Entering “Why can’t I do as I’m told?” vs “So what should I do?”

Chapter 1: Nothing Changes by Order: The Verbalization of 'Leadership'

Don't talk in a directional way
How to define the difference between 'goal' and 'current situation'
The Secret to Higher Performance in the Same Time
Forget the saying "look over your shoulder"

Chapter 2: No Employee Does Itself: The Verbalization of "Management"

The key to business growth is vision, action, and communication.
How to improve execution accuracy
Why a Sales Beginner Could Generate 100 Million Won in Monthly Sales
“What is being said?” is better than “Who is speaking?”
The delusion that psychological safety increases team effectiveness
Let today's to-do list lead to results
Vague measures solve nothing.
Reduce the time spent wondering what to do

Chapter 3: A Framework for Translating Vague Vision into Action: The Verbalization of "Goals"

The ambiguity hidden in "making a project a success"
Two Steps to Defining a Vision That's Just Words
“I don’t understand what the boss is talking about.”
We will design the 'intermediate stage' closely.
Having a 'framework' of thought gives you confidence in your speech.
Answering “Does that make sense?”
Beyond what is necessary

Chapter 4: If You're Worried About Neglect and Micromanagement: Verbalizing "Instructions"

Why arbitrary interpretations arise
Why can't we think and act for ourselves?
I worked hard, so why didn't I get anything?
If you are wondering how far you should direct work,
Repeat 'What should I do then?' three times.
How do I say 'accurate' feedback?
Criteria for judging whether something is truly necessary
Three Ways to Correct a Wrong Orbit
Clearly communicate the level of completion you desire.

Chapter 5: The Art of Drawing Out Team Members' Thoughts: Verbalizing "Questions"

Questions to organize vague feelings into business terms
Team members who don't say anything, team members who insist on their own opinions
Think in advance about what kind of answer you want to hear
It's good to use examples appropriately.
What's Hidden Behind Words and Silence
A Leader's Questions That Get You to Say the Hard Things
The Truth About Embracing Diversity
How to Get Rid of That Anxious 'Feeling'

Chapter 6: Narrowing the Illusion of "Knowing": The Verbalization of "Communication"

What does 'easy to understand' mean?
If you touch my 'emotions', I'll agree
Delivering the 'numbers' first, not the conclusion.
A technology that allows even team members who can't explain things to report clearly
Narrow the gap in interpretation that arises from 'good intentions'
Correcting unconscious choices

As times change, the role of leaders must also change.

“Why can’t you do as I say?” vs. “So what exactly should I do?”
As times change, the role of leaders must also change.

In fact, in the 2023 Japan Productivity Association's "Ideal Boss Ranking" survey of new employees, "a boss who explains work in detail" ranked first with 79.0 percent.
Team members also want to be 'informed properly about the work' before discussing the leader's personality or team atmosphere.


The author says that our society has changed from “an era where there was one right answer” to “an era where there are countless right answers.”
Problems arise when the correct answers collide with each other among numerous correct answers.
This is why we need a leader who can clearly 'delegate' work, telling the team which direction to go, what to do each day, and what to instruct others.


As the author confesses that he wrote the book in the hope that it would help as many leaders as possible, the book vividly portrays the realistic concerns of leaders.
If you've ever thought, "I don't have any team members I can trust," learn how to clearly communicate what you want through this six-chapter manual that elicits precise team behavior.
When the leader's words change, team members begin to do the "real work" that leads to goal achievement.


“It is the leader's responsibility to verbalize the actions that team members should take.”
- Verbalization of 'leadership' and 'management'

Recently, many companies at home and abroad are placing importance on respect for diversity and psychological safety.
This is a perspective that sees motivating team members and increasing team cohesion as the essence of leadership.
Of course, trust is important in a company.
However, a more fundamental quality of a leader is to accurately identify and clearly communicate in words what team members need to do specifically to achieve the company's goals.
Parts 1 and 2 of the book clearly present how a leader's speech must change to ensure that team members' actions directly lead to the achievement of the company's goals, based on the essence of leadership that the author has discovered through extensive experience.

Our conversational habits are quite ambiguous.
From sentences without a subject or predicate to vague instructions like “Do as you please.”
The author specifically points out that regular meetings are conducted routinely without clearly stating 'for what purpose' and 'what action is taken'.
The reason for having a meeting is to check 'to what extent the work on a certain task has been completed.'
But leaders often just say, “Please share the progress of your work.”
To get the information you want, the leader should say, “Tell me about the tasks you worked on over the past week and how they helped you solve them.”
The same goes for work feedback.
Instead of saying, “It’s a little awkward,” or “Please edit it to resonate with the customer,” if you say, “Please add the missing message and fix the awkward part like this,” your team will produce more results in the same amount of time.


It is the 'leader's responsibility' to verbalize the actions that team members should take to perform their tasks.
Looking back on my experiences as a leader and examining the cases of companies I consulted for, organizations with leaders who "verbalize their actions" operate very efficiently.
_From page 48 of the text

While working at Recruit Inc. (a company that operates a job and recruitment platform), the author experienced firsthand how a leader's clear speech improved organizational efficiency.
Contract workers and beginner salespeople achieved the incredible feat of 100 million yen in monthly sales.
The author analyzes the reason for Recruit's success as being 'because Recruit is structured in a way that even people who are not good at sales can be good at sales.'
This is because the company does not rely on the individual abilities of its team members, and the upper management (leaders) thoroughly direct high-quality actions so that even the most savvy person can immediately know 'what to do'.
So team members could immediately achieve sales results without wasting time worrying about what to do.

