#448 Do You Have a Right to Get an Answer? - article written by Niels Brabandt
Do You Have a Right to Get an Answer?
By Niels Brabandt
At the end of each business year, inboxes overflow, calendars fill up, and frustration rises. Messages go unanswered. Meetings conclude with vague promises: “I’ll get back to you.”
Weeks later, silence.
This recurring experience raises an important question for modern leadership:
Do people have a right to get an answer?
The Two Extremes of (Non-)Communication
In today’s business landscape, and especially on social media platforms such as LinkedIn or Instagram—leadership advice often lives at the extremes.
One side insists: “Leaders must answer everything. That’s their job.”
The other says: “Leaders are busy professionals; they don’t owe anyone an answer.”
Both are wrong.
Leadership is not about blind responsiveness or arrogant detachment. True leadership is about contextual communication—understanding when, why, and how to respond.
Complicated vs. Complex: Knowing the Difference
To understand why some questions don’t get immediate answers, leaders must distinguish between complicated and complex matters.
Complicated means something can be understood with enough effort.
Example: explaining how a combustion engine works. It’s intricate, but solvable through expertise and time.Complex, however, means multiple interconnected factors beyond direct control.
Example: shifting an entire industry toward hydrogen technology. It involves politics, infrastructure, regulation, and markets, issues that require influence, not just intellect.
Demanding instant clarity on a complex issue shows a lack of professional realism. Leaders must communicate this difference transparently. Followers, in turn, must understand that time, analysis, and coordination are legitimate parts of a responsible answer.
Importance and Urgency: The Hidden Variables
Every unanswered question must be assessed not only for complexity but also for importance and urgency.
A proposal to add plants to the office might be important for well-being, but not urgent when the company is mid-merger or facing compliance deadlines.
Prioritisation is not indifference.
It is a leadership decision, one that requires explanation. When employees understand why a matter ranks lower, frustration decreases, and trust increases.
Establishing Ground Rules for Answers
Public institutions have codified response mechanisms. Parliaments must answer inquiries within defined timeframes. Freedom of Information Acts require public offices to reply.
In business, such mechanisms rarely exist.
That absence creates confusion and resentment.
Organisations would benefit from communication protocols, such as:
Acknowledging every request within 48 hours.
Providing a substantive response or status update within 10 business days.
Explaining delays clearly and respectfully.
These practices are not bureaucracy, they are leadership discipline.
They show respect for the person asking, the process itself, and the organisation’s credibility.
Situative Leadership: A Skill, Not a Buzzword
Being an effective leader requires mastering situative leadership, the ability to adapt one’s behaviour to the context, the task, and the individual.
Leaders must decide when to engage, when to delegate, and when to defer—and communicate each decision transparently.
A simple “I’ll get back to you” without follow-up signals poor leadership.
Leaders who combine responsiveness with clarity earn both trust and authority.
The Role of Self-Reflection
Sometimes, the organisation is the problem.
Sometimes, the leader is.
And sometimes, the problem is you.
If every meeting sees the same person offering dozens of unprioritised ideas, expecting others to execute them, frustration will follow. Leadership communication depends on self-awareness on all sides.
Before escalating a non-response, ask:
“Is this a hill worth dying on?”
If the issue is truly strategic or ethically essential, escalation makes sense.
If not, patience and proportion are virtues.
Communication Is Not a Courtesy — It is a Core Leadership Duty
There is no formal “right to get an answer” in business.
But there is a moral and organisational obligation to communicate professionally.
Great leaders do not hide behind silence. They use dialogue to build trust, manage expectations, and shape culture. When employees know that questions will be heard—even if not immediately resolved—they remain engaged and loyal.
In the end, leadership without communication is not leadership at all.
It is silence with a title.
About the Author
Niels Brabandt is the Founder and Owner of NB Networks with offices in Zurich and London. He is a globally recognised expert on Sustainable Leadership, providing Professional Training, Speaking, Coaching, Consulting, Mentoring, and Project & Interim Management.
More at www.NB-Networks.biz.
Niels Brabandt
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More on this topic in this week's videocast and podcast with Niels Brabandt: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify
For the videocast’s and podcast’s transcript, read below this article.
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Niels Brabandt is an expert in sustainable leadership with more than 20 years of experience in practice and science.
Niels Brabandt: Professional Training, Speaking, Coaching, Consulting, Mentoring, Project & Interim Management. Event host, MC, moderator.
