“Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.”Habakkuk 2:2, KJV
Notice the order: written, plain, then run. People cannot run with what they cannot read. Most ministry leaders I know have no shortage of vision. What is often missing is clarity: a vision made plain enough that the team can carry it without the leader in the room.
Why it matters
In a fall 2022 survey by RedThread Research, employees with high clarity on what they needed to do to succeed were three times more likely to be engaged and twice as likely to stay with their organization. Yet only 38% said they were clear on what was expected of them, down from 48% the year before.
That research was done in corporate workplaces, but there is little reason to think ministry teams are immune: when people are unsure what matters, energy leaks away.
What clarity is, and what it isn’t
- Clear purpose. Why we exist, repeated until it sticks. As one CEO told Miami University president Gregory Crawford, “you can never say what you are trying to communicate too much.”
- Clear success. What “good” looks like and who owns it. In Crawford’s words, “Accountability succeeds only when expectations are clearly defined and unmistakable.”
- Clear priorities. What matters most now, and just as important, what doesn’t. Soaring Leadership calls this removing competing priorities.
And clarity is not certainty. As Cyrus Claffey puts it, “Clarity does not equal certainty.” A leader can be clear about direction and priorities even when the future is uncertain.
Where The Advantage helped me
In early 2018, our international directors’ team began working through Patrick Lencioni’s The Advantage as a development exercise. By our second discussion, we faced a choice: treat it as a book study, or actually put it to work. We chose to implement it, and I facilitated a session with the team at our September 2018 planning meeting in South Africa.
Not everyone came in without reservations, but we reached agreement and worked through the first part of the process. Then we got stuck at the playbook: the organization-wide priorities that needed to come from the top had not been defined. Rather than wait, we did our best to discern those priorities and moved forward.
In January 2020, a joint strategic meeting with senior leadership began building that playbook together. Weeks later, COVID arrived, and the effort fell through the cracks. Meanwhile, several directors were so energized by the process that they took their own leadership teams through it.
What I learned:
- Trust comes first. Without vulnerability-based trust, the conversations that create clarity never happen.
- Clarity is forged in robust conversation, and that is where buy-in happens. Without buy-in, implementation is almost impossible.
- Teams can only absorb so much change at once. We never followed the process to the letter, and that was okay.
Years later, members of that team still tell me it was one of the best interventions we made.
Six questions every ministry should answer
Lencioni’s four disciplines are to build a cohesive leadership team, create clarity, overcommunicate clarity and reinforce clarity. At the heart of clarity are six questions. The ministry translations below are mine:
Why do we exist?
Our calling
How do we behave?
Our core values
What do we do?
Our ministry, simply stated
How will we succeed?
Our strategy
What is most important, right now?
One rallying cry
Who must do what?
Clear roles and ownership
Focus: one thing, right now
Lencioni urges leadership teams to agree on a “rallying cry”: a single top priority that is qualitative, temporary and shared by the leadership team. Research points the same way. A 2024 study of 109 teams in the journal Human Resource Management, titled “Chasing Two Hares at Once,” found that teams that gave two different kinds of goals roughly equal weight found their work less meaningful and later performed worse than teams that clearly leaned one way. Claffey’s advice is practical: name one or two non-negotiable priorities, then repeat them.
How I can help
- Strategic Consulting: working with your leadership to get to vision clarity and a written, plain plan you can run.
- Executive Coaching: a trusted thinking partner for the robust conversations clarity requires.
- Organizational Assessment: an honest look at where you are stuck, starting with the Steer pillar: is the direction clear?
Is your vision plain enough to run with?
Book a discovery call at https://mcclintock-consulting.net.
Sources: RedThread Research via Reworked (March 2023; data fall 2022, n=739); G. P. Crawford, Forbes (July 2025); C. Claffey, Entrepreneur (Nov 2025); Soaring Leadership (May 2026); W. Sohn & J.-F. Harvey, Human Resource Management 63(6), 2024; P. Lencioni, The Advantage (2012). The author is not affiliated with The Table Group.
