Share the Why and How, Not Just the Order
- linnearader
- Jul 1
- 5 min read
I've been at the Road Commission for 21 years. That's a long time. Not the longest tenure in the room, but long enough that my brain is basically a filing cabinet of random history, processes, institutional knowledge, and details that most people don't even know to ask about.
I remember looking at the long-timers when I first started and thinking...how do they know all of that? Will I ever get there? Well, I sure don't know everything. But I've gotten there in a lot of ways. And what I've learned is that all that knowledge doesn't do anyone any good if I just keep it to myself.
The Report That Takes One Minute
Here's a simple example. Someone asks me how many scraper blades we went through last year. I know how to pull that report. I've done it a hundred times. Running it myself takes about one minute. Done, delivered, moving on.
For a long time, that's exactly what I did. Answer the question. Provide the information. Check it off the list.
But here's what I started noticing. The same questions kept coming back. Different details, same basic situation. Someone needed information, I had it, I handed it over, and we moved on. And then they needed it again. And again. Because I had given them the fish...but I had never once shown them how to fish.
So, I changed my approach. Now, instead of just running the report, I walk them through how to get the information themselves. How to pull it from the system, what inputs matter, where the data lives. Same question, totally different answer.
Here's the catch. Running the report myself takes one minute. Walking someone through it takes five. Maybe more. And when you're busy, that extra four minutes feels like a lot. It is tempting every single time to just do it yourself and move on. When you're busy, it's easy to just run the report yourself. But then guess what happens? Next time they need that report, they're back at your desk. And the time after that. And the time after that.
"When you're busy, it's easy to just run the report yourself. But then guess what happens? Next time they need that report, they're back at your desk. And the time after that. And the time after that."
But if you take that extra four minutes and share the how? That person can now run their own reports. They gain knowledge. They gain confidence. They understand more about how the organization works. And you get your time back, because they don't need to come back to you for the same thing twice.
Share the Why with Your Team, Not Just the Answer
It's not just reports. I see it with invoices, project numbers, system codes. Someone asks for a project number and the old version of me just gave it to them. Done. Fast. Efficient.
The new version of me explains how to find it. What the number means. How that project connects to the budget, to the timeline, to the bigger picture of what we're doing. It takes longer. But now they understand how their job fits into the whole. They're not just entering a number, they know what that number represents.
That's a completely different level of engagement. And it didn't require a training program or a meeting. It just required me to share the why and how, not just the what.
This Isn't Just an Accounting Problem
I can already hear some of you thinking, okay Linnea, that's great for your world, but what does this have to do with me?
Everything. This is a real thing for everyone, in every kind of job and every kind of relationship.
Picture this. You ask your kid to clean their room. They shove everything under the bed and call it done. Technically they followed the order. But if you had told them why...we have company coming this weekend and Grandma is sleeping in here...suddenly they understand the standard that's actually required. They get it right the first time. The why changes the quality of the execution every single time.
Same goes for asking your partner to pick up milk. "Grab milk on your way home" gets you whatever's on sale. "Can you grab whole milk? I'm making that recipe you love tonight and it needs the fat content" gets you exactly what you actually needed. One sentence of context. Completely different result. When people only have the what, they can only do the minimum. When they have the why and the how, they can actually think.
"When people only have the what, they can only do the minimum. When they have the why and the how, they can actually think."
Think about your own job for a second. Have you ever been asked to do something without any context for why? How well did you execute it? Was it perfect? Probably not. Because you didn't have all the information you needed to get it exactly right. You did your best with what you had, which is all anyone can do when they're working in the dark.
The Decision-Making Piece
This gets even more important when it comes to decisions.
If you're in a leadership role, you make decisions all the time. You gather input from your team, you weigh the options, and then you make the call. That's the job. But here's where a lot of leaders drop the ball: they make the decision and then just...announce it. Here's what we're doing. Go.
Two things happen when you do that. First, your team thinks their input was ignored. Even if it wasn't. Even if their perspective genuinely shaped your thinking. They don't know that, because you didn't tell them. Second, they go off to execute a decision they don't fully understand. They're going through the motions without grasping the situation, which means they can't adapt when something unexpected comes up, because they only know the step they were given, not the reason behind it.
Share the why behind your decisions. It doesn't have to be a long explanation. Even a sentence or two: here's what we decided, here's the reasoning, here's how your piece fits in. That's it. That changes everything.
This Is How You Build People Up
I wrote recently about building others up instead of tearing them down. This is another version of that same thing. When you share your knowledge, your experience, your reasoning, you are investing in the people around you. You are making them more capable, more confident, more connected to the work.
Hoarding your knowledge doesn't make you more valuable. It makes you a bottleneck. The leaders people actually want to work for are the ones who make the people around them better. Who take the extra four minutes. Who explain the why. Who trust their team enough to let them into the full picture.
"Hoarding your knowledge doesn't make you more valuable. It makes you a bottleneck."
You have things to teach. Experience, history, context that other people don't have yet. That's not something to protect. That's something to share.
So the next time someone asks you a question, before you just hand over the answer, ask yourself: can I teach this instead? Can I take five minutes instead of one and leave this person better off than they were before?
Most of the time, the answer is yes. And those five minutes will matter more than you know.
As always, carry social kindness with you everywhere you go. The world needs you and your positive mindset!
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