My default is to tell the team everything. It took a few misfires to work out that “everything, immediately, unfiltered” isn’t really transparency. Half the time it’s just offloading my own anxiety onto everyone else. The hard question was never whether to be open. It’s how, and when.
Why openness is still my default#
The standard arguments for transparency are all true, and I’ve seen each of them play out. When people understand the reasoning behind a decision, they trust it, even when they don’t love it. When they have the same information I do, they make good calls without waiting on me. And nobody enjoys discovering they were out of the loop on something that affected them.
Where raw transparency goes wrong#
Three ways, mostly.
Volume. Forwarding every half-formed update buries the things that actually matter, and people learn to tune out.
Context. Raw information without the surrounding story breeds confusion. “We’re reviewing the roadmap” means one thing with an explanation attached, and something much scarier without one.
Timing. Share something before it’s actually decided and the team spends a week speculating about outcomes that were never on the table. Half-decided news can eat more energy than the final decision ever does.
Waiting isn’t the same as hiding#
Choosing the moment to share something sounds manipulative. Done honestly, it’s the opposite: it’s making sure news arrives with enough context to be understood. Bad news lands softer when it comes with a plan attached. Good news lands better when it isn’t buried in a Friday afternoon dump.
But waiting has a cost, and it compounds. Sit on information too long and people can sense it. The rumour mill fills any vacuum you leave, and rumours are reliably worse than reality. And if someone is consistently the last to know, they read it as a statement about their worth. Fair enough, too — it usually is one.
How I decide now#
Before sharing (or holding back) something sensitive, I run through a few questions. Does the team need this to do their jobs, or do I just want it off my chest? Can I explain the context properly yet, or would I be handing over raw fragments? And how is this likely to land — do I have answers ready for the obvious follow-up questions?
Then, whichever way I go: deliver context along with the information, make it easy for people to ask questions afterwards, and pay attention to how it went so the next call is better calibrated. Different people want different amounts of detail, and you only learn that by watching and asking.
Default to openness, add context, and think for a minute about how it’ll land before you hit send. That covers most situations I’ve run into so far.