The Power of Clarity

Published: 9th September 2024

The Power of Clarity in Leadership

“Clarity breeds mastery.” [Robin Sharma]

Leadership Clarity lies at the heart of the Escentia 6Cs framework – the six critical ingredients which underpin our approach to developing focussed, adaptable, impactful and sustainable enterprise leaders and teams.

Defining Leadership Clarity

Clarity in leadership goes far beyond having a vision, or a set of goals that your team or organisation understands. It’s also about having a clear understanding of who you are as a leader, what you stand for, and understanding how to leverage your strengths to maximise your impact and influence with anyone you meet. Leaders must have a profound understanding of their values, strengths, and purpose. This self-awareness serves as a compass, guiding decisions and actions that are in alignment with core principles.

Practical Steps to Enhance Leadership Clarity

Define your vision: Create a compelling vision and communicate the strategy to achieve this, which inspires and motivates your team and ensures understanding of their role in it. This clarity also helps align efforts across the team and serves to reduce confusion.
Communicate Your Leadership Vision: Communicating your vision clearly, in a way that your organisation and team understand, is essential. Are you a visionary leader who inspires others with big picture thinking and change, or are you more pragmatic – focussed on the near-term delivery with metrics? Are you about the task or are you more about the people? Do you make time to really think about how you are communicating so everyone in front of you truly hears your message? Are you communicating in a way that YOU like to hear, or how THEY need to hear it to ensure understanding, emotional connection and action?
Acknowledge and Share Your Blind Spots: Acknowledging your areas of improvement also demonstrates self-awareness, an openness to feedback and willingness to grow. This is a powerful way to create a culture where trust, honesty and continuous improvement are valued.
Demonstrate Impact and Influence: Leadership impact and influence requires consistent alignment of your vision and actions – ensuring that your leadership presence is felt, trusted, respected and inspires others across the organisation – whether through driving business goals, fostering a positive team culture, or leading successful change. Impact and influence success requires constant flexibility and adaptability to the situation or person in front of you. How adaptable are you?
Seek and Value Feedback: Regularly ask for and act on feedback from a diverse range of personality types to foster a culture of continuous improvement. This practice helps you stay attuned to the needs of your team and organisation, whilst also fostering a culture of mutual respect and collaboration.
Seek Diverse Input on Strategy: Seek out different perspectives from across your team when developing or refining the business strategy. This will not only create a more robust plan, but it will also foster a sense of ownership and accountability among your team. Remember in ambiguity there isn’t just one answer.
Set Clear Objectives and Expectations: Provide clear goals, roles, and measures of success to keep your team focused and aligned with the organisational objectives. Clear objectives and expectations help your team focus on what’s important, reduce ambiguity, and drive performance.

At Escentia, we prioritise clarity in leadership and understand the importance of leading with intention. This is why we’ve developed a 360 assessment tool to help you and your team measure leadership clarity and other essential leadership qualities. Learn more about the Escentia’s 6Cs Assessment.