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# When Direct Communication Is Not the Best Communication
- URL: https://www.altiusjournal.com/when-clear-communication-is-not-the-best-communication/
- Published: 2026-09-30T20:32:15.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-30T20:32:15.000Z
- Description: Leaders are often told to be more direct. Recent organisational research suggests a better question: what does the listener need to understand, infer and own after the message?
- Author: Giani Boldeanu
- Tags: Communication, Leadership, Psychology

Leaders are often told to communicate more clearly, and the advice is usually translated into a simple rule: be more direct. In many situations that is exactly right. A deadline, a safety instruction or a decision that has already been made should not be wrapped in ambiguity. But leadership is not made up only of those moments. Sometimes the purpose of communication is not merely to transfer information; it is to leave enough room for another person to think, interpret and decide.

That distinction matters because directness can solve the wrong problem. A 2026 study in *Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes* examined leader indirect communication across six studies and found two different sensemaking pathways. Indirect communication could be interpreted as granting discretion, increasing perceived work autonomy and, in turn, supporting task performance. The same lack of explicitness could also be interpreted as limited guidance or disengagement, lowering perceived leader effectiveness and increasing withdrawal. The research therefore does not establish indirect communication as superior. It shows that similar language can produce very different outcomes depending on how the listener makes sense of it.

Clarity is useful, but directness and clarity are not the same thing.

## When the answer is part of the work

Consider the difference between two questions. “What time does the client meeting begin?” benefits from a direct answer. “What are we missing in this proposal?” may not. If the leader immediately supplies the diagnosis, the team gains information but loses the opportunity to interpret the problem for itself. I see versions of this across performance settings: a coach recognises the tactical solution before the athlete, a manager sees the flaw before the team, or a parent knows what the child should do next. The efficient response is to provide the answer. The developmental response may be to hold back long enough for the other person to do some of the cognitive work.

That does not mean withholding useful information to create an effect. It means deciding whether reaching the answer is itself part of the task. Where judgement matters, communication can sometimes protect another person’s opportunity to exercise judgement rather than replacing it.

The 2026 research is especially useful because it does not romanticise indirectness. The authors found that the listener’s interpretation is central. A less explicit message may create room for autonomy, but it may also be read as avoidance, indecision or weak leadership. They also identified the leader’s concern for the subordinate’s face — broadly, sensitivity to the other person’s social standing and dignity — as an important boundary condition. When that concern was perceived as stronger, the autonomy pathway was strengthened and the negative effect on perceived leader effectiveness was reduced. In other words, indirectness does not operate in a vacuum. The relationship changes the meaning of the words.

Hierarchy complicates this further. A senior leader may say, “You might want to revisit the budget,” intending it as a suggestion. The person receiving it may hear a decision softened linguistically, because the consequences of ignoring the message are not evenly distributed. Separate research on hierarchy and communication has also found that the effectiveness of more abstract or more concrete leader communication can depend on hierarchical distance. The practical lesson is not that senior leaders should be vague. It is that the same sentence may carry a different force depending on who says it, to whom, and from what position.

## The stakes determine how much ambiguity is acceptable

There is no virtue in making simple work mysterious. When safety, law, deadlines, crisis response or accountability are involved, ambiguity can create avoidable risk. People need to know who decides, what standard applies, what must happen and what cannot be negotiated. The case for explicit communication becomes stronger as the cost of misunderstanding rises. A leader who asks reflective questions in a development conversation may be helping someone think; the same approach in an emergency may leave people uncertain when speed and coordination matter most.

This is why rules such as “leaders should ask, not tell” or “leaders should always be direct” are too crude. Communication has to fit the task, the relationship and the consequences of misunderstanding.

I prefer to judge clarity by what happens next. Does the listener understand enough to take the appropriate action? Sometimes that requires precise instruction. Sometimes it requires a clear purpose and freedom over method. Sometimes it requires an honest statement about what remains uncertain. Talking more is not the same as communicating better: a leader can explain at length and still leave a team unsure about priority, ownership or intent. Conversely, a short question can be clear if it deliberately leaves the right decision with the right person.

Before speaking, it is worth asking three practical questions: what must this person know, what should they work out for themselves, and what ambiguity would create unnecessary risk? Those questions shift attention away from a preferred communication style and towards the work the communication is supposed to make possible.

## When clarity becomes dependency

There is another risk in organisations led by highly capable people. They answer quickly, diagnose accurately and remove uncertainty. Over time, everyone learns where interpretation lives. The leader becomes the place where the organisation goes to think. At first this can look like efficiency. Eventually it can reduce capability elsewhere, because people become accustomed to receiving the explanation rather than developing their own judgement.

This is not an argument for strategic vagueness. It is an argument for distinguishing information that people need from thinking that they need to learn to do. A leader who constantly resolves every ambiguity may make today’s work easier while making tomorrow’s team more dependent.

A strong communication system should make an organisation more capable, not merely make a leader easier to follow. The question is therefore not whether direct communication is good. It often is. The better question is what the message needs to produce in that particular moment: coordination, learning, autonomy, urgency, trust or a decision. Effective leaders do not choose one communication style and apply it everywhere. They recognise when an answer should be given plainly, and when giving it too soon would quietly take part of someone else’s work away from them.

## ALTIUS Note

This article interprets recent organisational research alongside broader leadership practice. The 2026 study on leader indirect communication included two construct-validation studies, a multiwave multisource field study and three experiments. Its findings support a dual-pathway model, but they should not be treated as proof that indirect communication is generally superior to direct communication. Context, hierarchy, perceived leader intent and the consequences of misunderstanding remain important.

## Research References

- Chiang, J. T.-J., Wang, Z., Chen, X.-P., Gao, Y., Zhang, Y., & Liu, Y. (2026). **Reading between the lines: The divergent implications of leader indirect communication on subordinate sensemaking processes and outcomes.** *Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 196*, 104497\. [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2026.104497](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2026.104497?ref=altiusjournal.com)
- Berson, Y., & Halevy, N. (2014). **Hierarchy, leadership, and construal fit.** *Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 20*(3), 232–246\. [https://doi.org/10.1037/xap0000017](https://doi.org/10.1037/xap0000017?ref=altiusjournal.com)

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