A senior leader recently relayed a story about a high-visibility project: “ I don’t get it. I thought I was clear on what needed to happen. And I thought people got it. But clearly, they didn’t because what came back wasn’t at all what we were looking for. So, we’re starting over. Feels like such a waste of time and effort on everyone’s part.”

That gap between what a leader says and what a team hears is one of the most common things I see in my work with leaders. And it has a name.

In 1990, a Stanford graduate student named Elizabeth Newton ran a simple experiment. She asked one group of people to tap out the rhythm of a well-known song, like “Happy Birthday,” on a table. A second group listened and tried to name the song.

Before they started, the tappers predicted that listeners would get about half of them right. The actual number: 2.5%.

The tappers weren’t bad at tapping. They could hear the melody in their heads, and the listeners couldn’t. Once you know something, it’s very hard to imagine not knowing it. Psychologists call this the curse of knowledge.

Every leader is a tapper. You’ve been in the strategy sessions. You know the history, the trade-offs, the reasons behind the decision. When you announce it, you hear the full melody. Your team hears knocking on a table.

What your team is really listening for

The first is certainty or surety. What’s happening? What does it mean for me? What comes next? I call this Surety, and it’s the foundation of how people experience work. When people don’t know what to expect, the brain treats it as a threat, and you see anxiety, resistance, and people doing less of their best thinking. In a 2016 study at University College London, people were more stressed when they had a 50/50 chance of a painful shock than when they knew for certain one was coming. Uncertainty can be harder on us than bad news.

The second is significance. Do I matter here? Is my contribution seen? Does my leader trust me with the real story? When the human need for significance is met, people lean in. In one study by Adam Grant and Francesca Gino, university fundraisers who received a simple thank-you from their director made more than 50% more calls the following week.

Clear communication meets both needs at once. It tells people what to expect, and it tells them they’re worth the effort of being told well. Every principle below builds one or both.

1. Share what serves them, not everything you know

Builds Surety and Significance

Be as forthcoming as you can, in service to the team member. Leaders who communicate openly are trusted more and seen as more effective. When people don’t get information, especially during change, they don’t sit quietly. They fill the gap with worry and worst-case stories.

But more isn’t always better. Too much information overwhelms people and makes their decisions worse. The test is simple: what does this person need, about the what and the why, to do their job well? Lead with that and keep the deeper detail available for anyone who wants it.

When you don’t know something yet, say so. “Here’s what we know, here’s what we don’t, and here’s when I’ll update you” builds more trust than silence ever will. It gives people certainty about the process even when you can’t give them certainty about the outcome.

2. Say it more often than feels necessary

If you planned to say it twice, say it four times.

This one can feel uncomfortable, because by the time you announce something, you’ve lived with it for weeks. It feels old to you. It’s brand new to them.

Research from Harvard’s Tsedal Neeley and Paul Leonardi found that the managers who got projects moving fastest repeated their messages, often sending the same point again through a second channel. Repetition isn’t nagging. It’s how a message makes it through the noise of a busy week.

One caution: people do tire of hearing the exact same words. Repeat the core message, but vary the framing, the example, and the moment. Same melody, different instruments.

3. Use more than one channel

Follow your all-hands with an email. Back up the Slack post with a mention in your team meeting. Send the slides afterward with a short summary at the top.

You may have heard this justified by “people learn in different ways.” The research on learning styles doesn’t hold up, but the practice is still right, for better reasons. People check different channels at different times. A written version gives everyone something to come back to. And pairing words with visuals helps nearly everyone understand and remember.

4. Always include the WHY

If I could keep only one of these, this would be it.

When people understand the reasoning behind a request, they don’t just comply. They take ownership. Decades of research on motivation show that a meaningful rationale is one of the most reliable ways to turn “I have to” into “I want to.” Research on fairness adds that people accept even unwelcome decisions more readily when they get a real explanation.

Sharing your why also sends a quieter message: I think you’re capable of understanding the full picture. That’s Signficance in action.

The key word is real. A thin or self-serving explanation can do more harm than none at all. Give people the benefit of your actual thinking, including the trade-offs you weighed.

5. Show what good looks like

You have a picture in your head of what ‘success’ looks like for this project: the quality bar, the level of polish, the things that matter most. Your team doesn’t have that picture unless you give it to them.

Gallup finds that fewer than half of employees strongly agree they know what’s expected of them at work. That’s not a motivation problem. It’s a clarity problem.

Words like “high-quality,” “strategic,” and “polished” mean different things to different people. Examples beat adjectives. Show them a past piece of work that hit the mark and tell them what made it work. And as you craft the message, put yourself in their shoes. Write it for the person with the least context, not the most.

6. Make a clear ask

Builds Surety

Be specific about what you’re asking for: the outcome, the deadline, how much time or effort you expect it to take. It’s tempting to assume your team knows what you mean. That assumption is where most missed expectations begin.

By all means, invite questions, ideas, and pushback. Just start with a clear, thoughtful request, so people have something concrete to respond to.

Closing the loop

7. Check what landed

Remember the tappers: you can’t judge clarity from your side of the table. The only reliable test is what the other person understood.

So ask. “What’s your takeaway?” “How would you explain this to your team?” “What’s still unclear?” Ask in a way that makes it about your clarity, not their comprehension. Something like, “I want to make sure I explained this well. Can you play back what you heard?”

This does double duty. It surfaces the gaps before they turn into missed deadlines, which builds Surety. And it tells people their understanding and their read on things matter to you, which builds Importance.

8. Make your actions match your words

Your team reads your actions as closely as your words, and when the two disagree, they believe the actions.

Researchers call this behavioral integrity: the alignment between what a leader says and what a leader does. Across dozens of studies, when people see that alignment, they trust their leaders more and perform better. When they don’t, no amount of repetition will fix it.

If you say a project is the top priority, it needs to show up on your calendar. If you say you want honest input, the first person who disagrees with you in a meeting needs to be thanked, not shut down. Consistency between words and actions is what makes you predictable, and predictability is the deepest form of Surety a leader can offer.

Before your next big message

Picture the person on your team with the least context, and ask yourself:

1. What do they need to know, and what can wait?

2. How many times, and in how many places, will they need to hear it?

3. Do they understand the why?

4. Do they know what good looks like, and exactly what I’m asking?

5. How will I check what landed?

6. Do my actions this week back up what I’m about to say?

Answer those, and you’ll give your team two things every person at work is looking for: confidence about what comes next, and the sense that they matter. You’ll also be a lot closer to having them hear the song.