21 Proven Ways to Overcommunicate Clarity Lencioni

Overcommunicating clarity is the third of Patrick Lencioni's four disciplines of organisational health. In The Advantage, Lencioni argues that once a leadership team has built cohesion and created clarity by answering his six critical questions, it must communicate that clarity to the rest of the organisation clearly, repeatedly, enthusiastically, and repeatedly. The repetition is deliberate. When it comes to reinforcing clarity, Lencioni insists there is no such thing as too much communication.

Most leaders dramatically underestimate how much communication is required to create genuine organisational alignment. They announce a new direction once, assume the message has landed, and move on to the next initiative. Meanwhile, employees are still trying to make sense of the last three changes that were announced and never mentioned again. The result is cynicism, confusion, and a workforce that has learned to ignore executive pronouncements.

Lencioni's solution is not more polished communication. It is more frequent, more personal, and more consistent communication of the same core messages. The leadership team must become what he calls "Chief Reminding Officers," repeating the organisation's purpose, values, strategy, and top priorities until they feel like they are overdoing it. Research suggests that people need to hear a message at least seven times before they begin to believe leaders are serious.

Below are 21 proven ways to overcommunicate clarity on your team. For a complete overview of Lencioni's organisational health framework, see our Advantage summary. To discuss how a facilitated offsite could help your team create and communicate clarity, reach out at jonno@consultclarity.org.

1. Cascading Communication Is the Primary Method

Lencioni identifies cascading communication as the most reliable way to align an organisation. After every leadership team meeting, each leader communicates the key decisions and messages to their direct reports within 24 hours. Those direct reports then cascade the same messages to their teams. Within days, the entire organisation has heard the same consistent message from their direct manager.

The power of cascading communication lies in its personal nature. Employees hear the message from someone they know and trust, not from an email blast or a CEO video. This personal delivery makes the message more credible, more memorable, and more likely to influence behaviour. It also gives employees the opportunity to ask questions and seek clarification in real time.

2. Agree on the Message Before Leaving the Room

Before the leadership team adjourns any meeting, they must agree on exactly what they will communicate to their teams. Lencioni recommends taking the final five minutes of every meeting to answer the question: "What do we need to go back and tell our people?" This ensures that every leader delivers the same message, preventing the inconsistencies that create confusion.

Without this discipline, each leader filters the meeting's outcomes through their own perspective. One leader emphasises cost savings. Another emphasises growth. A third emphasises restructuring. Employees in different departments receive different messages about the same decision, and the result is the opposite of clarity. Agreeing on the message eliminates this risk.

3. Repetition Is Not Insulting, It Is Necessary

Many leaders resist repeating themselves because they feel it insults their employees' intelligence. Lencioni addresses this directly: repetition is not a sign of disrespect. It is a sign that the message matters. Research consistently shows that people need to hear a message multiple times, through multiple channels, before it truly registers and begins to influence their behaviour.

The curse of knowledge makes this especially difficult for leaders. Because leaders have been discussing the strategy for weeks or months, they forget that most employees are hearing it for the first time. What feels like the tenth repetition to the leader may be only the first or second exposure for the average employee. Leaders must calibrate their communication to the audience, not to their own familiarity.

4. Leaders Are Chief Reminding Officers

Lencioni describes the leader's communication role as Chief Reminding Officer. This title captures a profound shift in how leaders should think about communication. The primary job is not to announce new initiatives. It is to remind people of the existing ones. The organisation's purpose, values, strategy, and thematic goal should be referenced so often that they become part of the organisation's ambient reality.

This reminding role requires patience and discipline. Leaders who prefer novelty and forward motion find it tedious to keep returning to the same messages. But organisational alignment is built through consistency, not variety. The leader who repeats the same core messages creates clarity. The leader who introduces new themes at every town hall creates confusion.

5. Use Multiple Channels, but Keep the Message Consistent

The medium may change, but the message must not. Leaders should communicate clarity through team meetings, one-on-ones, town halls, email updates, internal newsletters, and casual conversations. Each channel reinforces the same core messages. The variety of channels increases the likelihood that every employee encounters the message in a format that resonates with them.

