If it's important enough to say, it's important enough to overcommunicate.

This is #11 in a series on the ideas and personal breakthroughs I'm most thankful for. It's also a companion to post #10, on how leadership is really about creating clarity.

1. When you say thank you at Chick Fil-A, how does the team member respond?

"It's my pleasure."

Right?

2. What does Donald Trump want for America?

"Make America great again."

You remember that one, surely. Maybe even the acronym.

3. What about the company you work for—what big goal are you trying to accomplish together this year?

Oh really? You don't remember that one?

You're not alone.

No matter how you feel about Chick Fil-A or Donald Trump, they're just two examples among many messages you remember . . . because those messages have been overcommunicated.

Your company's annual goal? Well, if you're like most people, you don't remember it. Because it hasn't been overcommunicated.

If you don't overcommunicate your clarity, is it really clear?

In my last post, I talked about Patrick Lencioni's book The 4 Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive. It's had a huge influence on how I practice leadership.

According to Lencioni, there are really only four habits a leader needs to practice. I shared them in that last post, but here they are again, for . . . well, for overcommunication:

1. Build a cohesive leadership team.

2. Create clarity.

3. Overcommunicate clarity.

4. Reinforce clarity.

That last post was about clarity. And how the true job of any leader is to create clarity that makes it easier for your people to see what needs to be done, and that helps them get it done.

But you know what? If someone makes something important really, really clear for you, and then you don't remember it, how much has that clarity helped you? Not much.

This is why Lencioni introduces this crazy exaggeration of a term, overcommunication.

Here's what he means by overcommunication:

Once a leadership team has become cohesive and established clarity . . . they need to communicate [it] to employees over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. It was reported, employees won't believe a leader's message until they've heard it seven times. Whether the real number is five or fifty-five does not matter, the message is — people are skeptical about what they hear unless they hear it repeatedly over time. 

Here's how to overcommunicate, since overcommunication is so important that you should definitely overcommunicate.

So . . . if a message is truly important for your team to hear from you, then you can't just tell it to them.

You have to communicate it again and again and again. You're going to need to communicate is so much that, to you, it feels like overcommunication.

How will it feel to them? Well, it will sound familiar. It will sound reassuring. It will remind them of what's true, what's important, what orients them in the right direction and helps them prioritize.

In other words, overcommunication is just as much a gift to your team as the clarity you've helped create for them in the first place.

Overcommunication might mean that you open your regular team meetings with your most important clarity every single time. I've worked with companies that do this, and trust me, it's not weird at all. It's almost comforting.

Overcommunication might mean that you communicate your clarity in multiple media. In person. Over email. On the walls of your business. In front of your clients.

Like the Ritz-Carlton, you might make your clarity the theme of your interview questions, as well as the topics of onboarding and training. You might make the same clarity the subject of your storytelling and brags on teammates, and you might also make them the basis of performance reviews. Same clarity, overcommunicated until it grows into the bones of each teammate (or, in the Ritz-Carlton's case, the bones of each Lady and Gentleman).

Here's Andi Owen, the CEO of Herman Miller (who makes those sweet office chairs), on the topic of overcommunication:

The number of times that I need to repeat the message is a lot. At first I wondered how many times I'd have to say the same thing. Then I realized that there’s 8,000 employees, and in almost every venue I’m in, people are meeting me for the first time. I have to repeat the core message over and over because my job is to set the direction, communicate and be inspiring. I thought I would spend a lot more time doing some other things, but most of my day is spent communicating.

Communicating? Make that overcommunicating. Right, Andi?

Here's what I've learned: if you're a leader, your primary job is to create clarity. But if it's really going to stick, you're going to have to take that clarity, and overcommunicate it. Overcommunicate it. And then overcommunicate it again.

Your team will thank you.

Will Gray is the founder of ALIGN, a consultancy that helps good-hearted companies unlock their growth through better sales and marketing. He also runs Vocationality, which helps people discover their gifts and navigate their career. Learn more at www.alignforbusiness.com and www.vocationality.com.