Podcast Transcript
Niels Brabandt
It's the end of the year, you have many meetings, get together with people, you're sending out messages, and sometimes you get no response. Either you get no response where you say, okay, said something very important, no one actually took care, or you send an email, you say, no answer. The question is, do you have a right to get an answer? And that's our topic of today because many people texted me about how frustrated they are when their leaders do not answer whatever they ask them for. And that is an important point because as soon as you don't get an answer, this is of frustrating for the moment. The question is, do you really have a right to get an answer when it comes to leadership work? So when we talk about the right to get an answer, it's always very important that usually the very start of it is an extreme answer to the one or to the other side.
You find especially on platforms such as Instagram, on LinkedIn, where people with absolutely no leadership credentials love to talk about leadership. Usually they say one of the two. They either say, yeah, you look, people must answer. They, they, they just have to. Leaders have to answer absolutely anything. It's all about you have to answer anything. It's your job, it's an obligation, you must give an answer.
That's the one extreme. And of course in that extreme, that's wrong. However, the other extreme usually is, yeah, you look, you are very busy, you're a very busy professional, so things just can slip through and they absolutely have no right that you answer. You can say something or maybe you just delete the email. It's also, okay, you have all right to do that, so you don't have to answer. And that is of course another problematic answer because both of these extremes do not lead to any kind of suitable sustainable solution where people are actually happy with what is happening right there. So now we have to talk about do you actually have a right to answer?
And of course we know situations where this happens. The typical solution is, the first typical situation is you write an email, you text an email, send someone an email, no answer. When you have an answer, and you probably have an answer in mind, you even suggested something, however, the other side just didn't respond to that. Not at all. Or you're sitting in a meeting and sud in a discussion, you say, hey, we could do xyz. And the answer is, yeah, good point, I get back to you and you immediately wonder when and where will you tell me and on which channel will you communicate? But also you might think, yeah, one of these answers would Usually mean there's nothing happening.
So when you are in meetings, you have discussions, often people are frustrated that their leaders sit there and they say something like, yeah, I get back to you. And then a couple of things on top of that, yeah, I get back to you. I really appreciate, really appreciate the idea. I mean, I see you and I hear you. I see you and I hear you. We will check. And I get back to you on that.
And nothing happens afterwards. That, of course, is not great. However, it is simply more complicated and also more complex than just saying it's either the one or the other. And now we have to talk about how do these things really work. The first aspect that we have here is you need to see when you talk about an issue and is the issue complicated? And we need to define that because many people mix it up with something else. So let's say, for example, you want to talk about combustion engines.
You want to have a combustion engine explained. And that's complicated, no question about that. Complicated means you really have to put effort into that to understand what's going on there, however complicated. And that's the good news here. Complicated can be explained. It always can be. It takes time.
It takes effort from both sides, probably from your side when you're working on your own, even more if you have external help. It probably takes a bit less time. But complicated means it can be understood in one way or the other as long as you put in the effort. However, if I now say, let's say you are a leader, we talk about combustion engines and I talk to you and say, look, I have an idea, you know, combustion engines and you know that we have E mobility. I think we should go, I really think we should. We, we should just switch the whole thing to hydrogen, Hydrogen power. And please also go to politics and tell them that they need to promote this.
They need to say, we move away from, from E mobility, we, we all go to hydro. That must be the flavour of the month and the year, the decade that the government does that. Are you able to do that? And then probably people who are qualified say, that's rather complex because it is. Complicated means you can read yourself into it and sooner or later you're going to understand that math is complicated. And when you really put in the effort, you, sooner or later you might not still like it, but you will sooner or later say, yeah, I think I got that. See the point in it maybe when it comes to math, and I can tell you math is important to understand complicated things, however complicated you can reach stuff into complex means there is something out there.
Because often when it comes, for example to politics and how to drive cars in the future people will say, look, there are politics, there are different parties, there are elections coming up, we don't know who's the next party, we have certain polls and tendencies, however, we don't really know who's the next one. So we really have to see and we have to balance out where do we position ourselves. So it's rather complex. And that's exactly the point here. As soon as you are sitting there and in a complex situation where you know that people have to talk to other levels, other departments, go up the hierarchy, go up to the board, present there, get commitment, get management commitment, what not else. And when you then ask for a quick yes, no, you are the unreasonable one. Complex means something is out there which is beyond your control, but which is highly relevant.
For example, when it comes to how to power cars in the future, the support of the government of certain technologies and absolutely crucial because they will set the sail or not set the sail in a certain direction or the other in your favour or against your favour. And that is something you need to know. And in addition to that of the issue being either complicated or complex, on top of that you have to see is it important and is it urgent.
