I grew up with a friend whose mum would never tell him what was going on until she had to. She seemed to think that parenting should operate on a need-to-know basis. In many ways she was a great mum – patient, fun, loving – but it drove my mate crazy that she would spring things on him at the last minute, or organise things behind his back. As he got older she’d ask him to do things around the house. If anything was unusual he tended to ask why he was doing it (‘Why are we moving the table out of the kitchen?’, ‘What do you need me to buy eggs for at this time of night?’, and the like), but she played her cards close to her chest. She was full of phrases like ‘What you don’t know won’t hurt you,’ or ‘Curiosity killed the cat’.

The result of this, over time, was that my friend never really felt like a fully paid up member of his own family. On the one hand it kind of amused him, but on another level he felt excluded. What’s more, he’d usually find out eventually what was going on, or why the kitchen table had been moved, and often he could see a much better way of doing it. But it was too late to suggest it by then.

You get the message. People want to feel involved and included. They work better when they understand what their efforts are supposed to achieve, and they can’t help you improve things if they have no idea what you’re trying to do. How can you get anyone on your side when they don’t know what your side is?

I’m sure you’re not as secretive as my friend’s mother was. She was partly a product of her generation, and it’s easy to exclude your kids when they’re small, and then forget to stop as they get older. You wouldn’t do the same thing with a friend or a colleague or the rest of your family. Nevertheless, it’s an easy trap to fall into, at least to some extent. Maybe it’s quicker to do it yourself, or you can’t see the need for everyone to know what’s happening, or you think if they don’t know about it they can’t interfere – or say no.

If you don’t share, however, other people don’t have that feeling of all being in it together. Even if they don’t need the information per se, they still need to be one of the group, and that means sharing information with them.

And not only information. If you’re all part of the team, all on the same side, you’ll need to share other things too. Knowledge, control, power, credit – sharing can be scary, but the risks of not sharing are higher.

Whether you’re organising a family anniversary, or running a high-powered sales team, or organising a local campaign, you need to involve people in order to motivate them. They want a piece of the action too. They want to know where they fit into the bigger picture. They want to know that if they work hard they’ll get a share in the credit. They want to feel they’re making a difference. All of these things are only possible if you give them a share in everything you can. That way, you’ll get a share of their hard work, goodwill and commitment in return.