Imagine this from a military perspective. The general/field marshal etc makes the call that you're going over the top and as a smart Major or whatever you know this means most of your men are going to die. Are you going to say to your men:
"Hello gents, we have our new orders, we're going to go over the top tomorrow at 8am and try and take the village one mile down the road, however, I think this is a horrible idea and you're all probably going to die."
Even if you really believe this is the case, it's a bad idea to tell your men as it means the plan (which is going to happen anyway) is even LESS likely to succeed. That is, if you can make your men believe the plan is genius and they're going to destroy the enemy easily, it may give them more confidence and leave more of them alive at the end of it.
By explaining your reasoning in every situation you can will build trust, so that on the rare occasion that you need them to act without sharing, they will trust you enough to do so. For example, when in an execution environment where response time matters.
And in practice, this is how good commanders I've worked with have operated. And this is explicitly a principle of the US Army, by understanding the objective and it's purpose units are able to continue acting to fulfill their objectives even if they are cut off.
The upside of explaining whenever you can let them build a mental model to know how you would likely handle an unexpected situation, allowing them to act in your absence.
It is unusual to have a team emotionally mature enough to handle actual transparency. You only have to read HN to know people live with extreme cognitive dissonance between wanting their high salaries and hating the business practices that enable them.
My experience has always been that certain employees get marked as "adults in the room" and are given real transparency in 1:1s.
This is true. Especially extending it to opinions and emotions.
But understanding the purpose and why of a decision/plan is only a small piece of full transparency. And is always achievable. This is the minimal amount I consider functional. Less than this is dysfunctional.
The reset is extremely rare for teams (I’ve only had this on a team once and it was magical), but happens regularly individually 1-1.
"Hello gents, we have our new orders, we're going to go over the top tomorrow at 8am and try and take the village one mile down the road, however, I think this is a horrible idea and you're all probably going to die."
Even if you really believe this is the case, it's a bad idea to tell your men as it means the plan (which is going to happen anyway) is even LESS likely to succeed. That is, if you can make your men believe the plan is genius and they're going to destroy the enemy easily, it may give them more confidence and leave more of them alive at the end of it.