I just give you an example. I sat in a meeting and there was one person very passionately, very passionately speaking about how important it will be to have more plants in the office. And we all agree that this is is a point, especially when you work in a financial industry where probably some of the offices are, let's say a bit sparse depending on where you work. And it there is scientific evidence how good plants are for the atmosphere or you want to have a dog in the office or whatever else. However, when people now say, look, we just have a.
We just have. Have a merger going on, we, we are just talking with xyz, but integrating their company into ours, which is now ongoing, we really can talk about that later because we are a 42 storeys high building and just putting plants in there is just not the whole story. You have to talk to safety and security. What about the fire hazard risk, who's taking care of the plants? What about any kind of insects that might come in? What about any kind of allergies that might be there? There are lots of things to discuss.
Probably not immediately complex, but complicated. Also when you suddenly talk about what about the allergies, okay, we just make a list. So you want to have your medical records employer and suddenly it gets complex because that's. That's also a personal aspect of work. People, sorry, people probably will say, I don't want my personal records being somewhere with my employer in an Excel file, which is also not GDPR compliant, by the way. So it might be that you have a complicated and complex issue and something else is more important, is more urgent, or both. And then it takes time.
And the question now is, how do we implement what we just talked about in your organisation without getting overly frustrated? And number one is ground rules. And here, by the way, public office is usually set up better than free enterprise. When you, for example, want to have an answer from public office, when you're in politics and the other party asks you a question, you have to answer. When the Prime Minister in the UK has Prime Minister's question time and someone asks a question, the Prime Minister can't stand there and say, yeah, I'm not going to answer that, I'm not going to say anything on that one.
No, thank you. I just pass, thank you. No fair question. Thank you. No, no, thank you. That's just not possible.
There are ground rules also. There's a Freedom of Information act where you can ask certain public offices and public entities about certain aspects and they must give you an answer. However, in free enterprise, we often do not have these rules, or very, very few of them in place, and that sometimes becomes the issue. So you need to be aware that this needs to be taken care of. And of course, I don't like that immediately a new piece of regulation is put up. However, having some regulation in there, where you say, when someone puts up a reasonable aspect, when they have, for example, a business case, when they put everything in writing and when they hand it to you as a leader, an answer within 48 hours as the first reaction and 10 days as the next reaction, is reasonable and should be what we can expect from our leaders. Because people need to know, when do I deal with something which is complicated, complex, and how do I handle importance and urgency?
That is just situative leadership. Some people say situational leadership. Situative leadership. Situational leadership is a. Is a skill that you must have learned. If you didn't learn it, it is time to learn it right now. And by the way, no one should be a leader without knowing about this theory and how to apply it in practise.
So very important is take care of this, because anything else will fall apart when you simply tell people, yeah, I get back to you. And you never do because you thought, yeah, my boss did that. With me and I think this is just how things go. No, this is not how things go. This is just bad leadership. And in addition to that, and now we come to a very important point. Sometimes the organisation might be the issue, sometimes your boss might be the issue, and sometimes the issue is you. You. Because there are people who with every meeting they always pretend they're very engaged, but what they really are is they sit there and they actually think.
I think in this organisation many people should change. I mean, not me obviously. So I always have these 48 ideas with having zero skin in the game and of course I have zero task out of them. I just throw them on the table and I expect people then to change it and probably I get a bit of bonus for that. And when they don't do it, I'm going to pretend I'm super offended by it because I bring ideas and you just don't listen to me. When you become that person lacking that self reflection, then the issue is with you. The last aspect here is self reflection. Think of.
And that is something which I learned from a great friend who lives in central London who gave me that amazing phrase, is it a hill worth dying on? Is your idea so important that you say, I'm going to escalate this non answered email, I'm going to escalate my non answered question, I'm going to escalate my non answered meeting request, I'm going to escalate this to the next level. Is it that important? If so, go for it. And then you probably will be a very engaged employee, a very successful manager and leader in the future when you pick the right battle. However, if you pick every battle because you think everything's important and you think you don't care about complicated, they need to master that you don't care about complex. It's their job to deal with that very quickly.
Everything you say is important, everything you say is urgent. That's a clear lack of self reflection. So be sure that you have the self reflection place because only with that self reflection you will be able to deliver on the promise that people expect from you. And this promise is simply reasonable picks in reasonable moments, sorted in the categories complicated, complex, in addition to impact, of course, impact, but also important and urgency. And when they see that you understand all of that and then you make a request, then they will consider this reasonable and everything will get better from here. When you do it exactly the way we just discussed and I wish you all the best implementing that in your organisation and your personal work life and when you now say, I think I have about 48 aspects to discuss here, let's go for it. So feel free to of course first, when you listen to me or you watch me on YouTube right now, feel free to leave a like here, subscribe to my channel.
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