Most of us have probably been in this meeting.
Someone presents an idea. There is some discussion, a few questions are asked, and eventually the person leading the meeting looks around the room and asks if anyone has any concerns. Nobody does.
The meeting ends, people walk out, and suddenly everyone has concerns.
It is easy to look at that behaviour and conclude that people should simply have the courage to speak their minds. Sometimes that criticism is probably deserved. But I think there is a more interesting question for anyone leading a business or a team.
Why didn’t they?
Economist Timur Kuran has written extensively about something called preference falsification. Put simply, people don’t always publicly express what they privately believe. We adjust what we say based on the social consequences of saying it.
That sounds like dishonesty, but it can also be perfectly rational behaviour.
Most people become quite good at reading a room. We learn which opinions are welcomed, which ones create friction, and which disagreements simply aren’t worth having. The dynamic can exist in a ten-person business just as easily as it can in a corporate boardroom.
Over time, every organization teaches its people what honesty costs.
If challenging an idea produces curiosity and discussion, people learn that disagreement is useful. If it produces defensiveness, embarrassment, exclusion, or a reputation for being difficult, people learn something else. Eventually nobody needs to tell them to stay quiet. They do the calculation themselves.
That creates an interesting problem for leadership because leaders depend on observable information to understand their organizations. We watch how people react, listen to what managers tell us, look at employee feedback and performance reports, and pay attention to what happens in meetings. Then we make decisions based on what we see.
But what happens when our position changes what we are able to see?
Imagine ten people sitting around a table discussing a proposal. Seven privately think it is a bad idea, but nobody wants to be the first person to challenge it. One person stays quiet because everyone else appears supportive. Someone across the table notices that person’s silence and makes exactly the same calculation.
Suddenly seven people can privately disagree while each believes they may be one of the only people who does. From the leader’s chair, the observable evidence is compelling. Nobody objected.
The problem is that silence and agreement can look remarkably similar.
I think this becomes even more important as someone gains authority. A colleague may tell you directly that your idea won’t work. An employee might say they have “some concerns.” By the time the same information travels several levels upward, a serious operational problem can arrive in an executive meeting as an “implementation challenge.”
Power doesn’t necessarily stop information from moving. It can change the information while it moves.
That creates a strange paradox of leadership. The more senior you become, the more consequential your decisions are and therefore the more accurate your information needs to be. Yet the authority attached to your position can make people increasingly careful about what they tell you.
This is why I am skeptical when organizations describe themselves as having an “open culture.” An open-door policy tells me very little. I am much more interested in what happens when someone walks through that door and tells the person on the other side something they don’t want to hear.
Does the disagreement become a discussion about the employee’s attitude or commitment? Does nothing happen until people eventually conclude that raising concerns is pointless? Or can someone disagree, be heard, lose the argument, and walk away without having damaged the relationship?
That last part matters.
Creating space for disagreement does not mean leadership becomes a democracy. Employees can be wrong. Teams can resist necessary change. Leaders still have to make difficult decisions, including decisions people dislike.
The objective isn’t agreement. It is access to unfiltered information.
Because when something eventually goes badly, leaders often ask the same question: “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
Sometimes nobody did. But before asking why people stayed silent, it may be worth asking what happened the last time someone spoke.
Organizations are constantly teaching people which behaviours are rewarded, tolerated and punished. Eventually those lessons become culture, whether leadership intended them or not.
So a room full of people nodding along should not always make a leader comfortable. Agreement is useful when it is genuine. When it isn’t, the appearance of consensus can actually deprive leadership of the information it needs most.
A leader’s job isn’t to create a room where everyone agrees. It’s to create a room where disagreement is cheap enough that the truth can afford to show up.
I am a Canadian insurance and investment professional and the President and Chief Executive Officer of Chazz Financial Inc. and Chazz Capital Assets. I write about leadership, markets, insurance, investing, and decision making, with a focus on how structure and incentives shape outcomes.
I hold a business degree and I am a Fellow of the Canadian Securities Institute (FCSI®), a Chartered Life Underwriter (CLU®), a Chartered Financial Planner®, a Certified Health Specialist and a Mutual Fund Investment Representative.
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