Why Employees Do Not Act on Leadership Messages and What to Do About It
Stacey Hanke, Hall of Fame Keynote Speaker
A leadership team announces a new priority.
Employees attend the town hall. They receive the follow-up email. Managers reinforce the message in team meetings.
Weeks later, leaders ask:
Why isn't anything changing?
The problem may not come from a lack of communication.
Employees may hear the information without clearly understanding what it means, why it matters or what they should do next.
This distinction matters.
Leadership communication does not succeed simply because leaders deliver a message. It succeeds when people understand it, find it credible and know how to act on it.
Before your next important message, ask three questions:
What do my listeners need to Know?
What do they need to Believe?
What do they need to Do?
I call this Know. Believe. Do.
The framework is simple. Using it consistently takes discipline.
Why Leadership Messages Fail to Create Action
Today's employees do not wait quietly for leadership's next message.
They sort through:
email;
meetings;
chats;
notifications;
competing priorities; and
constant interruptions.
Microsoft's 2025 workplace research, based on trillions of aggregated and anonymized Microsoft 365 productivity signals, found that the average employee receives more than 100 emails and 150-plus Teams messages every day. Nearly one in three employees surveyed said they could not keep up with the pace of work. Microsoft: Breaking down the infinite workday
That does not mean leaders should stop communicating.
It means another email or meeting cannot define your success.
Your message competes for attention before your listener even decides whether it matters.
More communication does not automatically create clearer communication.
When employees fail to act, look first for a breakdown in one of three places:
They do not Know what the message actually means.
They do not Believe the message is relevant or credible.
They do not know what to Do next.
If one piece is missing, action becomes much less likely.
KNOW: What Must Your Employees Understand?
You know more about your message than your employees do.
You may have spent months discussing a new strategy, organizational change or shift in priorities. You know what led to the decision. You know which alternatives leaders debated. You know why leadership believes the change is necessary.
Then employees hear the conclusion.
That gap matters.
Leaders frequently communicate from everything they already know instead of focusing on what their listeners need to know.
State What Is Actually Changing
Do not force listeners to search for the decision inside the background information.
Start with the point:
What is changing?
What has leadership decided?
What matters most?
If you cannot explain the core message concisely, your listeners will struggle to explain it after you leave.
Consider the difference:
Less clear:
“We have been assessing several opportunities to better position our organization for long-term growth, and as a result, we have identified three strategic areas that will require increased focus across the business.”
Clearer:
“We are changing our top three priorities for the next six months. Here is what they are, why they changed and what each team needs to do differently.”
Do not make employees decode your main point.
Explain What Is Not Changing
This matters especially when you communicate change.
When people hear that one thing will change, they may quickly assume ten other things will change with it.
If you know what will stay the same, say it.
That clarity reduces unnecessary guessing and helps listeners focus on the change that actually matters.
Translate the Message Into Listener Meaning
Corporate language often sounds clear to the people who created it.
Examples include:
“Align around our strategic priorities.”
“Drive operational excellence.”
“Strengthen our customer-centric approach.”
“Accelerate execution.”
Ask yourself what your listener should do with those words.
If employees still have to translate the statement into day-to-day decisions, the message is not finished.
Use this test:
Could an employee explain this message accurately to someone else after I leave the room?
If not, keep working.
BELIEVE: Why Should They Take the Message Seriously?
Knowing what you said does not mean a listener believes it.
And “believe” does not mean your employees must agree with every decision you make.
Employees may:
dislike some decisions;
reject some changes they would not choose themselves; and
want answers you do not yet have.
Credible communication does not require universal agreement.
It requires your words, behavior and context to give listeners a reason to take the message seriously.
Give Them Enough of the Why
When leaders provide too little context, they create questions.
When they provide too much, they create noise.
Find the balance.
Your listener needs enough information to understand:
why leaders made the decision;
why it matters to the organization; and
why it matters to them.
Then stop.
Overexplaining does not necessarily increase credibility. It can bury your point and create more uncertainty.
Make Sure Your Behavior Supports Your Words
You cannot:
call something a priority and repeatedly behave as if it is not;
ask employees to focus while constantly introducing new priorities; or
say you want questions and then become defensive when someone asks one.
Your listeners evaluate more than your words.
They notice:
your verbal, vocal and visual communication;
your follow-through;
inconsistencies; and
whether your behavior on Monday matches your message from Friday.
This is the difference between your intention and their experience.
You know what you intended.
They act based on what they experienced.
Acknowledge the Reality Your Listeners Are Experiencing
If a decision will make someone's job harder, do not pretend otherwise.
If a change creates uncertainty, acknowledge it.
If you do not know something yet, say so.
Credibility does not come from pretending to have every answer.
It comes from communicating clearly about:
what you know;
what you do not know; and
what happens next.
Research on organizational transformation reinforces the importance of leadership communication. In a McKinsey survey, respondents at organizations where senior managers communicated openly about transformation progress were 8 times as likely to report a successful transformation as respondents at organizations without that communication. For enterprise-wide transformations, respondents were 12.4 times as likely to report success when senior managers communicated continually. These findings show an association, not proof that communication alone caused success, but they underscore the role leaders play throughout change—not just during the announcement. McKinsey: The science behind successful organizational transformations
Do not disappear after you deliver the message.
Build credibility through what you do next.
DO: What Should Employees Do Next?
This is where many leadership messages stop short.
The leader explains the strategy.
The presentation ends.
The employee thinks:
Now what?