The risk with multiple channels is message drift. When leaders paraphrase or adapt the message for different audiences, the core meaning can shift. This is why agreeing on the message as a leadership team is so important: it provides the reference point that keeps all channels aligned.

6. Top-Down Communication Is Not Enough

While cascading communication flows top-down, Lencioni emphasises that healthy organisations also create channels for upward and lateral communication. Leaders must actively seek input from employees, listen to their concerns, and incorporate their perspectives into decision-making. Communication is not a broadcast system. It is a dialogue.

Upward communication gives leaders access to ground-level insights that improve decision quality. It also builds trust because employees feel heard. When employees see their concerns reflected in leadership decisions, they are more likely to engage with the messages that cascade back down to them.

7. Communicate Within 24 Hours of Every Meeting

Lencioni recommends that leaders cascade key messages within 24 hours of the meeting where decisions were made. Speed matters because it demonstrates urgency and prevents the rumour mill from filling the information vacuum. When leaders wait days or weeks to communicate, employees fill the silence with speculation that is often worse than reality.

The 24-hour rule also prevents message decay. The longer a leader waits to communicate, the more the details fade and the more likely they are to deliver a watered-down or inaccurate version of the team's decisions. Immediate communication preserves the message's accuracy and impact.

8. Spread True Rumours

Lencioni makes a surprising observation: the most effective communication in organisations often travels through informal channels, the way rumours spread. He suggests that leaders should deliberately spread "true rumours" by talking about the team's decisions informally, in hallways, at lunches, and in casual conversations. This informal repetition reinforces the formal message.

The insight is that employees trust informal communication more than formal announcements. When a leader mentions the thematic goal in a casual conversation, it carries more weight than the same message in a corporate memo. Leaders who integrate clarity into their daily conversations, not just their formal communications, create the deepest alignment.

9. Overcommunication Requires Emotional Buy-In

Employees do not commit to messages they hear in monotone from leaders who seem bored by their own announcements. Lencioni emphasises that leaders must communicate clarity with genuine enthusiasm and conviction. If the leader does not seem passionate about the organisation's purpose and priorities, why would anyone else care?

This emotional buy-in starts at the leadership team level. If the team has genuinely debated the six questions, committed to the answers, and taken collective ownership, they will communicate with the authenticity that employees respond to. Manufactured enthusiasm is transparent. Genuine conviction is contagious.

10. Address the Curse of Knowledge

The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias where people who know something find it difficult to imagine not knowing it. Leaders who have spent weeks discussing strategy cannot imagine that their employees have not been thinking about it at all. This disconnect is the primary reason leaders undercommunicate: they genuinely believe the message has already landed.

The antidote is to assume that the message has not landed until proven otherwise. Ask employees to articulate the organisation's purpose, values, and current priorities. If their answers are vague, inconsistent, or wrong, the message has not been communicated enough. This simple test reveals whether overcommunication has been achieved or merely attempted.

11. Use the Six Questions as the Communication Framework

The six questions from Lencioni's clarity discipline provide a natural framework for communication. Every employee in a healthy organisation should be able to answer: Why do we exist? How do we behave? What do we do? How will we succeed? What is most important right now? Who must do what? These six answers, communicated consistently, provide all the clarity an employee needs to make good decisions.

When leaders use this framework, communication becomes less about announcements and more about reinforcement. Every message ties back to one or more of the six questions, creating a coherent narrative that employees can follow. For a full guide to the six questions, see our Six Questions of Clarity summary.

12. Overcommunication Is a Discipline, Not a Talent

Some leaders are naturally gifted communicators. Others are not. Lencioni argues that this distinction matters far less than most people think. Overcommunicating clarity is a discipline, not a talent. It requires consistent behaviour, not charismatic delivery. A leader who repeats the organisation's purpose in every team meeting, regardless of their personal style, is communicating more effectively than a charismatic leader who only communicates when inspired.

