In today's Sensemaker, we're reviewing a concept foundational to our work at Talentism: Clarity.

Last week we covered the foundational Talentism concepts of confusion and certainty. This week's Sensemaker will be building directly on that foundation, so if you haven't had a chance to read that yet, check it out here before reading today's Sensemaker on clarity.

Helping people achieve clarity in commercial contexts is the heart of what Talentism does. This is because the ability to turn confusion into clarity (rather than certainty) is the fundamental requirement of active learning and, thus, achieving potential. As a leader or manager responsible for achieving big goals through the work of others, it's essential to learn how to create clarity for both yourself and those you work with. Every big goal that seeks to create something new in the world will inevitably run up against confusion. Continually returning to clarity transforms that confusion into fuel for growth rather than cause for fragility. Choosing the path to clarity is, in the end, what distinguishes leaders and organizations that win from those that fail to achieve their potential.

THINK

Turning Confusion into Active Learning Through Clarity

If confusion is the state we enter into when reality doesn't match our expectations, clarity is the state of purposely updating our expectations to understand reality and act on it toward our intentional goals. Whereas the path to certainty sees us make sense of our confusion by seeking to protect ourselves and our existing worldview, clarity, by contrast, is the open-minded process of making sense of our confusion by updating (rather than retrenching) our view of ourselves and the reality around us. The goal, in other words, is to meet the unexpected with intentional learning.

The first step toward clarity is simply habituating awareness that you are confused. When we pause, even just to be aware of our own confusion (and better yet, to voice it), we can start to learn more about ourselves and the world around us. It requires transitioning from the question we tend to implicitly ask ourselves under threat — "why are others wrong?" — to the question "what am I missing?"

Remember, confusion shows up any time there's a gap between reality and your expectations. The sooner you catch it, the easier it is to transform into clarity. There's a good chance that if you're confused, others are as well, so it's almost always the right move to step back and inquire if you suspect that expectations aren't lining up to what you (and others) are experiencing.

Some potential signs you're getting confused:

Mind signs

Emotional signs

Once you've become aware of your own confusion (or that of others), you can open the door to curiosity. The key here is to identify the gap to expectations and how that gap is distorting your thinking. Key questions include:

Because clarity requires both updating your mental model and narrowing down your field of vision to what matters most for effective action-taking, you need to use your awareness to reorient to your intentional goals. Good prompts to use for yourself and others to reorient include:

This isn't just a mental exercise; it requires checking in with others and actively experimenting to both update your mental model and try new shots on goal. This could take the form of:

Put all together, the model looks like this:

Confusion to clarity model

REFLECT

Take a moment to think about your own work:

TRY

Commit to the following experiment. For the next two weeks, every time something you're working on with someone else doesn't go the way you expect (or otherwise confuses you), do the following: