Our world is moving at breakneck speed. In the corporate world, the lines are often blurred between today and tomorrow. For leaders, being able to ponder the future, excel in the present and raise their leadership bar requires great clarity.
To be clear, clarity is the ability to see things as they are with an accurate perception and understanding. It’s a freedom from uncertainty or confusion. It’s the skill to grasp fundamental truths and distinguish false alternatives. Clarity of mind stands as a basic framework to hang other usable skills, and successful leaders learn how to find it.
I agree with Peter Bregman who writes in Leading with Emotional Courage: How to Have Hard Conversations, Create Accountability, and Inspire Action on Your Most Important Work (Wiley, 2018), that one of the most distinguishing character traits successful leaders possess is clarity. This encompasses not only reaching a state of clarity but continuing to embody it. Providing clarity to others is just as vital as establishing it within yourself.
Increase Your Clarity
If you want to increase your clarity and determine how to move forward, you need to assess your recent performance and frame your effectiveness. Ask yourself what things went well. Just as important, ask what kinds of things did not go well. Putting together an historical picture helps to reveal patterns.
When this topic comes up with my coaching clients, we discuss the usefulness of finding patterns and common causes. The goal is to find a personal theme behind it all, as Bregman suggests. You might find your theme to be similar to these examples:
- Overthinking makes things more complicated. When I break things down into simple compartments, solutions are more effective and longer lasting.
- Emotions get in the way of clear thinking and reasonable responses. When I have calm responses rather than emotional reactions, outcomes are much better.
- Rushing to conclusions with impatience takes me down terrible paths. Taking a more deliberate approach, dealing with one step at a time, yields a better understanding and thus better decisions.
Your personal theme determines the corrective action needed to reverse the affects you don’t want to see. Make it your ‘theme for clarity”. Let it be simple, doable and easy to remember. Make it your focus every day. For example, if your theme is to slow down, practice slowing down. A deliberate awareness will become an automatic state of mind. Raise your leadership bar by finding your best self-improvement theme.
What do you think? How do you achieve greater clarity? I’d love to hear from you. You can call me at 561-582-6060, let’s talk. And as always, I can be reached here, or on LinkedIn.
