Is Transparency Enough?

Transparency has often been shared as the gold standard of leadership strategies. The logic on this was that if leaders share more, trust will follow. According to a Forbes piece by career and leadership writer Kara Dennison, roughly 89% of U.S. workers want their leaders to be more open about decisions and direction.

And yet the ongoing Gallup data on continued to show that only about a third of US employees feel engaged a work and some two-thirds have experienced burnout which often seems to be tied to fuzzy expectations and priorities that keep shifting. Dennison suggested that the problem was not a shortage of information but rather a shortage of meaning.

Think of transparency as handing someone the keys to a warehouse. Everything is in there, but nobody has told you what you came for or where it's kept.  Dennison cites research suggesting more than 80% of workers feel overwhelmed by the information their jobs demand, and that the average employee burns around two and a half hours a day just hunting for things. Now add a leader who shares every unresolved question and every half-formed plan. It feels honest. But for the person on the receiving end, it lands as homework. They have to decide which updates matter, which decisions touch their work, and what to prioritize, all without a map. The result is decision fatigue and continual low level stress.

In Dennison's words, the outcome of transparency without structure is noise, not alignment.Her answer is a skill she calls narrative clarity: the ability to explain what matters, why decisions are being made, and how everyday work connects to something meaningful.

The difference is subtle but huge. A transparent leader opens the window. A leader with narrative clarity also tells you what you're looking at. They don't just share information, they shape it, giving people a through-line to hold onto when the outside world refuses to hold still.

The payoff, per the article, shows up in the places leaders care about most: sharper engagement, faster and more confident decisions, less duplicated effort, fewer people quietly updating their résumés. Dennison notes that nearly 79% of employees say leaders' communication quality shapes how well they understand company goals.

The author offers a set of habits that builds clarity of purpose:

Explain the why, not just the what. Equip your middle managers. Check that your message has landed (ask!). Make questions and questioning the norm. Let your actions match your words. Share what you are learning.

Transparency was the right answer for its moment, and nobody's arguing for secrecy. But we've swung so far toward more that we forgot to ask is it usable? The leaders who stand out now won't be the ones who share the most. They'll be the ones who help their people make sense of it all, so that when the ground shifts, the team still knows which way it's facing.

Note: Inspired by Kara Dennison's Forbes article, "In 2026, This Leadership Skill Replaces Transparency" (Feb. 25, 2026).