TSLH #020: A Process To Create Quality

26 May TSLH #020: A Process To Create Quality

Read time: 4 minutes

When COVID hit us hard in March 2020, the first thing I did was to switch my coaching business to be fully online. That meant holding every coaching session in the room of our house that has now become my home office.

During one of the early coaching sessions I had with that new setup, my son entered the room to ask me something (he was 6 at the time). I promptly asked him to leave the room “… because I am in a coaching session”. He left frustrated, slamming the door. After my session was done, he came back to me with a big smile and handed me this sign:

He then told me: “If your door is closed, I can’t know if you are in a coaching session or not. Use this sign to tell me!”

That was it! Pascal: 0 Thomas: 1

What he really meant is “Be crystal clear with me and I’ll know if I can disturb you or not.”

Point taken. And I realized that it’s not only in such situations of life that clarity is key. Clarity is also key in many leadership situations.

However, what I often observe when coaching clients, watching teams, even looking back at my own experiences and failures at creating clarity, is that some version of the following process happens, say in a meeting:

• A topic is brought and discussed
• Opinions and ideas are shared, not from everyone
• A decision is made
• Once the meeting is done, the leader notices that different teams got different versions of what was discussed and decided in the meeting
• Now, confusion hits the organization because there is a lack of clear and consistent message

Does it sound familiar? I bet it does.

So how do you create clarity in this type of situations or for that matter, any leadership situation you’re in with your team or other people?

Here are the several steps you can use to create clarity. In some instances, you might not need all of them. My experience though is that the more of these steps you use, the greater the clarity. Again, let’s take the example of a topic you want to discuss in a meeting.

1. Set a clear objective of what it is you want to achieve on the topic or during the meeting. Ideally, you will even have set that objective in the meeting invitation, so that people can start thinking about the topic.
2. If needed, define any term or aspect of the topic that may be prone to diverse interpretations. For instance, once in a workshop I organized, I kept talking about “How we want the team to behave in such situations”. At some point, someone in the group raised their hand and asked me, “What do you mean with ‘the team?’” This question was indeed needed, because when asking other people in the group what they thought it meant, almost everybody had a different answer. So start creating clarity by making sure that what you are talking about means the same thing for everyone. And if not, just make it clear what it means in the context of your meeting or your discussion.
3. Have people lead the discussion. Lead with questions, listen, coach, avoid giving your opinion first, let the people own that discussion and any solution they are bringing for the topic.
4. Once solutions have been discussed, and there is a solution or a plan that has been agreed upon, this is where clarity should happen again. You, as the leader, must now make sure that everybody is leaving the meeting with the exact same understanding of (a) what has been agreed, (b) what specific steps must be done by who, by when, and (c) how any decision made may be communicated – or not if this is the agreement – to the rest of the team, or to the next level of managers, or up, as the case may be.

Without that clarity, you can be 100% sure that as soon as people will leave your meeting, disconnect will happen, because not everyone will have understood the decision the same way.

Bernard Werber, a French science-fiction writer, most famous for his Ants trilogy once said:

“Between what I think,

What I want to say,

What I think I say,

What I say,

What you want to hear,

What you think you hear,

What you hear,

What you want to understand,

What you think you understand,

What you understand,

There are ten possibilities that we may have difficulties to communicate.

But let’s try anyway.”

How does that resonate with you? Think about recent situations at work or in your personal life, when you thought you had been clear and that wasn’t the case. What could have contributed to that?

Lastly, I want to leave you with some great questions you can ask during these meetings or when you discuss with people to help establish clarity. You don’t need to ask all of them, they’re here to support you when you need.

1. What did you understand of the discussion on that topic?
2. What is not clear about what we have just discussed?
3. How do you feel about that decision? On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 the lowest)? What is missing for you to make this a 10?
4. What’s one thing that you can do to move this forward?
5. Take a blank paper and without consulting with each other, write down what you have understood of the discussion and the decisions we have met.
6. How do we want to communicate that in a clear, consistent, and transparent manner to our teams/executives/organization/etc.?

Remember, clarity is one of these things that will make the difference for you as the leader, between a fully engaged, collaborative, accountable team, and a team that is confused, reluctant to take action, or distrustful.

Which way would you rather go?

I wish you a great read. I’ll see you next Saturday!

TL; DR (Too Long, Did not Read)

A process to create clarity

1. Set an objective
2. Define terms and align understanding.
3. Lead and coach the discussion.
4. Agree on what has been decided and how to communicate.
5. Ask great questions.

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

1️⃣ Work 1-1 with me to step up as the authentic leader you aspire to be.

2️⃣ Hire me to help you build a high-performing team.

3️⃣ Start with my affordable digital courses on Mastering Difficult Conversations for Leaders and Goal Setting