In 2002, Edwin Locke and Gary Latham published a major study on goal-setting in the journal American Psychologist. They called it "Building a Practically Useful Theory of Goal Setting and Task Motivation: A 35-Year Odyssey." It summarized decades of research on how people set goals and found something specific: a specific, difficult target beats a vague one. People do better when they're given something specific and hard to aim for, and worse when they're just told to do their best. That finding held up across decades of studies, in all kinds of settings. A vague instruction like "do your best" leaves a person guessing at what the target actually is. A specific one gives them an actual target to aim at, and a way to tell whether they hit it.
A response works the same way, even without a study behind it. "We'll support you through this" sounds warm, but it leaves the person hearing it with nothing to hold onto. They have to guess what the support will actually look like, and hope the guess is right. A different kind of response sounds like this: "By Tuesday, you'll have next steps in writing from me. If you don't, you can check with me directly." The person hearing it can check whether it happened.
That difference is what leaves the other person with a fact to check, instead of just a feeling to go on. A vague response gives them only the feeling; a specific one gives them the fact. The person who heard it can plan around it right away.
Once a person feels that difference, they can start treating other people's responses the same way. That can look like expecting more than a vague answer like "it's being handled" from anyone else, now that they know what a specific answer feels like by comparison. It can also look like asking for something just as concrete in return: a date, a specific person to ask, a way to check whether it happened.
Kim Scott's book Radical Candor names a related idea, applied to feedback rather than to responses like these. Her framework pairs two things: how much someone genuinely cares about the other person, and how honest they are willing to be with them, especially about something hard to hear. Offering reassurance instead of the hard truth, because it feels kinder in the moment, is what she calls Ruinous Empathy. It feels caring, but it leaves the other person no better off. Honesty paired with real care is what she calls Radical Candor. She argues that, over time, it becomes a whole culture. That same kind of spread can show up with responses like these, too. When one person is specific, other people can start copying it: someone finally puts an exact time on it instead of saying "soon," and the next person who starts to say "soon" can catch themselves and give a time instead. That is how the practice can spread, until people start expecting it from each other too.
That kind of practice has to start somewhere. For schools and districts, that start is September: the first weeks of the year. For many people working there, that stretch is when early responses start setting the expectations that carry through the rest of the year. A vague response and a specific one create different levels of checkability from the very first exchange, before there is much else to go on.
Here is how that turn actually happens, using the same two responses from a moment ago. Start with the vague one: "We'll support you through this." It sounds complete, but it will not survive three questions:
- When? The sentence does not say.
- Who? It does not name a person to call.
- How will you know? It gives no way to check.
Now run the same three questions forward instead of backward. Answer each one before you give the response:
- When? By Tuesday.
- Who? From me.
- How will you know? You'll have next steps in writing. If you don't, you can check with me directly.
Answer all three, and the vague response becomes the specific one on its own: "By Tuesday, you'll have next steps in writing from me. If you don't, you can check with me directly." The three answers are the whole response.
Naming when, who, and how is what makes a response specific enough to become a commitment. The other person can hold you to it. That works whether your vague response was "we'll take care of it" or "you'll hear from us soon." The "how you'll know" part is the same thing a specific goal gives you: a way to check whether you got there.
The same three questions work in the other direction too. The next time someone gives you a vague response, ask them when, who, and how you'll know. That is how three specific questions, asked in September, become the standard the rest of the year has to live up to.
Sometimes, though, the honest, specific version of a response is smaller than what someone hoped to hear. It might be less time than they wanted, a later date than they asked for, or a plain no where they hoped for a yes. The disappointment belongs to the reality of the answer. The person who gave it straight did right by saying so. A specific no is still a response the other person can act on: they know where they stand, and they can plan around a specific no the same way they could plan around a specific yes. Being that honest, even when the answer disappoints, raises the next question: what does that kind of honesty do to trust?