Connecting to Admired Leadership
How Does Clarity Enhance Decision Making and Engagement?
Episode Summary
A conversation with Admired Leadership Executive Coach, Sierra Holland and Wes Bender from CRA | Admired Leadership, exploring how clarity in communication drives employee engagement and decision-making effectiveness. Drawing from the firm's proprietary Clarity Index research tool, this session reveals the five critical topics leaders must communicate with regularity and specificity to achieve better results. Sierra provides practical strategies for creating clarity at both organizational and team levels, emphasizing that message sent is rarely message received without intentional communication design.
Episode Notes
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Key Highlights
- The Clarity Index reveals five essential topics for regular communication: strategy, culture, functional strategy, role clarity, and employee value proposition (why work here vs. elsewhere) - lack of clarity in these areas directly impacts engagement and decision-making speed
- Connect everything back to strategy: Don't just communicate strategy once in January - every decision, change, or new initiative should be explicitly connected back to your organizational strategy throughout the year
- Cultural clarity requires specificity: Values like "excellence" or "trust" are meaningless without behavioral examples - use promotions, hiring decisions, and daily interactions to demonstrate what these values actually look like in practice
- Conditions of accountability drive clarity: Set clear expectations (format, detail level, deadlines), provide proper resources (templates, examples of excellence), give appropriate autonomy, and define positive/negative consequences
- Tailor detail to audience: With senior leaders, be brief, brilliant, and be gone - they'll ask for more if needed. With teams, mix formats using pre-reads, focused meetings, and detailed follow-ups rather than cramming everything into one communication
Notable Quotes
- "Message sent is rarely message received. People are looking at your actions, decisions, and interactions to see what's really true."
- "When senior leaders want three things from you: be brief, be brilliant, and be gone. If they want more detail, they'll ask."
- "Your strategy can only be clear if there aren't detractors from it. You have to proactively look for where skeptics will roll their eyes."
- "Do a little bit more work up front to create clarity for better results the first time, rather than going back and forth on details later."
- "Before important communications, ask yourself: What is the one thing I want people to take away from this?"
- "Culture itself is intangible - we have to tie cultural values into things we're already communicating about, like promotions and daily interactions."
Featured Speakers
- Sierra Holland is a Managing Director in CRA | Admired Leadership's Strategic Communications practice, specializing in helping leaders become better communicators for their teams. With expertise in organizational communication strategy and the proprietary Clarity Index research, she focuses on creating communication experiences that drive engagement and decision-making effectiveness. Known for her sharp facilitation skills and curiosity-driven approach to client work.
- Wes Bender serves as a facilitator and thought leadership coordinator at CRA | Admired Leadership, helping to connect practical leadership insights with real-world application through webinars and educational content.
Resources Mentioned