I have highly capable team members, but sometimes they need me to solve a problem or make a decision. Describing a solution or communicating a decision can often be brief, but I spend a lot of time describing how I arrived at the solution or decision. There are a few reasons for that.

The first is that it gives me a way to teach the other person. If I’m doing my job well, my team members are becoming steadily more capable, and I hand off more and more responsibility to them. Certainly they’ll learn from example and experience, but they’ll learn faster if I describe what I see as the key principles and how to apply them to a specific situation. That’s better than only describing principles in the abstract or only giving them answers where they have to infer the reasoning.

The second reason is that I am frequently wrong. I may be missing important facts, I may misunderstand them, or I may have a flaw in my reasoning. If I just deliver an answer, it’s difficult to tell that I went wrong. However, if I explain the facts as I understood them and how I interpreted them, then my team member can observe my mistake and share it with me. I learn something, and we end up with a better decision.

Third, and relatedly, it makes it easier to invite disagreement. If all the other person has is my conclusion, there’s a finality and opacity to it that makes it hard to engage. However, if I describe my thinking, there’s more for the other person to grab on to if they think we should go in a different direction.

Finally, I believe it shows respect. The people on my team are motivated, capable professionals. They’re not flunkies I expect to do my bidding without question. I don’t want to be given orders, and I don’t want to give them. By investing my time in explaining myself, teaching them, and inviting criticism and disagreement, I show them their opinions and perspectives matter to me. It’s about them executing my brilliant ideas, but the two of us putting our heads together to solve problems as partners.