Clarity

One of the things that I value is clarity.  Clarity of thought and clarity of expression.

My employer periodically sends managers to the Dale Carnegie leadership training.  I did it a couple of years ago.  My favorite exercise was something they called value cards.  They gave us each a deck of about 50 cards that said things like "commitment", "fairness" and "lifelong learning."  We were asked to sort through the deck and pick the six most important, then remove two, then remove two more.  Thus identifying the two things we valued the most.  There were also blank cards if we wanted to add something.  I used one to add "clarity".  As we discussed it, I said that I'm perfectly willing to do stupid things for stupid reasons as long as we are all clear that that's what we're doing.

Last week I was working on a proposal with a couple of co-workers.  One of them commented on how well I explain things.  That's happened multiple times during this project.  I'll say something and then someone will say "ooh, that's really good, write down what he just said."

I responded that it's because I have to be able to explain things to my autistic children. Unless I am super clear, Middle Son doesn't understand what I mean.  To a (significantly) lesser degree the same is true for Oldest Son.

That was a minor revelation for me.  It had never occurred to my kids are one of the drivers of my urge for clarity.