“He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened.” Lao Tzu

Occasionally we need to enlist the help of a babysitter, and the last time we told our boys that we’d be out on the Saturday night, our six year old unexpectedly freaked out.

After much questioning, it turned out that he hadn’t known that the babysitter stays until we get home. He had assumed that they left once he and his brother had gone to sleep. Consequently, he was not worried about actually having a babysitter, but was totally stressed about the possibility of waking up and not having one.

It had never occurred to us that we needed to explain exactly how it all works. We had consciously avoided talking about the specific reasons why we needed babysitters (i.e. in case of an emergency) but hadn’t considered what he didn’t actually know.

Instinctively, we all tend to give detail based on what we believe is needed or appropriate, and as it is generally easier to give information collectively, not individually, we don’t often spend enough time figuring out who needs what information and how much from us.

On the one hand, some people don’t need to know the ending, or prefer not to. Being interviewed about his starring role in The Good Wife, Alan Cummings remarked that the big difference with TV from films or plays was that you don’t know the ending. He found this both liberating and a big lesson to learn to not always think of the end.

On the other hand, particularly in periods of uncertainty or change, some people do need to know the ending. Certainly when there may be fear lurking beneath the surface – for my son it was fear that he would be left alone – we need to absolutely make sure we’re disclosing enough, and particularly not holding anything back out of ego or a power trip.

An Inc.com article reported that safety and belonging are key traits that should be at the top of every leaders list if they want to get the most out of their teams.  The recent Google survey that found that psychological safety is the critical success factor for all their great teams serves to highlight this. 

Ideally, we should know our leaders and teams well enough to identify exactly what each person needs from us in terms of information disclosure. And our kids too of course – which in our household is clearly still a work in progress!