Words such as:
align;
support;
embrace;
prioritize; and
execute
sound actionable until someone has to decide what to do Monday morning.
If you expect action, name the action.
Replace Abstract Action With Observable Behavior
Compare these two calls to action:
“We need everyone to focus on improving the customer experience.”
versus:
“Beginning this month, escalate every customer complaint you cannot resolve during the first interaction to a manager before the end of the business day.”
The first communicates an aspiration.
The second gives the listener something observable to do.
Not every action requires that much detail, but every call to action should pass this test:
Would my listener know what I expect without having to guess?
Name Ownership
Leaders also create confusion when they ask “everyone” to act.
When everyone owns something, no one may know exactly what they own.
Clarify:
Who is responsible?
What should managers do?
What should individual employees do?
What does leadership own?
What happens first?
Spell it out.
Give People a First Step
An employee may understand your long-term destination and still have no idea what to do next.
Give them the first step.
You do not always need to map the next 12 months.
You do need to make the immediate action clear.
Confirm Understanding
Do not end by asking:
“Does everyone understand?”
You already know what usually happens.
Silence.
Instead, create a conversation.
Ask:
“What does this change for your team?”
“What questions will your employees have?”
“What could make this difficult to execute?”
“What will you do first?”
Those questions reveal whether your message landed the way you intended.
Use the Know. Believe. Do. Leadership Message Diagnostic
Before you send your next important message, stop and test it.
KNOW: What must my listeners clearly understand when I am finished?
BELIEVE: What context and behavior will make this message credible and relevant?
DO: What specifically should my listeners do next?
Then test it again after you communicate.
KNOW
Ask:
Can employees explain what changed without reading your talking points?
BELIEVE
Ask:
Can they explain why the decision matters, even if they disagree with it?
DO
Ask:
Can they identify what you expect them to do next without guessing?
If not, do not immediately assume you need another communication campaign.
Diagnose which part failed.
Stop Repeating a Message That Is Not Working
When employees do not respond, organizations often say:
“We need to communicate this again.”
Maybe.
Reinforcement matters. Consistency matters.
But first determine what you are reinforcing.
If employees do not Know, improve the clarity of the message.
If they do not Believe, examine the context, your credibility and whether leadership behavior matches leadership words.
If they do not Do, make expectations, ownership and next steps more specific.
Repeating an unclear message increases exposure.
It does not guarantee understanding.
Managers Link Leadership Strategy to Employee Action
Even an excellent executive message can lose clarity as it moves through an organization.
Managers play an especially important role because employees rely on them to translate enterprise decisions into team-level meaning.
Gallup's research finds that managers account for 70% of the variance in team-level employee engagement. Gallup also notes that managers directly influence whether employees know what leaders expect of them, along with other core elements of engagement. Gallup: How leaders can improve employee engagement and company culture
That does not mean managers determine 70% of whether employees understand a leadership message.
It does mean organizations should take the manager's role in creating clarity and reinforcing expectations seriously.
Forwarding the executive email is not enough.
Managers need to know:
the core message they cannot change;
what the message means for their team;
what employees need to do;
which questions they can answer;
which questions they need to escalate; and
when employees can expect additional information.
Prepare managers before the announcement whenever possible.
Do not let employees ask managers questions while the managers themselves are still trying to figure out what leadership meant.
How Do You Know Whether a Leadership Message Worked?
Do not confuse reach with effectiveness.
You can measure:
email opens;
intranet visits;
meeting attendance;
video views; and
the number of communications distributed.
Those numbers can tell you whether employees had an opportunity to receive your message.
They cannot tell you whether the message changed understanding or behavior.
Ask better questions:
Can employees explain the priority consistently?
Do managers keep hearing the same points of confusion across teams?
Are people making different decisions because of the message?
Are they taking the expected actions?
Where does the message change as it travels through the organization?
Your communication is not about checking the “sent” box.
It is about creating an outcome.
Awareness Is Only the Beginning
Know. Believe. Do. can help you:
organize your message;
diagnose why a message does not produce the response you expected; and
communicate more intentionally before a high-stakes conversation.
The harder part is communicating that way consistently when the stakes are high.
Under pressure, leaders may:
overexplain;
rush;
bury the point;
fill silence;
become defensive;
miss reactions from listeners; and
assume their title, expertise or good intentions will carry the message.
That is why communication improvement requires more than knowing what you should do.
You need:
to see how others actually experience you;
specific feedback;
deliberate practice;
accountability; and
consistent application Monday to Monday®—not just during the town hall, executive presentation or major announcement.
Turn Your Next Leadership Message Into Action
Before your next:
announcement;
organizational change;
strategy conversation; or
leadership meeting,
ask yourself:
What do my listeners need to Know?
What do they need to Believe?
What do they need to Do?
Then listen to how they respond.
Because the measure of influential communication is not how well you believe you communicated.
It is what your listeners understood—and what they do next.
Ready to Move Your Leaders From Communicating to Influencing Action?
If your leaders keep delivering messages but employees remain unclear about priorities, expectations or next steps, another set of talking points may not solve the problem.
Stacey Hanke Inc. works with executives, senior leaders and people leaders to:
identify how others actually experience their communication;
strengthen message content and delivery;
practice specific behaviors; and
create accountability for long-term improvement.
Explore Stacey Hanke Inc.'s leadership communication workshops to see how leaders develop the skills to communicate clearly, build credibility and influence action Monday to Monday®.
For an immediate communication skill you can begin strengthening today, learn how to communicate with greater brevity and impact.
