June 2026

I am challenged with clarity when it comes to wine, which means I don’t know how to describe what I want. The only thing I know for sure is I don’t like overly dry red wines, and white wines can’t be too sweet, nor too dry. Tell those things to the waitress or bartender at a restaurant and they don’t really know how to help me. I enjoy wine, but it’s like hockey to me in that I can’t tell why the team is playing well or poorly. In the same way, I can tell you I enjoyed that glass of wine or didn’t, but I don’t understand why. Whenever I tried to explain something growing up that didn’t make sense to my dad, he’d respond with one of his favorite phrases, “that’s clear as mud” and ask me to try again.

One of the challenges facing leaders every day is providing clarity on what they want from their team and expectations regarding behavior or performance. Over the years I’ve found way too many leaders operate a little like I am with wine, sometimes even saying “I’ll know if it’s right or wrong when I see it.” Those same leaders then lament when their expectations aren’t met and the team is underperforming.

Out of all the things you are responsible for as a leader, providing clarity to your team regarding their performance and behavior is at the top of the list. They can’t perform best without you being clear.

Vague statements about performance expectations never help. Your team needs clarity to perform at their best and be efficient with their time. The leader who tells their team, “We must improve our customer service”, hasn’t really defined what they mean for the team to work on because customer service is a broad topic. A directive like that will lead the team to waste hours arguing among each other about what they “think” needs to be improved. The direction they choose may not be what was needed. To add more clarity, include specifics, e.g., “We need to improve our call center response time, customers are waiting more than 5 minutes to talk with someone.” With this directive, the team knows it must get the wait time to 5 minutes or less. Or if the directive is, “We need to improve our resolution rate (how many customers have their issue resolved by the call without needing further follow up) to at least 90%”, the team knows 85% is progress, but it’s not where it needs to be. You get the point; the clearer you are with your expectations; the performance of your team will improve in meeting those expectations.

The other area for clarity is behavioral expectations. I’ve watched leaders say things, “get along” or “I expect teamwork”, which tells people something, but isn’t clear. I was working with a leadership team, and their CEO was frustrated with team members not working well together, especially two of them. His directive was, “you need to work together.” To himself, he was clear, but not to them and issues persisted. I encouraged being more specific. A better directive would be to say something like, “I expect the two of you to work together and bring to me a plan you both agree with and can support.” This directive provides more clarity for the two leaders because they now can’t point fingers at each other, they must have a joint plan. Accountability is the second part of behavioral expectations, and without it you won’t have success. If the two leaders come with their plan but begin sharing with the leader the parts they agreed to, but still don’t like, trust me, they are hoping you will step in and make a change. Don’t take the bait. Your job is not to be the referee. Simply direct them to go back, work on it and don’t return until they have a joint plan.

Two other tools will help you make certain you are providing clarity.

Seek feedback – Ask those you are giving directives to repeat back what they heard you say. If they can’t, you have a chance to fix it, by re-explaining and using different words.

Follow up in writing – I’m not suggesting you communicate by writing e-mails or memos, but when something is critical, you won’t want people to hear what you said and interpret it differently. For those times, write it down as a follow up to your conversation. Your written follow-up should provide the additional clarity needed to assure everyone knows what you expect.

When you become more skilled in providing clear directives on performance and behavior, your team’s performance will start becoming even better.

So it is with you. Unless you speak intelligible words with your tongue, how will anyone know what you are saying? You will just be speaking into the air. 1 Corinthians 14:9