Welcome to the Leader’s Lens!

This issue offers a fresh perspective and actionable tips to enhance your leadership this week.

Send me an email and let me know how you plan on implementing this perspective shift in your leadership!

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We are currently in a Leader’s Lens newsletter series titled The Moment Determines the Mode, a leadership framework that helps us as mid-level leaders pause before reacting and choose the response a situation actually requires. You can read part 1 right here.

Share this with a fellow mid-level leader and let’s dive into Part 2!

Have you ever felt that certain places and spaces felt loud to you?

I remember sitting in a board meeting for a nonprofit I served with, looking around the room thinking: Everything feels important.

We were planning community events for different audiences, preparing for a fundraiser, meeting with community partners, pursuing new funding. All at the same time.

Which is very typical for just about every nonprofit in this era. Yet, every conversation felt urgent. Each committee had a good reason why their work mattered most; it was expressed during each update within the board meeting.

The weirdest part was there was no arguments or overpowering voices. Just extremely hard working people who were not necessarily working on the same things.

This moment was loud for me and it made it really difficult to focus.

When every priority feels equally important, people naturally begin making their own decisions about where to spend their time and energy.

Good people start moving in different directions and the work has the potential to get duplicated. Then everyone’s energy gets scattered, but somehow leads to the dreaded burnout cycle.

As I reflect on this leadership moment, it was revealed to me that motivation and hard work can be great, but Clarity in those moments increase effectiveness (as well as reduce the noice that may be buzzing in everyone heads).

In Part 1, I introduced the idea that leadership is a lot like training in they gym.

Every leadership situation requires a different muscle.

Sometimes the moment calls for empathy.

Sometimes it calls for systems-thinking.

Sometimes it calls for culture-building and coaching.

But sometimes, the moment calls for clarity.

The clarity muscle is the leader’s ability to help people answer six simple questions::

A key thing to note is “Do I have all the answers?” is not a question listed.

For a moment, I want to switch analogies from lifting to driving.

Let’s thinking about a time when you had to drive through heavy fog. Do you suddenly stop driving when all you can see is 1km ahead of you?

Actually the National Weather Services advices that you slow down, use the low-beam headlights, leave plenty of distance between you and the cars in front of you, and follow the lines on the road.

You focus on what's immediately in front of you. And leadership works the same way.

Our teams don't always need us to show them the entire journey. Sometimes they simply need us to help them see the next stretch of road.

Clarity doesn't eliminate uncertainty but gives people enough confidence to take the next step.

Your leadership is helping guide the team to move from fog to focus.

Every leadership muscle has a range. We desired to leverage it in a healthy way because thats where we see the greatest impact. But there is an impact when you use it too little or too much.

I didn’t provide this kind of leadership for years. While my ideas and instincts were solid, I didn’t lead in this way because I was afraid.

Most of that fear came from not being able to identify the leadership muscle myself. I say it as “Controlling”. Since I like being collaborative and wanted everyone’s voices to be heard, I leaned in letting the room be what it needed to be.

I thought, “Eventually, everyone would come to the understanding and agreement on our direction.”

The posture of collaboration is good, but avoiding clarity when needed doesn't always feel collaborative to your team.

It’s ambiguity. And it creates the pressure of people creating their own narrative. Those with strong personalities being the unofficial leaders and it signals to the quiet voices that they have to wait for permission to speak.

Then you get the repeated questions, the spiraling of thoughts from others, the tangent perspective that is out of our control, and competing of priorities.

The anxiety I was trying to avoid was actually increasing.

But be careful now, leaning too heavy into providing clarity can be perceived as control.

You’ve been in moments where leader answers every question, and quickly too!

They can be the ones that make every decision or turn every discussion into an action plan.

I’ve been in this environment before, and have noticed myself and others decrease or critical thinking to just execute. It becomes more authoritative than engaging.

The over-directive nature can shut people and their inputs down. You are then being managed (or micromanaged) to execute in the leader’s way.

This shadow side of clarity can remove a team’s agency to operate.

I needed to keep this in frame whenever I notice a conversation going in circles and needing direction.

After recognizing my default mode of collaboration in this area, and wanting to strengthen my Clarity mode, I reflected on the areas where I noticed the team getting hung up on

From there, I distilled those areas in to four questions I wanted to lead with/keep in mind when I enter in to a urgent and tactical moment:

I understand that these four questions don't solve every problem, but they almost always create enough clarity for the team to move.

This week’s leadership workout is simple.

Think about one area where your team may be carrying unnecessary ambiguity.

Ask yourself:

This rep helps you become the leader who can calmly read the room and say “Here’s what matter's now.”

You are helping provide direction with humility, context, and care. That becomes one of the greatest gifts a leader can give.

Help reduce the noice in people’s head by providing them a frequency to listen to.

Help them navigate the fog to focus on what’s right in front of them.

Help them take the next best step towards the defined success.

This topic has become a very important leadership concept toward how I help build culture and leaders.

So much so, I am in the process of designing an assessment guide to help you Understand your Default Mode, Read the Moment, Define the Right Mode for the Moment, and Execute your leadership to meet the Moment.

A lot of mid-level leaders find out too late what tools they could have used in these moments. That could be you… and I want to help.

Your vote below will let me know you want to be notified when its ready and/or if you need support in applying this framework to a real situation you are experiencing right now!

In your corner,

— Ray

Whenever you are ready, here are ways you can work with me: