There is no shortage of data to support that communicating more, and not less, with your employees is a valuable decision. Then why are so many business leaders hesitant, or outright opposed, to communicating more with their employees?

I’ve consistently found there to be five main errors business leaders make regarding communicating with their employees.

Leaders may assume they have already communicated the message. A favorite quote of mine, from George Bernard Shaw is, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” We often think we have effectively communicated a message, but we haven’t. With the volume of messages that bombard us every day, it is no surprise that things we think were communicated were not. That’s why checking for understanding is important.

Leaders may believe that their employees don’t need to know. Although sometimes this is true in the case of something confidential or not ready for release yet, leaders often keep too much in secret, leaving the gossip train to run rampant. A leader may believe they need to keep all their cards close, all the time, but that does more harm than good. They may forget that communicating is not an all or nothing proposition and communicating something, even if simplistic, is often better than nothing. Saying something like, “We understand there are concerns about xyz, we are currently meeting to develop a solution to the problem and will keep you updated as things progress,” can provide enough communication to ease worries and squash rumors instead of no communication at all.

Leaders may assume that the employees don’t want to know some information, likely because it doesn’t impact their work directly. But people want to be in the loop. They want to know what is happening around their organization even if it is unrelated to their specific role. They want to be in on the big picture. Employees want to be in the know. If they don’t care about something, they can choose not to pay attention to messaging on it but let them make that decision instead of making it for them.

A leader may not realize that their team doesn’t already know something. We all fall into this from time to time – the assumption that everyone knows what we already know so we don’t bother communicating it. It is easy to forget that what is known to us is not known to everyone.

In some cases, the leader is simply oblivious to the fact that they aren’t communicating. It isn’t something they see as their role. Sharing information doesn’t even cross their mind.

It is easy to discover the value of communicating with employees. You can research it to learn more, or just do it and see first-hand what happens when you have increased transparency and communication. With so many business leaders who keep their employees in the dark, I figured there must be some meaningful school of thought that exists about the benefits, so I searched for information on the value of keeping information from employees. I came up with nothing positive.

To me, the decision to not be transparent and to keep employees out of the loop boils down to four root causes.

Some business leaders want to maintain excessive control of their employees. Restricting communication is one way to achieve that. Closely related to this is the desire for power. Being just transparent enough but not too much is a way to maintain power over employees.

Other business leaders might operate from a place of fear. They fear letting go of too much information might make them look bad, give up valuable secrets, open them up for conflict or legal issues, make them vulnerable, or others fears.

Lastly, it might stem from the failure to understand the benefits of communication. If an organization has always been relatively secretive, but still successful, they may not realize the added value they could achieve if they were more transparent and open with employees. They may not see the value of communication simply because they have never tried it.

Communicating with your team is incredibly important. Responses like, “because I said so,” and, “that’s none of your business,” are harmful to an organization. Letting rumors run wild is a great way to cause stress among your team. Lack of transparency and communication lead to less productivity, an increase in disengaged workers, lower trust from employees, and lower levels of commitment from the team.

Those aren’t things you want, right? Then communicate more. It’s free. It’s easy. It’s valuable.

Jackie Krawczak is president of Jackie Krawczak LLC. Her column runs every three weeks on Thursdays. Follow Jackie on Twitter @jkrawczak.