Clarity is the Most Underrated Skill

Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player who ever lived. Six championships. Five MVPs. The man other great players measured themselves against.

He also oversaw the Charlotte Bobcats. Under his ownership and basketball leadership, the 2011-12 Bobcats finished 7 and 59 — the lowest winning percentage in NBA history.

The greatest player the sport has ever produced built the worst team the sport has ever seen. Not because he didn't care. Because what made him extraordinary on the court — instinct, feel, a standard so high it was almost impossible to articulate — could not be transferred to the people around him.

Being great at something does not make you clear about it. And being unclear is expensive in time, in trust, and in outcomes.

Being expert at something does not make you clear about it. And being unclear is expensive in time, in trust, and in outcomes.

Cal Newport, in Deep Work, argues that most people operate in a fog of unclear priorities and poorly defined work. They are busy but not productive. Active but not effective. The problem, Newport says, is not effort. It's that the work hasn't been made clear enough, to themselves or to the people around them, to produce anything beyond surface activity. Clarity has two parts: whether people understand what they're supposed to do, and whether your communication produced understanding. Not whether you explained something. Whether they got it. Those are different things, and confusing them is one of the most common and most costly errors in leadership.

Questions to ask before you explain anything:

●  Could someone act on this without asking me a follow-up question?

●  Do they know what success looks like before they start?

●  If they didn't understand it, what does that tell me about how I explained it and not about them?

Reflective Questions

●  Think of the last time someone didn't do what you expected. Is it possible the expectation wasn't as clear as you thought?

●  Where in your work or leadership do you assume understanding rather than verify it?

●  What is something you know so well that you may have lost the ability to explain it clearly to someone who doesn't?

Listen to Episode 7 of Move Toward: Unlocked for the story of a classroom game nobody could follow, a student who said in six words what twenty minutes of instruction couldn't, and what Wayne Gretzky has to do with all of it.