2024: Being Clear
Life is a series of new beginnings. Every first day of the week, of the month, and the year—every birthday, every important anniversary, every Labor Day (who doesn't like new pencils?), every day. New starts allow me to start as I wish to move on, reset, and build momentum. They help me get real about the difference between my goals and my actions toward achieving those goals.
Every year, I choose a word that I want to thread through my life day after day, week after week, month after month, through the whole year. It serves as the touchstone for my focus, allowing me to act rather than just wish. My 2023 word was energy, and I arranged pretty much everything to optimize my energy through lots of different decisions I made, trials and errors, different 30-day challenges, schedules, and calls to action for myself, my team, and my clients.
In the past year, I’ve realized that CLARITY is the biggest driver of energy and progress. Clarity outperforms everything in the pursuit of individual, group, team, and company goals. When I’m clear, my team is clear. When I’m clear, I shed habits that don’t serve me and replace them with habits that do. I am happier when I’m clear.
2024’s word: Clarity.
Of course, clarity is not always easy to achieve. What’s clear and obvious to me may not be clear and obvious to others. Indeed, I have heard “it might be easy for you, Lee” many times in my career. Clarity is at the heart of all good communication: the written word, spoken word, conduct, representation, image, and association. Clarity is at the center of everything.
Being clear provides energy to every situation. Being clear with positive intent provides progress.
Being clear is efficient, and that efficiency helps drive positive energy.
So how to be clear?
Being clear with others requires you to be clear with yourself. You can communicate much more effectively when you understand yourself, your strengths, your weaknesses, your values, and your worldview. I’ve used many different personality, skill, and strength assessments throughout my career; each one has contributed to my understanding of myself and how to bridge the gap between myself and others. Here are the four I particularly find valuable: (Note, I don’t have any relationship with these businesses.)
Strengthfinders (now CliftonStrengths Assessment) which helps you discover what you naturally do best, and then learn how to develop those natural talents into strengths.
DISC Profile which provides an easy visual way to understand yourself across four behavioral styles - Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness
Myers Briggs - The OG business assessment tool (a vast majority of Fortune 500 companies use the MBTI)
And my favorite
The Enneagram a typology that classifies human personality into nine basic types. The online assessment tool is relatively recent in the Enneagram history which goes back centuries (read more here).
2. Articulate your values. Values (expressed or implied) are the DNA of a person behavior and priorities. They are the fundamental beliefs that you holds. If you haven’t identified your own values yet, I recommend two resources for you:
Unstuckable by Heather Kernahan. Specifically pages 14 - 19
The meaning of personal values and how they impact your life from BetterUp
3. Articulate and Regularly Reinforce Your Company values. The best guide for creating relevant, meaningful company or team values that aren’t just words on a poster or a mug that can be wildly interpreted is The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything in Business by Patrick Lencioni. Run don’t walk.
Double Forte uses the very clear process outlined in The Advantage to identify our core, non-negotiable, aspirational values. They guide our day-to-day language, behavior and “rules” of engagement with each other and our clients and partners. When we face tough decisions, we bring out the values to help us make those decisions quickly. They are indispensable.
4. Activate Your Communication. And as much as being clear requires you to be clear about yourself and your organization, being clear also requires active communication. The first and last thing you need to know is that active communication is never one and done. Once is never enough. Once is never enough. (see what I did there?)
And you will think, “Oh my God, didn’t I already say this?” why yes, you probably did. But if everyone who needs to didn't hear it, didn't understand it, and didn't apply it, it wasn't said.
Seven times is probably a good number the message needs to be said in different ways for different people to hear, understand and apply it. 10 is better.
And as soon as you have a new team member or the situation changes, you need to start again. You are never done.
And lastly.
5. Line up your language with your behavior.
Everything Speaks. Everything you do speaks for you too. Not only what you said, not only what you wrote down, but more importantly what you did and how you behaved. As Maya Angelou said, “When people show you who they are believe them.”
Want to show people you respect them? Turn off your phone and put it away when you’re talking with them. What does that say that says to the other person, I'm paying attention, you're paying attention to them, you're listening, and you're engaged.
So let's be clear in 2024. And now is the perfect time to start. Commit to being clear this year and see the dramatic difference it will make in your life and your organization.