How to avoid ‘Confusion Syndrome’ in your team
Confusion is one of the most under-estimated syndromes in any team!
Recently one of our growth advisors was with a client, joining them for their quarterly ‘Leadership Team Planning and Preview’ session. They were assessing the ‘health’ of what we call a ‘Key Function Flow Map’ – a simple map that details 4 or 5 of their most important business functions that will guide and enable the business to make money and thrive.
It had been three months since they reviewed their ‘Key Function Flow Map’, and some organisational changes and pressure points emerged during that time. As they worked through their map and the key measures for and between each function, we noticed that some of the team weren’t confident in what was being discussed.
When digging a little deeper, it became very clear that this map wasn’t flowing effectively in the business. When the team were asked to talk through this, they battled to explain how it worked. There was a real lack of clarity and unanimity.
To be clear, this tool is used to create simplicity. It represents a practical and replicable diagram that can and should flow throughout the entire organisation so that all employees can understand the workings of the whole business, what are the measures that matter, and how they specifically connect to each of them.
However, if a leadership team can’t understand it clearly, what hope does the rest of the organisation have? This is not about the tool at all, but about how effective your team is, and how its performance is translating through the rest of the business.
With the aim of avoiding confusion as a leader, how often are you ‘double-clicking’ on members in your team to assess their levels of understanding and clarity? Avoiding ‘confusion syndrome’ in a team requires clear communication, established processes, and fostering a supportive environment.
Here are a few extremely practical tips you can use to achieve avoid confusion and achieve clarity in your team:
Rehearsal
Ask a team member to take the rest of the team through a topic/tool/output as though they were presenting it to their own team.
Once someone steps in to do this, you can also ask someone else if they may approach it differently to the first person and how they may do this.
Get curious
Pose a question to any of your team members such as “What do you understand of what we just concluded/agreed upon?”
Their response should be an on-the-spot indicator of whether your team is clear on what has been discussed.
Mine for ambiguity
When ambiguity arises, address it promptly. Encourage team members to ask questions and seek clarification rather than making assumptions that could lead to confusion later. Directly ask them an open question such as, “What part of this remains ambiguous or unclear?”
Not only does this give you the opportunity to clear any confusion immediately, but it also means that you can be assured your team are crystal clear on what has been discussed or agreed upon in your meeting.
However, the ultimate goal of this process is to reduce the reliance on having to ‘double-click’ with your team. If you have built a high-performance, high-trust culture, it should be very natural for any team member to own their confusion on a particular matter. Before the team moves onto the next topic, they should be asking for clarity.
One thing is for certain, if anyone in your team is sitting with confusion, you can bet they won’t be the only one, and that doesn’t work well for effectively cascading clear, concise, and consistent messages across the rest of your business.
Anywhere confusion exists, engagement and performance will suffer!
Next time your team gets together, discuss this with them, get curious, mine for ambiguity, and determine exactly how as a team you can avoid the syndrome of confusion.
For more blogs and tips to help improve your business and leadership teams, click here.