“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

-Albert Einstein

For a leader to meaningfully engage people around their business and to collaborate across an organisation, it’s essential to build capability to simply explain their role and how it’s critical to the on-going success of the business.

This is vital because you will very rarely find someone whose job lines up with how it’s advertised – life just isn’t that simple. Job titles, where people sit in the business, LinkedIn profiles … none of these mirror what a person has to actually do to be successful. 

The result of this gap is the inability of organisations to effectively collaborate, engage others and provide meaningful careers. Individuals, teams, business units and functions become quick to assume, judge and unknowingly replicate efforts simply because they are not aware of what others are up to. Worse still, rivalries can emerge and a blame culture ensue.

So …

You can play your part by stopping to think about what you really do, as a leader and how it makes a difference to:

• Organisation / people
• Customers / shareholders
• Industry
• Society
• Other

Once you’ve double checked that your narrative is free of corporate jargon and acronyms, test it out on family, friends or people in different vocations. They will let you know soon enough if it makes sense!