Structure
Type. You lead with the reasoning. The ask arrives late.
You lead with the reasoning. Situation, what changed, why it matters, then what you think. Your team can repeat your logic, which is rarer than it sounds, and when a decision of yours is challenged upstairs it survives, because there was a case behind it.
Here is what your team hears that you do not say. The ask arrives late. By the time you get to "so I want us to", a third of the room has stopped listening and half of them are not sure whether you have decided or you are thinking out loud. You experience this as being thorough. They experience it as having to find the point.
The second pattern is written over spoken. Structure leaders write well and would often rather send the note than have the conversation. The note is clearer. It also lands without a face, and the person reading it fills in the tone themselves, usually worse than you meant it.
Check your lowest dimension. If it is Headline, your team is getting the case and losing the decision. If it is Connection, your reasoning is sound and nobody can tell how you feel about it, which for a hard message is the part they needed. If it is Inquiry, you are building the case before you have asked what the other side knows, and you are sometimes building it on the wrong facts.
A CEO I worked with had a strategy his leadership team could recite word for word. I asked one of his managers what she would do differently on Monday because of it. She did not know. Nobody in the room did. That is not a team that failed to listen. It is a leader who made the case and never made the ask.
The fix was one question at the end of every strategy conversation, asked of each person in turn: what will you stop or start this week because of this. The first round was awkward. Within a month the answers were short and specific, and he could see which parts had landed and which had only been heard.
One change for this week. Put the ask first, once. Open the next hard conversation with the sentence you would normally end on. Then give the reasoning to anyone who wants it. You will feel exposed, because the reasoning was the armour. Notice what happens to the length of the meeting.
Your Clarity score is a range score. A Structure leader with a low Headline bar has a range problem with a clarity name.
Next step: the said, heard, understood, committed ladder is the tool for this. It is in 5 Minute Leader.
Next step
The other results
- HeadlineYou lead with the point. Clear, fast, hard to argue with.
- ConnectionYou lead with the person. Hard messages land soft.
- InquiryYou lead with the question. Where do you stand?
About this result
This is one of 4 results from the Communication Style Quiz for Leaders, a free tool that shows the score without an email. Aggregate figures are at the statistics page once 30 completions have been reached. More free tools are at the tools shelf.