What Do You Need From Me?

or… just say the quiet part out loud

I preach Clarity. Focus. Urgency.

Clarity always comes first. Because without it, nothing works. You can’t focus on the right things. You can’t move with urgency. You’re likely wasting time.

And the killer is that lack of clarity usually doesn’t look like chaos. It looks like busy people doing good work. Until you realize they’re doing the wrong work. Or rowing in slightly different directions. Or waiting for a signal that never comes.

I see it all the time between CEOs and their teams.

A CEO thinks the plan is obvious, but hasn’t said it out loud in weeks. The team fills the silence with assumptions.

A product leader thinks they’re executing on vision, but they’re chasing metrics that no longer matter.

A CFO is trying to preserve runway, while the CEO is pushing to hire fast.

No one’s wrong. They’re just not clear. And no one wants to say it.

That’s where this simple tool comes in.

One of my clients showed me an alignment exercise they use with their team. It’s only four questions, but it cuts through the fog every time. Turns out, it’s rooted in something leadership experts have been studying for decades: boundary spanning.

The formal definition comes from Michael Tushman, who described boundary spanners as people who connect internal teams to external networks and ideas. His work focused on innovation systems, but the same concept applies inside organizations too. Especially when trust is shaky or communication is cloudy. You need people who can bridge across roles, functions, and perspectives to make progress happen.

“Boundary spanning refers to individuals within an innovation system who have, or adopt, the role of linking the organization’s internal networks with external sources of information.”

—Tushman, M.L., Administrative Science Quarterly, 1977

That’s the theory. Here’s what it looks like in practice.

You sit down with someone you work closely with—your co-founder, your head of product, your board chair—and you each answer these four questions:

1. What I need from you

2. What I think you need from me

3. What I expect of you

4. What I think you expect of me

That’s it. You each share. You talk it out. You check for mismatches, surprises, and blind spots. And then you recalibrate.

This isn’t a performance review. It’s not feedback. It’s not therapy. It’s alignment. It’s RealTalk™.

And it works.

The version I learned might not have an official name, but it lines up with other structured tools like the ICBD exercise from Jurriaan Kamer. That one asks people to clarify intentions, concerns, boundaries, and dreams. It’s designed to surface hidden assumptions and get teams on the same page before they hit a wall. This version uses different language, but gets to the same result: clarity, faster.

If you’re a CEO or a leader, this kind of clarity is your job. Alignment isn’t a vibe. It’s a conversation. And most of the time, the thing that’s blocking progress isn’t a strategy problem. It’s a “we never said it out loud” problem.

So say it out loud.

Ask the questions.

And don’t wait until things break.

If this post helped you, or made you think of someone, please consider forwarding it to them. And let me know what resonated or missed. I read every reply.

#leadership #RealTalk #executivecoach #clarity #foundercoach