This framing is liberating for leaders who feel they are not natural communicators. The skill required is not eloquence. It is consistency. The leader who shows up every week with the same core messages, delivered simply and honestly, will create more alignment than the leader who gives one brilliant speech and then goes silent.

13. Do Not Delegate Communication to Corporate Communications

Many leaders rely on their corporate communications team to handle messaging. Lencioni warns against this. While communications teams are valuable for crafting materials and managing channels, the message itself must come from the leader. Employees need to hear their direct manager say, "This is what we decided and why it matters." A polished email from the communications team cannot replace that personal delivery.

The distinction is between communication as content and communication as connection. Corporate communications handles content. Leaders provide connection. When a leader delivers the message personally, it carries the weight of personal commitment that no third-party communication can replicate.

14. Align New Hire Orientation Around Clarity

Every new hire should be immersed in the organisation's clarity from day one. The onboarding process should cover the six questions: why the organisation exists, how it behaves, what it does, how it will succeed, what is most important right now, and who does what. New hires who understand these answers from the beginning integrate faster and contribute more effectively.

Onboarding is also a litmus test for clarity. If the leadership team struggles to articulate the six answers in a way that a new hire can understand and repeat, the clarity itself needs work. New hire orientation forces the team to distil their clarity into language that is simple, memorable, and actionable.

15. Consistency Matters More Than Creativity

Leaders often feel pressure to find fresh ways to communicate the same messages. Lencioni argues that consistency matters more than creativity. When the message changes with every communication, employees cannot distinguish between what is permanent and what is temporary. When the message stays the same, it eventually becomes part of the organisation's shared understanding.

This does not mean communication should be robotic. Leaders can use different examples, stories, and contexts to illustrate the same core messages. But the underlying message, the organisation's purpose, values, strategy, and priorities, must remain constant. The creative variation is in the delivery, not in the content.

16. Overcommunication Builds Trust

Employees who consistently receive clear, honest communication from their leaders develop deeper trust in the organisation. They feel included, informed, and respected. They are less likely to fill information gaps with negative assumptions and more likely to give their leaders the benefit of the doubt when things go wrong.

Trust through communication is especially important during periods of change. When leaders overcommunicate during uncertainty, employees feel safer and more engaged. When leaders go silent during uncertainty, employees feel anxious and disconnected. The volume of communication during difficult times is a direct signal of trust. For more on trust, see our vulnerability based trust guide.

17. Test Clarity by Asking Employees

The ultimate test of overcommunication is whether employees can accurately articulate the organisation's clarity. Lencioni recommends that leaders periodically ask employees at all levels: "Why does this organisation exist? What are our values? What is most important right now?" If the answers are consistent and accurate, overcommunication has succeeded. If they are vague or contradictory, more work is needed.

This test provides honest feedback about the effectiveness of the team's communication efforts. It moves the conversation from "We communicated it" to "They understood it," which is a fundamentally different standard. Communication is only complete when the recipient can articulate the message accurately.

18. Connect Decisions to the Six Questions

Every significant decision the leadership team makes should be explicitly connected to one or more of the six questions. "We are investing in this initiative because it supports our thematic goal." "We are restructuring this team because of how we answered 'Who must do what?'" These connections reinforce clarity and help employees understand the reasoning behind decisions.

When decisions appear disconnected from the organisation's stated clarity, employees lose confidence in the framework. When every decision is explicitly linked, the framework gains credibility and the organisation's alignment deepens with every communication.

19. Overcommunication Is the Bridge Between Disciplines Two and Four

In Lencioni's four disciplines model, overcommunication sits between creating clarity (discipline two) and reinforcing clarity through human systems (discipline four). It is the bridge that carries the leadership team's clarity to the rest of the organisation. Without overcommunication, clarity remains locked in the leadership team. Without reinforcement through systems, overcommunication fades over time.

Understanding this position in the model helps leaders appreciate why overcommunication alone is not sufficient. It must be paired with the structural reinforcement that comes from embedding clarity in hiring, performance management, and reward systems. For more on this final discipline, see our Reinforce Through Human Systems guide.

