Watch a relay race, and one thing becomes clear: the fastest runner rarely wins alone. The winning team is the one that masters the handoff.
Maybe you watched the USA men's 4x100 relay team in the 2024 Paris Olympics. This team had some of the fastest sprinters on the planet. Individually, they could outrun almost anyone in the field. Yet the team was disqualified in the final when the second runner took off too early and had to slow his pace to receive the baton from Christian Coleman, causing a collision mid exchange. Fast legs, elite training, a stacked roster, and the whole race ended in a three second window between two runners.
Your leadership team runs this same race every single day.
Picture this. A leader sees the vision clearly. She shares it in a meeting, confident the message is obvious. But somewhere between her words and the team's understanding, the baton drops. Priorities blur. People sprint in different directions, each convinced they are carrying the right thing.
The weak link was not the people. It was the exchange.
This is where clarity proves its value. Relay teams obsess over the exchange zone. They know when to reach, how fast to match pace, and which signals matter. The baton keeps moving at full speed because both runners own their side of the handoff.
Communication works the same way. My clients learn this quickly: confidence in the message is not enough. Clarity in the exchange determines whether the message lands. A leader can believe every word and still lose the room when the handoff is rushed, vague, or assumed.
Here is how this has played out in the “real world”, at a far higher price. In 1999, NASA lost its 125-million-dollar Mars Climate Orbiter because two teams passed critical data across a gap they assumed was clear. The Lockheed Martin engineering team calculated thrust in imperial units. The NASA navigation team expected metric. Both teams were skilled. Both teams were confident in their own numbers. The mismatch went uncaught until the spacecraft flew too close to Mars and broke apart in the atmosphere.
Two capable teams. One faulty exchange. One unnamed gap that stayed invisible until it was too late to close.
A clean handoff has three clear signals:
·The message is translated into language the receiver already understands, not jargon that only sounds sharp to the speaker.
·The next step is stated out loud, so ownership moves with the information.
·There is a quick check that the baton landed, through a confirming question, a repeat back, or a visible next action.
You can spot a dropped baton just as quickly:
·Same project. Different priorities. Everyone thinks they are aligned, until the work starts moving in opposite directions.
·A decision leaves the room without an owner, a next step, or a clear change in direction, so momentum turns into confusion.
·The real conversation happens after the meeting, because people are still trying to decode what leadership meant.
Here is the piece leaders often miss. Speed comes second. Precision comes first. A relay team that runs fast but exchanges the baton poorly loses every time to a team that runs a fraction slower with a flawless exchange. NASA had brilliant engineers on both sides of that gap. What was missing was a shared language for the exchange itself.
Your team's daily handoffs work exactly the same way. The strategy session, the project brief, the one-line update in the hallway; each one is an exchange zone. Clarity in that zone determines whether momentum carries forward or stalls out completely.
The good news is that exchange zones can be practiced. My clients build this skill the same way relay teams do, through repetition, feedback, and a shared language for what a clean handoff actually sounds like.
Where does your team's baton tend to drop? Reply and let me know, I read every response and I am building the next piece of this series around what I hear.