What happens when a leader is wrong?
Throughout my career I noticed a certain type of leader who sucked all of the safety out of the room, who mistook our silence for agreement and who made decisions that nobody agreed with.
To those people, discussion and debate weren’t encouraged and when you tried to raise objections it was seen as dissent or disloyalty. The problem was, when that decision turned out to be the wrong one, it affected everyone.
L. David Marquet, a former US Navy submarine commander, put it simply: ‘What happens in a top-down culture when the leader is wrong? Everyone goes over the cliff.’
Top-down cultures don't just suppress disagreement, they punish it as well. So, people learn to nod, offer tacit agreement, then quietly sit back and watch the disaster unfold.
In my experience, the most dangerous leaders aren't the ones who make bad decisions. They are the ones who build a culture where nobody feels safe enough to say so.
