I fear that we are becoming anesthetized to what would be considered vicious, uncivil, unacceptable, and unproductive discourse to a prudent, independent observer.

In today’s Muse, I’m going to focus on the topic of meetings. Love them or hate them, meetings are a meaningful part of corporate life and represent a significant opportunity for improvement—meaning making meetings more effective—as part of any organization’s continuous improvement practice.

There are many “top skills for the future,” but communication, influence, and professional presence routinely populate top ten lists that are prevalent in academic circles and the business press. I view it as my duty to prepare my students for the real world of work. If they enter the job market without being objectively terrified to use their voice, render an opinion, and act as a positive force for change and growth, I will have done my job.

I speak frequently about the benefits of adopting a continuous improvement mindset and practice—so much so that the premise of my second book, The Balanced Business, is that smooth workflows create an environment that fosters organizational accountability and allows trust to flourish. There are many preconditions to the establishment of smooth workflows, but one of the most important is to create clarity about how the work gets done in your business.

The point I’m driving at is that while you as a leader may do just fine with the ambiguity of unfinished goals—simultaneously cleaning up last year’s mess and rolling out shiny new initiatives, many of your people detest loose ends, unfinished business, and incomplete goals.

What do your people want (other than more money)? They want clarity, autonomy, empowerment, respect, and organizational accountability. They want to make a difference and do good, meaningful work. They want to know that leadership cares and that everyone in the company is rowing in the same direction with the same commitment and vigor that they apply to their own work.

As the plane taxied out, we made a 90 degree turn onto runway 4-22, sat for 30 seconds or so, and then instead of roaring off into the sky, the engines whimpered and we made another 90 degree turn onto an adjacent empty tarmac. We all sat in relative silence, waiting for the captain to make an announcement about why our takeoff was aborted. We waited, waited, and waited some more.

Are you feeling disengaged or ‘stuck’ at work? Does it feel like you’re trudging through mud and that the light in your eyes has dimmed? From my own personal experience, it can be very difficult to pinpoint the root cause of these feelings and it’s even harder to break through to an improved state of well-being and engagement.

Operating in the absence of organizational clarity means that unwritten rules and ad hoc processes become the norm. Since nothing is codified and communicated, the organization’s culture becomes one of firefighting and crisis management. Fiefdoms are established, job protectionism flourishes, and information about what’s really going on is traded like state secrets.

So today’s lesson is this. Yes, as a leader, people are going to talk about you. Someone is probably talking about you right now. The good news is that you have control about what they’re saying and the irony is that you’ll sleep better and your ears will stop buzzing if you’re transparent, authentic, clear, and structured. Oh, and sprinkling in a bit of humility, a sense of humor, and a dash of vulnerability won’t hurt either.

In a healthy team or organization, there is a spirit of learning and continuous improvement that is shared by each individual. There is shared purpose, strong communication, a sense of stewardship, well-defined goals and standard work, cross-training, backups, smooth handoffs, empowerment to pull the Andon Cord (to stop the assembly line in the case of an issue), and a laser focus on delighting the customer.

I believe the replacement phrase for constructive criticism is influenced by the relationship between sender/receiver and the depth of knowledge the sender has. In all cases, we should retain the word constructive, as our goal in human discourse should be to build others up and not tear them down.