When leaders sit on sensitive information like pending layoffs, strategic pivots, or confidential deals, they typically do it out of necessity. In many cases, sharing too much, too soon could create confusion, spark panic, or undermine the very outcomes they’re trying to achieve.
But new research from Columbia Business School Associate Professor Michael Slepian, China Europe International Business School professor Ke Michael Mai, and Renmin University of China professor Yating Wang suggests that even well-intentioned secrecy can quietly backfire.
“For some employees, even necessary secrets can feel like a betrayal,” Slepian says. As a result, those employees may be less willing to go the extra mile in their work. What’s more, they may be less likely to speak up about problems in the workplace, creating a cycle of secrecy that drags on productivity and morale.
But secrecy and trust don’t have to be at odds. When leaders are explicit about what they can share, and just as clear about why they can’t share other things, employees are far more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt.
A New Frontier for an Expert on Secrets
Slepian has been studying the psychology of secret-keeping for over a decade. In 2022 he published The Secret Life of Secrets, a book that explores the effects that keeping secrets has on our well-being and relationships. Often, he found, the hardest part about keeping a secret is that you must live with it alone, without the support of others. Just talking about your secret with one other person can feel like removing a heavy burden.
But what about when keeping a secret is part of the job, and talking about it might harm your organization? That’s the question Slepian wanted to explore in his research with Mai and Wang—and he wanted to know the effects that kind of secret had not just on the people keeping it, but on the people being left in the dark.
To find answers, the authors conducted three different studies. In the first two, participants engaged in a simulated work task with a supervisor who either withheld information or communicated transparently. The third study turned to a real-world setting, looking at 364 employees and their 77 supervisors working at a multi-national marketing consultancy firm.
The studies all pointed to the same conclusion. “When employees feel that their leaders are keeping secrets from them, they can interpret that as a breach of trust and reduce their willingness to contribute beyond their formal role,” Slepian says. Importantly, the actual content of the secret matters far less than the act of exclusion itself—and how it makes employees feel.
However, the research found that not all employees responded in the same way. Some people are simply more prone to trust others, whether inside or outside the workplace. These high-trust workers are more likely to assume benign motives on the part of their supervisors.
Low-trust workers, on the other hand, are more likely to suspect unfairness or hostility. For them, secrecy can undermine something known as the “psychological contract”—the unwritten set of expectations employees hold about what their leaders owe them, such as transparency, fairness, support, and job security.
Why Sharing Context Helps
So how can leaders keep necessary secrets without undermining the trust of a large portion of their teams?
“The reality is, you have to keep some secrets from your employees,” Slepian says. “You might be protecting them by keeping secrets from them. You might be protecting the organization. Part of the solution is to help employees see when you are sharing sensitive information with them. That shows you that you do trust them and reinforces the psychological contract.”
The second part of the solution, Slepian says, is to provide context around the secrets you have to keep. “When people understand the reasons behind the secrets being kept from them, we see benefits,” he says.
In other words, transparency isn’t just about how much you disclose, but about how you communicate the boundaries of disclosure itself. Leaders who overvalue secrecy risk eroding trust. On the other hand, those who narrate their decision-making—what they can share, what they can’t, and why—may turn secrecy from a tool of isolation to one of collaboration and trust-building.
