Blog Executive Transparency: Setting the Right Tone from the Top Share Leaders with strong values around transparency and direct communication tend to be very open with their teams as a way to build trust and enhance coordination. This can be a great approach– providing ongoing context is incredibly empowering for followers because it allows for a deeper understanding of the expectations and shifting parameters that inform key decisions and enables others to follow your thinking and be brought into specific decisions. When more of your team has context, they can operate more autonomously and make better, more broadly informed decisions, necessitating less time and attention from you. Further, when team members feel their leaders are honest and transparent with them, it enhances trust, an essential element for high-performing executive teams. However, our strengths can be overused at times. Highly transparent leaders can overshare with trusted team members, which may include complaining about policies/processes or worse, complaining about peers/leadership, sharing details about disagreements amongst peers on the leadership team, or sharing off-the-cuff statements about business changes (e.g., RIFs, divestments, etc.) without full context. While venting can be a helpful mechanism for talking through issues and releasing frustration, it’s important to avoid unproductive complaining with team members, as this can create noise or churn within an organization. Key Considerations for Transparent and Open Leaders Speak through the lens of “contextual transparency,” which means pausing to think through whether the information you are about to share will help your counterparty be more effective and whether it includes enough context to minimize the extent to which your content is open to interpretation. Be thoughtful around the tone and language you use. Being overly open in expressing your disappointment or frustration with team members or issues happening within the Company is usually unproductive. It can hurt engagement/morale or require that people around you to work hard to help you calm down or manage your overt emotionality. As a senior leader, it is essential to learn to absorb transient feelings of stress, anger, or overwhelm and serve as a filter for the organization below. Consistently work to project alignment across your #1 Team (your team of peers on whatever leadership team you sit on) and NOT the team you lead. This mindset shift is essential for leaders who want to make the shift from a purely vertical leader to one who can work effectively at the enterprise level, leading vertically AND horizontally within large, complex organizations. Always “keep the back door shut,” which means that no one in the organization can go to different members of your Team #1 and get a different view or decision (once the leadership team has made a decision) or hear disparaging comments about other team members. We see this come through in our conversations with direct reports as perceptions of alliances or factions within a leadership team– which can have detrimental impacts on cross-functional collaboration and drive hallway gossip. Teams that can master this approach to communication significantly minimize friction and foster deeper trust and alignment. The Beliefs That Shape Transparency The way we approach transparency often stems from deeply held beliefs about leadership and communication. These beliefs—whether overt and embraced or subconscious—play a significant role in shaping how we show up for our teams. Beliefs that might provide insight into whether we might be being “too open” –“Openness is the most important thing, and concealing or withholding information, even temporarily, from my team is dishonest and unproductive” –“I wear my emotions on my sleeve, and that makes me authentic/relatable” –“Filtering what you say/share is just “playing politics,” and I don’t need to do that” Understanding these beliefs is a critical step in recognizing how they influence your communication style. Calibrating Openness and Transparency as a Senior Leader It’s important to build self-awareness around your own communication style and work to better recognize when you are about to share something that is not productive and will create unnecessary noise or friction within your team or organization. Do strive to share important updates, expectations from yourself or more senior leadership, contextual factors that might impact ongoing processes, timelines, etc, or context that minimizes how much interpretation is needed to get to a conclusion. Do not share context on ongoing behavioral conflict, open debates/disagreements amongst the leadership team, language that conveys that you are not aligned to an enterprise/leadership decision that you were part of, fleeting negative feelings or frustrations. Calibrating openness as a senior leader requires self-awareness and thoughtful communication. Striking the right balance between sharing the context your team needs and maintaining alignment with your peers and the broader organization sets the tone for trust, collaboration, and effectiveness. Developing this awareness takes practice, reflection, and the right tools—such as Hogan Assessments or coaching—to better understand the beliefs that shape how we lead and how we can set the right tone from the top.