“I thought you knew.”

It’s the sentence leaders say when accountability breaks down. It’s also the sentence employees say when trust breaks down. Everyone thinks the other side received the memo. Nobody can prove it. And everyone feels slightly betrayed.

I’ve heard that sentence in performance coaching sessions across industries and countries. Usually spoken with genuine confusion rather than hostility. That’s what makes it dangerous. It feels innocent.

In practice, it’s a confession that clarity was never created.

When leaders tell me they have a performance problem, I often find they have an assumption problem. Expectations were implied, not stated. Standards were modeled, not explained. Priorities were hinted at, not locked in.

Then a deadline slips, or quality drops, or a customer complains. The leader feels let down. The employee feels ambushed.

What I find most interesting is how rarely people argue about the outcome. They argue about the invisible contract.

So I’ve started treating clarity as a coaching deliverable. Not as a communication style.

In a high-performing coaching culture, leaders don’t rely on “common sense.” They translate what they mean into a shared operating language. Not bureaucratic. Not heavy. Just explicit.

Here’s what that looks like in real life.

A leader doesn’t say, “Be more strategic.” They say, “Before you propose a solution, bring me three options, the risk of each, and what you recommend.”

A leader doesn’t say, “Take ownership.” They say, “If you see a problem, I expect you to propose the first fix and tell me what you need from me.”

That level of clarity does something more than improve performance. It reduces the emotional noise that drains teams. People stop guessing. They stop scanning for hidden expectations. They stop spending cognitive energy on interpretation.

And that’s where performance coaching becomes organizational development. Because clarity isn’t just a manager skill. It’s a system capability.