20. Do Not Wait for Perfect Clarity Before Communicating

Some leaders delay communication because they feel the message is not yet perfect. Lencioni warns against this perfectionism. Imperfect clarity communicated consistently is far more valuable than perfect clarity that never reaches employees. The leadership team should start communicating as soon as they have directional clarity, refining the message as they go.

Waiting for perfection also signals to employees that leaders are indecisive or that the direction keeps changing. Communicating early, even with acknowledged uncertainty, builds trust because it demonstrates transparency. Employees can handle ambiguity. What they cannot handle is silence.

21. Overcommunication Is Everyone's Responsibility

While the CEO sets the tone, overcommunication is not solely the CEO's job. Every member of the leadership team is responsible for communicating clarity within their area and reinforcing it in every interaction. The team must hold each other accountable for consistent, timely, and enthusiastic communication of the organisation's clarity.

When one leader communicates actively while another goes silent, the inconsistency creates confusion. Employees in one department feel informed and aligned. Employees in another feel neglected and disconnected. Overcommunication only works when every leader treats it as a personal responsibility, not as something the CEO handles on behalf of the team.

What to Do Next

Commit to ending every leadership team meeting with a five-minute conversation: "What do we need to go back and tell our people?" Then cascade that message to your direct reports within 24 hours. Start simple and build the discipline over time. Within weeks, you will notice a meaningful shift in your organisation's alignment and engagement.

If you want help creating the clarity that your team needs to communicate, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does Lencioni mean by overcommunicate clarity?

Overcommunicating clarity is Lencioni's third discipline of organisational health. It means that once the leadership team has answered the six critical questions, they must communicate those answers clearly, repeatedly, and enthusiastically to every employee in the organisation. There is no such thing as too much communication.

What is cascading communication?

Cascading communication is the practice where each leader communicates key decisions to their direct reports, who then communicate to their teams, and so on throughout the organisation. It ensures that every employee hears the message from someone they know and trust rather than from an impersonal corporate announcement.

How many times must a message be repeated?

Research suggests people need to hear a message at least seven times before they begin to believe leaders are serious. Most leaders dramatically undercommunicate because the curse of knowledge makes them assume the message has already landed when it has not.

What is the curse of knowledge?

The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias where people who know something find it difficult to imagine not knowing it. Leaders who have been discussing strategy for weeks assume employees understand it when they may be hearing it for the first time. This disconnect causes undercommunication.

What is a Chief Reminding Officer?

It is Lencioni's term for the leader's primary communication role. Rather than announcing new initiatives, the leader's job is to consistently remind employees of the organisation's purpose, values, strategy, and priorities. The primary value of communication is reinforcement, not novelty.

Does overcommunication mean more meetings?

Not necessarily. Overcommunication means integrating clarity into existing channels: team meetings, one-on-ones, casual conversations, and onboarding. It means repeating the same core messages consistently across every interaction, not adding more meetings to the calendar.

About the Author

Jonno White is a Brisbane-based leadership consultant, bestselling author, and Certified Working Genius Facilitator specialising in organisational health. His book, Step Up or Step Out, has sold over 10,000 copies globally and equips leaders with practical strategies for difficult conversations and conflict resolution.

Jonno hosts The Leadership Conversations Podcast, reaching listeners in over 150 countries across 230+ episodes. He works with CEOs, school principals, and executive teams across Australia, the USA, UK, Singapore, Canada, and India, delivering keynotes, workshops, executive team offsites, and facilitated strategic planning sessions using Patrick Lencioni's frameworks.

As a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, Jonno helps teams build both relational health and operational effectiveness. To discuss how Jonno can help your leadership team create and communicate clarity, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

35 Vital Lessons from The Advantage Summary

Overcommunicating clarity is one of four disciplines that Lencioni outlines in The Advantage. Where this article focuses specifically on the communication discipline, our comprehensive Advantage summary covers 35 vital lessons across all four disciplines, including how they connect and reinforce each other.

If the overcommunication insights in this article helped you, the full Advantage summary will give you the complete organisational health framework.

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