right on the day.

Just give me the slides and I'll talk around them. Right. And that might make them feel comfortable. But when we tune into the listener, they've completely missed the message. There needs to be a disciplined story, that flight path with base camps. This is how we're getting there. And actually the discipline of learning to communicate for clarity, I think is really, really hard. When people put together slide decks or messaging, we go get it all out, then delete a third.

then delete a third and then you'll be close to sort of where your note should be, delete another one. It's hard to say little and have it cut through, right? But it's certainly doable. The last question before I go into our top tips that I've got for you is that what do you think the biggest telltale signs inside of an organisation are that clarity has gone missing and no-one's brave enough to say it?

Well I guess at the end of the day you're looking at the behavior of what people are doing or not doing, aren't you? That's really your feedback loop to go, I need people to do this but they're not. Well that's going to give me feedback that they haven't picked up on the communication that I maybe got up and talked about at the town hall. They're still acting in the old way. They're still doing those types of things. That would suggest… It hasn't driven any behavioral change. hasn't done anything. And that comes down to, you know, the…

That probably is that, you know, when people stand up and deliver the message, there is no call to action. There's no… This is… As a result of listening to me for the past 15 minutes, I need you to do these three things. I don't think it's probably as clear as that. Last one that came to mind. Does communicating with clarity mean that you share everything? Definitely not. Not for me personally, because I've been burnt is where I've shared too much what I considered to be…what I thought was going, I want people to believe that I'm transparent and open. So what I'll do is I'll open the kimono and I'll show them everything I've got. And what I ended up doing was that there were people within that group that completely were spooked by what I was sharing. Too much information. Way An area that they can't influence or control. Well, they look at it, you know, what we were talking about.

that was like, oh, goodness me, am I going to have a job tomorrow? Yeah, absolutely. So look, hopefully from listening to this podcast, you can see the difference between communication and clarity and that clarity is a discipline where the leader really needs to be an interpreter of the strategy and you need to be checking in and asking whether people have that clarity and create the right environment for them to give you some feedback. So here are some top tips for leaders on how you amplify clarity. 

Number one. You need to continuously keep talking about the message until the people can say it themselves. So don't stop communicating when you're bored of your own message, right? Stop when everybody else can repeat it. 

Number two, we've talked about this, simplify and then simplify again. If your strategy doesn't fit on a page or your priorities can't be remembered without notes, then you're not clear enough and it's confusing. So get to the stage where you can absolutely communicate with conciseness and simplification of message. Three, design your communication loops. Don't rely on those town halls that you talked about, Terry, or one-way emails. Make sure that you've built some feedback loops that tell you what people actually heard, not what you said. Who are your eyes and ears out there, where it really matters in front of your customers. 

Ban those buzzwords. You talked about this, get rid of the jargon, simplify your language, acronyms should be taken out. Leaders create clarity when they trade all of that corporate bullshit speak for human language. 

And the last of all, connect clarity to execution. So when we do communicate about strategy, we're making sure that every meeting, every project, every initiative, ladders back to those three questions. What are we doing? Why are we doing it? And how will we know when it's done? 

So this is our first of two amplifiers. And the question that I'd leave you with before going into energy and visibility is. What's one message in your organization that's still fuzzy? Identify what that is and what will you do about it to add clarity next week?