as easy as... maintaining clarity
- Jul 8
- 6 min read
I’ve had the good fortune over the last two years to work with a team of leaders, teaching and exploring the skills they need for leading change. One thing that I’ve discovered is that talking about change can sometimes be just as complicated as making change happen. As I mentioned in an earlier article in this series, one hurdle to overcome when discussing and teaching change leadership is the fact that change is not linear, but we need to create a kind of structure to work through the concepts and practices. This contributes to a certain muddiness.
Which is especially frustrating as I approach the final topic of this series: Maintaining Clarity during change. It may be the last of the priorities I’ll discuss for creating effective and sustainable change—preceded by Direction, Engagement, and Choice—but Clarity is truly the focus area that wraps around the others, giving change form and keeping you aligned to the original intent of the initiative.
Without clarity, you can’t set direction, communicate to create engagement, or provide choice to the team. Lasting change does not happen in the absence of clarity.
So, why talk about it at the end? If it’s so important, why wait to address the requirement of change that clarity addresses?
Well, for one, clarity is the thread that runs throughout the other priorities. It may not be explicit, but the work will fall apart without it. Additionally, the work of maintaining clarity allows you to loop back and check the progress and effectiveness of your earlier and ongoing efforts.
This all reinforces the central tension of change leadership, that it requires you to deal with constantly competing priorities. We focus on direction because change needs both stability and innovation. Engagement answers the need for logical connection and compassionate communication. Choice names employees’ responsibilities and freedoms to help them navigate the day-to-day work of making the change a reality. In the same way, Clarity allows you to lead change with appropriate simplification and precision.
Clarity is having the quality of being clear, being both easily understood and creating ease through order. Simple. Precise. In the midst of ongoing, complex change, clarity is a soothing balm.
Simplification and precision support teams becoming agile and efficient. Agility gives your team the ability to move quickly and efficiency makes them able to produce needed results. This is desirable during normal operations, but absolutely necessary in the face of change.
So, your responsibility as a leader is to strip away distractions, remove barriers, and make things as easy as possible at every turn. Maintaining clarity will involve five key actions:
1) Communication
2) Lessons Learned
3) Effectiveness
4) Assess Complexity
5) Recognition and Reflection
In addition to outlining each of these for you, I will also provide what I call “Clear Questions,” simple thought questions you can ask yourself at regular intervals throughout a change initiative to gauge how well you’re maintaining clarity.
COMMUNICATION
We will always talk about communication when it comes to leadership and change. It is the constant if you want to lead. And “communication” covers so very many topics, skills, and practices. So, for this moment, I want to focus on the idea of events and challenges, as well as some guidelines to help you communicate effectively and in ways that will maintain clarity.
Consider a change you are currently leading or one that is on the horizon. When it comes to the subject of this change, ask yourself:
What do you talk about most with your team?
These topics represent communication events—what you discuss and in what settings.
What exactly about talking about this can be hard?
This lets you articulate the communication challenges you face in the midst of the change.
Now that you are equipped with understanding of the events and challenges in front of you, you can prepare for communication with a few simple guidelines.
Clear
Clear communication avoids interpretation or opinionating. When planning clear communication, choose simple, understandable language and familiar terms and prioritize brevity, logic, and organization.
Direct
Direct communication isn’t about being blunt. It is communication that makes direct connections to the information and priorities related to the change. It is relevant, respectful, precise, and truthful.
Kind
Kind communication is a demonstration of the clear and direct guidelines. When you deliver kind communication, your voice and body reflect kindness, you choose the appropriate time and place for sharing the message. You make empathy, mindfulness, intentionality, awareness, and courage your goals for kind communication.
With these guidelines, you can plan clear messages, stay directly connected to your purpose, and speak with a kind presence to communicate during any event or challenge associated with your change efforts.
Clear Questions:
Am I communicating regularly and consistently? Are my messages balanced for the head and heart?
LESSONS LEARNED
Change will impact performance. Expect to see a dip in productivity, an increase in errors, and even a little bit of general chaos during any change. The bigger the change, the greater the possibility of mistakes—and opportunities to learn.
Approaching the mistakes and missteps that will happen during change with a learner’s mindset will produce two distinct benefits for you. First, you will build or improve psychological safety and increase the team’s shared knowledge and experience.
Second, a “What can we learn from this?” attitude is a highly effective way to respond to employees’ resistance to the change. It lets you engage them individually and as a team in uncovering what’s working and what needs they still have. Whether you’re dealing with a lack of information, emotional discomfort, or low trust, using change as a bridge to learning will address the underlying causes of resistance.
Clear Questions:
Am I making it psychologically safe and providing opportunities for us to discuss what we’re learning?
EFFECTIVENESS
Every change is intended to create new circumstances. When you lead change, you are accountable for ensuring that those new circumstances are coming into existence, that you and your team are achieving the desired and necessary results.
While this is pretty straightforward, it does mean that you need to understand what results you’re looking for exactly. You also need to have a way to observe or measure those results. In larger change efforts, this is usually managed through a project management function. But you can (and should!) establish a recurring review cycle for yourself to monitor progress. This can be a great opportunity to involve employees in the monitoring process, to invite their feedback and share their experiences so far, and, at the very least, to share regular updates with the team and your direct manager.
Clear Questions:
Is the change getting the results we need? Do we need other resources to stay on track?
ASSESS COMPLEXITY
I’m always astounded by how quickly overcomplication slips in. Change leaders have to be diligent to avoid and reduce complication whenever possible. Otherwise, the new processes and expectations will get bogged down and people will struggle to do different. Change is hard enough without extra steps or unnecessary activity.
Your job is to work with the team to identify the most efficient and effective way to do their work in the new circumstances and then to keep that path open. This includes having organizational and political savvy so that you know the right people and protocols for getting things done where you work. Your ability to navigate your organization—what I call internal savvy—is an overlooked but essential leadership skill during change. It is vital to creating simplicity in the face of ambiguity. You will help yourself and your team immensely if you devote time today to building the relationships and knowledge that make navigating your organization easy tomorrow.
Clear Questions:
Am I creating more complexity or difficulty or am I actively making things easier? How can I simplify the change even more?
RECOGNITION AND REFLECTION
This is more than pizza-party-thank-yous. The work of recognition and reflection is a change leadership practice that balances your team’s past success and present priorities so that you can move towards the new future.
It is important to recognize past accomplishments and other significant events your team has experienced leading up to the change. I mean formal recognition here. You want to provide people the opportunity to remember, commemorate, and release the past. If you don’t take this step, they will naturally carry these memories, habits, and expectations into the future—and they will get in the way of the change.
For example, during a merger or acquisition, employees often experience shifts in work identity and connection. Recognizing the past helps them grieve what’s ending and prepare for what’s ahead.
Creating opportunities for shared reflection is another important aspect of maintaining clarity. Not only does it provide people with the chance to share wins and tell the stories that will become their shared history, taking time to reflect lets you determine if the team’s progress is on track and aligned with the purpose of the change.
Clear Questions:
Am I recognizing the team’s progress? Are there opportunities for us to reflect on what we’ve done?
Maintaining clarity is not a final step in a change initiative. It is the ongoing, continuous assessment and reflection on the alignment and effect of your efforts. It means keeping all elements of the change in focus, staying true to direction, actively engaging people (even in the face of resistance), and managing the choices and actions your team makes every day. Clarity gives you the ability to navigate changing circumstances with communication, learning, and reflection, and devoting your energy to maintaining clarity is essential for successful change leadership.
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