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Section 3 of 6
Pathway 3: Providing clarity

How head of services can provide clarity in practice

By now you will have a clearer sense of how you might want to grow in clarity. Here are a range of practical strategies designed to promote clear communication, consistent decision-making, and transparent processes at a senior leadership level.

These strategies will ensure that your leadership teams:

  • operate with confidence 
  • align their work with best practices
  • deliver high-quality support to children and families across the service 

The following exercise makes some suggestions that will benefit you, your team, and your work with wider stakeholders. 

Decide which activity from this exercise you, your teams and service most benefit from doing. You might want to do all the activities or just select one that would benefit either you, your teams or service. Choose at least one activity from each section to experiment with in your leadership practice.

Thinking about yourself, your team and the wider system

Creative leadership exercise: the clarity map

Step 1: create your clarity map

Materials needed: large paper, markers, sticky notes, or a digital whiteboard. Note that you may need to create an account to use digital whiteboard software. Draw a map of your service, using symbols or images to represent different areas of responsibility such as teams, departments, or external partners. Each section of the map should represent an area of your leadership.

What to do

Vision and goals: at the centre of your map, write down or draw your service’s vision - the long-term goals and outcomes you are working towards. Teams and relationships: around this central vision, place sticky notes or write the names of your teams and external partners. For each team, ask yourself: 

  • how well they understand your vision 
  • how aligned their goals are with the broader service outcomes 
  • if there are gaps in their understanding or clarity 

Challenges: use different coloured pens or sticky notes to highlight areas where clarity is lacking such as unclear expectations, conflicting priorities, or communication issues.

Step 2: build clarity connections

Now, create connections that relate the central vision to each team or partner. These bridges represent the actions or strategies you will use to improve clarity in each area. Use questions to guide your thinking: 

  • What conversations or meetings can I start to clarify expectations and goals? 
  • How can I better communicate the service’s vision in a way that aligns with each team’s responsibilities? 
  • What tools or resources can I offer to improve transparency and understanding across departments? 

Step 3: explore perspectives with role-playing

Invite your leadership team to join this exercise. Ask each person to take on the role of a different team leader or external partner. 

Have each person share their perspective on how clear the service’s goals and strategies are from their assigned role. As they share, add new insights or missing bits of information to your map.

Step 4: action plan and reflection

Based on the insights from your clarity map and role-playing, identify two to three immediate actions you will take to improve clarity in your service. Write these actions on your map as ‘clarity milestones’. Examples might be to:

  • schedule monthly strategy check-ins with team leaders to ensure alignment with our service goals
  • create a visual roadmap to explain our long-term goals and share it with all departments

Step 5: reflect on the process

After completing your clarity map and taking action, take some time to reflect: 

  • How has the clarity of your leadership evolved? 
  • What effect have you noticed on team alignment and service outcomes? 
  • How did this creative approach help you visualise and address clarity challenges?

Over to you

You can use the 4C leadership capability framework action plan to detail when and where you’ll try these steps out and reflect on their effect over time. 

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The resources have been developed by Frontline in collaboration with DfE.
Published: 30 January 2025
Last updated: 30 January 2025