“Show Working”

Whilst helping my daughter with her maths homework this week, I heard myself say,

“Show working”

I immediately kicked myself. First, because it was clear I was just repeating something I’d been told as a child — and there’s nothing more annoying than that. Second, because only now, years later, do I fully understand why it might matter.

I can’t remember exactly when it started (upper primary, I think), but somewhere along the line teachers began insisting that I show my working. It was in maths. I couldn’t be further from being a prodigy, yet I had a habit of doing the sums in my head and then scribbling down random answers.

I wasn’t a talkative child, so I never asked why. But I do remember hearing one of my maths teachers, Mr Cox (a loquacious, retired Royal Navy man), explain his insistence to our class:

“Because even if you don’t get the right answer, I’ll be able to see how you came to it. And it might be that I can give you some points – rather than none.”

OK, that made sense to me — a few marks rescued from the wreckage of a wrong answer. But over the years I’ve realised there was greater wisdom in that explanation. The working out matters. It lets others follow your reasoning, see your assumptions, and notice where you might have misstepped.

How often have you said to yourself, I might not agree with your decision, but I can see that you’ve thought it through? It happens to me all the time, and I’ve learned that, more often than not, I value the thinking (right or wrong) as much as any final answer. I want to hear what the trade-offs were, what options were considered (even if they were ultimately rejected). I don’t like being left in the dark. When we are only presented with the solution, without the thinking behind it, trust erodes. And so, show working is a function of effective leadership.

As I’ve moved through different organisations, from student to leader, I’ve become increasingly aware of the need to show working.

In the Army, through the manoeuvrist approach and the philosophy of mission command, I learned that leaders must make their reasoning visible (e.g., “I want you to do X in order to achieve Y and Z.”). You can’t just issue orders from on high; you need to share the thinking, the intent, and the why behind the what. If you don’t, people will not follow you, and to be blunt, bad things usually happen.

It holds in schools, too. Every time an organisation takes a moment to explain itself (even if others don’t agree with the final call), the act of showing your working changes the conversation. People may still challenge you, but they are far more likely to respect the process and be more tolerant of the decision because they can see that you’ve thought it through.

I’ve seen this play out in our own school community when our College took the bold decision to phase out GCSEs and replace them with a new programme of courses that we felt would better meet our community’s needs. We shared the rationale (in words, coffee mornings, meetings, and webinars) that we wanted a programme more mission-aligned, more challenging, and more authentic for our students, and we invested significant time to make the case for change. When we eventually made the change, not everyone was initially convinced, but our community came with us. They trusted us.

Or even this week, when we wrote to our Grade 11 students to explain why we want to conduct the next IB Maths unit assessment formally in the exam hall. With AI tools and easy content-sharing, we are seeing issues of collusion when tests are spread across different days. Honest students worry they’re at a disadvantage, and both individual and collective well-being are being impacted (across staff and students). The best way forward, we think, is to trial a simultaneous assessment that helps protect fairness, preserve integrity, and support wellbeing by containing the stress to a single block. We don’t like creating additional high-stakes moments, but the rationale seems to have been accepted.

And this same principle applies beyond schools. For example, Singapore’s 2019 decision to abolish secondary school streaming is a more strategic case in point. For decades, students were divided into Express, Normal (Academic), and Normal (Technical) tracks. When the change was announced, parents and educators were anxious: Would standards fall? Would weaker students be left behind?

What gave the reform resilience was not only the decision itself but the way the Ministry of Education showed its working. In Parliament, Education Minister Ong Ye Kung pointed to pilot data from schools already using subject-based banding, where Normal (Academic) students had successfully taken subjects at Express level. He spoke candidly about the stigma of labels — how being called “Normal” could shape a student’s mindset and limit ambition. And he emphasised that subject-based banding would preserve academic rigour while giving students the flexibility to take subjects at different levels according to their strengths. Transparency didn’t erase all concerns, but it shifted the tone. The reform gained legitimacy because the rationale was visible, and people could follow the logic behind the change.

In maths, showing your working will often earn you partial credit, even if the final answer is wrong.

In leadership, the same principle holds true: showing your working builds partial trust, even when the decision might be contested or misunderstood.

Transparency doesn’t guarantee agreement, but it almost always increases understanding.

And understanding is the foundation of trust.

The paradox is this: the more a leader is prepared to show working, the less they need to defend their answers. People don’t expect perfection. They do expect honesty, clarity, and the chance to understand.

So…show working.