My wife and I were planning a holiday. We went back and forth on where, then started on when, working around both our calendars. She gave me some dates. I told her I would go away and check whether those dates actually worked on my side. We left it there.

In my head, that was almost done. We knew where we were going. I had her dates. As long as mine lined up with hers, I could book it. So I booked it.

A couple of weeks later an email landed in her inbox. Flight details. Locations. The holiday, confirmed. She came to me and asked why I had booked it. I said because we talked it through, we agreed the place, we agreed the dates. She said no. You told me you were going to go away, check the dates, then come back so we could sync up, because there were still a few things to factor in before we decided.

The flights were booked. The decision was made without her. Now we had to figure it out.

You have done a version of this. Maybe not a holiday. A decision at work you were certain had been agreed, that the other person thought was still open. You closed the loop in your head. You did not close it with them.

At work you call it being decisive. You bring an idea to your team. You ask what they think. They give you something real. Then you go away, you have a quiet conversation with someone senior, it gets signed off, and the next thing your team hears is that you are moving in a particular direction and everyone needs to get on board. On the surface that looks like good leadership. It moves. It decides. What it skips is the one step that would have made your people yours. You never went back and told them why.

For the last six months or so I have been working with an organisation that has around twenty mini-CEOs across ten different countries. My client, who has given me permission to share this, sits in the middle of a lot of that responsibility. Because of their roles, these leaders are constantly inviting their teams into projects. They welcome them in. They welcome their perspectives. They have a debate. Then they go away, have a word with a senior manager, it gets signed off, and the team finds out later that a direction has been chosen and it is time to move.

Nothing about that is unusual. It is how most organisations run. What we changed was one habit. Go back to the team, and before anything else, say here is the reason why we chose this.

A number of them came back after they tried it. One had worked with someone on his team for years. When he finally closed the loop, actually walked them through the why, the person looked at him and said you have never done that before. It had left a bitter taste for years. Every time this leader announced a decision, the message underneath it read the same way. I have already made up my mind, so why would I bother contributing. So the person stopped contributing fully. Years of half a person in the room, because a loop was never closed.

Another leader told me her team did not agree with her direction at all. We had talked about that in the workshop, so she was ready for it. She closed the loop anyway and gave them the full reasoning. They told her, we still do not agree with the decision you have made, and we appreciate you closing the loop. They did not get their way. They got the reasoning, and they stayed in the room with her.

Here is what closing the loop actually does. It is not you saying I agreed with you. Most of the time the path you end up on looks nothing like what your team said in that room. That is not the point. The point is that they gave you something and you treated it as if it counted, because you came back and showed them how it fed the thinking. Not agreement. Acknowledgement.

This is where the gap lives. You intended to bring your people with you. You genuinely did. Then the pressure came, the diary filled, and closing the loop became the thing you were certain you had done and had not. The intention was real. The follow-through fell into the gap. Your team does not experience your intention. They experience the silence after the decision.

It costs you nothing but a few minutes and a sentence. Here is the reason why. What it buys is a team that brings you their real thinking next time, because they have evidence it goes somewhere.

This week, find one loop you left open. One decision you announced without ever going back to explain the why. It might be at work. It might be at home, with someone who is still quietly wondering what happened. Go back. Give them the reasoning. Not to win them over. To show them their input landed somewhere.

• Whose input did you ask for this month, then never go back to?
• Who around you has quietly stopped contributing fully, and how long have you been reading their silence as agreement?

If closing the loop only costs a sentence, what does it say that you still have not gone back?

See you next Monday.

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