What to do if things go wrong despite clear instructions
- Verbalization of 'goals' and 'directions'

First, let's think about the 'goals' of the company I work for or the project I'm currently working on.
While some goals can be expressed in numbers, such as "1 billion won in sales," most are qualitative goals, such as "strengthen product branding," "make customers smile," or "increase employee satisfaction."
The problem is that these emotional expressions can be interpreted differently depending on the person.
What condition is necessary to say a brand is strengthened? How can we make customers smile? How can we measure employee satisfaction?

If the goal is unclear, team members will not know what to do and will be unable to move.
Even if you think and act on your own, there are many cases where it is different from the direction the leader intended.
Part 3 of the book focuses on this very issue, introducing methods for translating vague vision into precise actions for team members.


Let's look at the framework of 'a state in which ○○ can do △△'.
A company's goals are often expressed in nouns, such as "customer first" or "horizontal corporate culture."
Goals presented in words alone like this are ambiguous because information is omitted.
At this time, if you put in a subject and a predicate and express it as '○○ aims for a state where △△ can be done', a specific customer base and the target state are drawn.
The phrase “customer first” is being revised to “our goal is to enable guests with children to eat without worrying about the eyes of others, even if their children make loud noises.”
Expressing it this way will give you a concrete picture of what you need to do to achieve your goal.


Once you have clearly communicated your goals, the next step is to 'direct' the actions to achieve them.
For leaders who worry about how detailed their instructions should be and whether team members will feel like they are micromanaging, the author suggests starting with three criteria.
It's about defining what you "should" do, verbalizing what you "shouldn't" do, and correcting the trajectory of your "misbehavior."
It's much more difficult to change the course of action your team is already taking than to direct them to take their first action. In this case, it's helpful to convey three things:
1) Communicate ‘where to focus’.
2) Communicate actions that will change the outcome.
3) Communicate the appropriate amount of the behavior to be performed.

Muscles grow when used, and words grow when spoken.
The same goes for the language of work.
If things go wrong even after you have clearly given instructions, the problem lies in the way you 'talk about things'.
This book covers the communication skills that transform a leader's vague words into clear strategies that move people.
_Heeren Choi · Operator of YouTube channel "Heeren Choi-nel" and author of "I'll Say What I Have to Say"

Employees who don't say anything VS team members who insist on their own opinions
- Verbalization of 'question' and 'communication'

There are times when you need to elicit a team member's opinion during work or in a meeting.
The role of a leader is especially important when it comes to team members who think, "I have to figure out the answer to this on my own," and don't speak up first.
For leaders struggling to communicate with their team members, Part 5 of the book will be of great help.

The reason team members don't speak up is not because they don't have thoughts, but because they don't have a framework to express their thoughts in words.
Sometimes emotions aren't strong enough to be expressed clearly in words.
If you want to communicate with a team member who's struggling with "What should I say?", try using appropriate examples.
If you want to open up a conversation, it's a good idea to use extreme examples ("What's your complaint?" ▶ "I don't understand why you're doing this?").
Team members' emotions begin to take on a sense of direction.
If you want to get an answer to a question, break it down and give an example (“What do you think about the new project?” ▶ “Do you think the new project can beat the existing competitors?”)
Finally, if your team member seems anxious about something, a 'future scenario example ("What do you think?" ▶ "If we continue like this, what do you think will happen in the future?")' is effective.


Conversely, there are team members who make claims or suggestions while being stuck in their own thoughts or stereotypes.
In these cases, the feedback is usually, “Please explain based on data or facts.”
But logic and evidence do not easily change people's minds.
In such cases, asking, “In what cases would this not apply?” will help your team members expand their perspective to areas where their argument does not apply.


Even if a leader's instructions are clear, team members may interpret them differently.
Because each person has their own 'line spacing'.
If a team member's line of thought deviates from the leader's intention, the leader must be able to anticipate the team member's thoughts and point out in advance that "that's not it."
This is a method of ‘deliberately mentioning and denying’ a part that could cause misunderstanding.
Team members interpret and act on the leader's words with 'good intentions'.
Let's be careful in advance to ensure that our good intentions don't lead to bad actions.


A leader needs the ability to communicate in an organization of people as much as the ability to do a good job.
By clearly understanding what the other person wants and clearly expressing what I want, I can expand the scope of cooperation between my team members and myself.
This book provides abundant examples to show you how to solve this difficult problem in the clearest way possible.
Lee Heon-ju, Research Professor, Yonsei University Future Convergence Research Institute, Counseling Expert

The author explains his ‘worldview on work’ as follows.
“A society where all workers can clearly recognize the value of their work and the business value of their existence.”
And the means to realize this worldview is ‘verbalization.’
Ultimately, language is necessary for business, but it is also necessary for humans to recognize their own value as 'Homo laborans' (working humans).
I hope this book will serve as a catalyst for all workers, regardless of whether they are leaders or team members, to recognize their own value in words.