As leaders rise through the ranks, they often find themselves increasingly surrounded solely by supporters who agree with everything they say and crave their approval. This insular echo chamber effect can lead to dangerously ill-informed decisions and stagnated growth if left unchecked. Here’s how to proactively ensure you have access to hard truths.
The Perils of Insular Leadership Devoid of Dissent
When executives and senior managers hear only positive feedback, validation, and endorsements of their perspectives, several risks emerge:
You become overconfident in your own ideas, strategies, and capabilities since no one questions your thinking or challenges your assumptions. Blind spots grow unchecked.
You lack access to diverse points of view that could profoundly broaden your worldview and leadership mindset. Information diversity fuels innovation.
You stop developing critical thinking skills and stop growing as a leader without candid critique stress testing your logic and mental models against reality. Intellectual muscles atrophy.
You begin making poorly informed, suboptimal decisions without the benefit of devil’s advocates who surface smart counter perspectives you need to hear but don’t know exist.
People on your team start withholding constructive dissent and feedback that could dramatically help you, the leadership team, and the entire organization out of fear of potential repercussions of honesty. Truth-tellers become an endangered species.
Leaders who surround themselves solely with supporters telling them what they want to hear quickly lose touch and perspective. Their growth stagnates. They sow the seeds of their own demise.
Proactive Tactics to Continuously Elicit Unfiltered Feedback and Input
Here are some intentional tactics and strategies to solicit unfiltered input and insight, even if difficult to hear:
Carefully examine your own reactions when someone questions or disagrees with you. Do you become defensive, irritable, or feel the urge to override them? Make sure you truly seek first to listen and deeply understand dissenting perspectives before reacting. Remain open to being wrong.
Explicitly reward contrarian thinking and constructive pushback from your team. Make it safe for people to civilly and thoughtfully challenge your assumptions without fear of negative repercussions. Invite dissenting views.
During meetings, proactively ask probing questions like “what are we missing here?” and “what are potential downsides or risks we haven’t fully considered?” to draw out objections and ensure all perspectives are aired. Disagreement shouldn’t feel threatening.
Occasionally poll team members privately to surface concerns, doubts, or ideas they may not be comfortable sharing publicly yet. Anonymous input often highlights blind spots.
Bring in external advisors, coaches, consultants, and subject matter experts with differentiated thinking and outsider perspectives into key meetings and decisions. They ask fresh questions and are unafraid to challenge groupthink.
Carefully and open-mindedly read anonymous employee engagement survey feedback. Look for patterns and recurring themes. Then publicly share key takeaways and actions to build trust in the process.
Watch for the clear warning signs of groupthink taking root such as lack of dissent, desire for harmony overriding realistic debate, and people self-censoring themselves from deviating from perceived consensus. Then actively encourage team members to take on the contrarian role.
Hearing critical feedback and accepting that your initial thinking may be flawed or incomplete is a sign of substantial strength and wisdom, not weakness. As leaders, we cannot grow and reach our potential without truths we may not like or want to hear. But we must hear them.
Who Will You Empower to Tell You the Hard Things You Need to Hear?
Surrounding yourself with emotionally intelligent team members armed with the courage and confidence to tactfully provide contrarian perspectives represents an incredible competitive advantage for any leader committed to continuous improvement. Allowing dissent helps ensure blind spots don’t devolve into pitfalls.
If you need guidance making it psychologically safe for people to constructively disagree and push back without fear at your organization, executive coaching provides external support perfectly tailored to your culture, leadership style and emotional intelligence blind spots. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you want to discuss how we could potentially collaborate. With the right team around you willing to speak hard truths, the sky is the limit on what you can achieve. But first you must show you can handle the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable.