Who Can Tell the Leader They're Wrong?
If the answer is “nobody,” the wrong person is in charge.
There is a simple question that can tell you a great deal about the quality of a leader:
Not who can privately disagree with them. Not who can carefully suggest that there might possibly be another way of looking at something. Not who can tell them afterward, when the consequences are already apparent.
No.
It's, who can sit across the table from them, look them in the eye, and say, “I think you're wrong, and here's why”?
If the answer is nobody, you've learned something critically important about the person sitting at the head of that table.
The best leaders surround themselves with people who know things they don't, see things they don't, and are willing to tell them things they don't want to hear—and then make it safe for them to do so.
That may be one of the simplest and most reliable tests of leadership.
The Higher You Go, the Less You Can Know
Leadership presents an interesting paradox. As a person's responsibility increases, the range of things for which that person is responsible also increases. Eventually, no matter how intelligent, experienced, or well educated the leader may be, the scope of the job exceeds the scope of any one human mind.
A small-business owner can understand much of what happens inside his company. The leader of a multinational corporation cannot personally understand every technology, market, regulation, financial instrument, manufacturing process, and culture in which the company operates.
The same is true of a university president, a military commander, a governor, or the leader of a nation. The higher the position, the greater the dependence upon the knowledge of other people. That means one of the most important abilities of a leader isn't knowing the answer. It's knowing how to get the answer.
And that requires surrounding yourself with people whose knowledge, experience, judgment, and perspective fill the inevitable gaps in your own. A wise leader doesn't find that threatening. They find it useful.
Hire People Who Are Better Than You
There is an old piece of management advice that says you should hire people smarter than yourself. That's a good beginning, but it isn't enough.
A good leader will deliberately seek people who are better than they are at the things they've been chosen to do. If the leader knows more about finance than the chief financial officer, more about engineering than the chief engineer, more about law than the attorneys, and more about operations than the people running operations, either they've hired very poorly or they've dramatically overestimated their ability.
The purpose of assembling talented people isn't to confirm the leader's intelligence. It is to compensate for their limitations in pursuit of the best possible outcomes for the greater good.
And those limitations aren't confined to knowledge. Every human being has blind spots. We have biases, assumptions, habits, experiences, loyalties, fears and preferences that affect what we see and how we interpret it. The people around a good leader don't merely know things they don't know.
They see things they don't see.
That is why diversity of thought matters. Ten brilliant people who approach every problem in essentially the same way can share the same blind spot. The objective shouldn't be agreement. It should be perspective.
Disagreement Is Information
This is where leadership becomes psychologically difficult. It's pleasant to be agreed with. It's considerably less pleasant to hear someone explain, especially in front of other people, why your cherished idea may actually be terrible.
Power makes this problem worse. As people acquire authority, the behavior of those around them changes. Employees become more cautious. Advisers learn the leader's preferences. Objections become softer and bad news gets polished on its journey upward.
Nobody has to issue an order saying, “Don't disagree with me” because people learn. If a leader rolls their eyes when challenged or humiliates someone who brings bad news, excludes a dissenter from the next meeting or promotes only those who enthusiastically support their ideas, everyone notices.
Soon the leader doesn't need to silence disagreement. The system does it for them. And eventually something remarkable happens. Everyone agrees with the leader. Not because the leader is always right, but because everyone who remains in the room has learned what happens to people who say otherwise.
The result: the leader has created manufactured certainty.
Making It Safe to Say “You're Wrong”
Tolerating disagreement isn't enough. A good leader must actively make disagreement safe. That doesn't mean every opinion deserves equal weight nor does it mean endless debate. It doesn't mean the leader abdicates responsibility or governs by committee because, ultimately, someone has to decide.
The leader may listen carefully to ten highly qualified people, hear eight of them recommend one course of action, and choose another. There may be considerations those specialists cannot see because their own expertise gives them a narrower view of the larger system. That's judgment.
The distinction is crucial:
Good leadership does not require agreeing with advisers. It requires ensuring that disagreement can reach the leader intact.
The people in the room must know that challenging an idea will not cost them their careers, their access, their influence, or their dignity. A leader who genuinely wants that kind of candor doesn't merely announce an “open-door policy.” They demonstrate it.
They ask, “What am I missing?” They ask the quiet person at the table what they think. They invite someone to argue against the favored proposal and they reward the person who identifies a serious problem before it becomes a catastrophe.
And occasionally they say perhaps the most powerful words a leader can say:
“You're right. I was wrong.”
Those words don't diminish authority. They justify it.
Look at the Room
This gives us an unusual way of evaluating leadership. Instead of looking only at the leader, look at the people surrounding the leader.
Who gets invited into the room? Are they accomplished people with independent judgment, or people primarily distinguished by their loyalty? Do they have different experiences and perspectives? Do talented people stay? Do dissenters disappear? Does the inner circle become intellectually broader over time—or narrower?
Most importantly, watch what happens when someone disagrees.
A room full of intelligent people vigorously challenging the person at the head of the table may appear disorderly. It may actually be evidence of extraordinarily healthy leadership. A room in which everyone enthusiastically agrees with the leader may appear unified and efficient. That's the room to worry about.
Leadership isn't demonstrated by having the final word. The position already gives the leader that. Leadership is demonstrated by what happens before the final word. The strongest leader in the room may be the one who has deliberately surrounded themself with people capable of changing the leader's mind.
So when evaluating a president, a chief executive, a commander, a manager—or anyone entrusted with consequential decisions—don't ask only whether the leader appears confident, decisive, intelligent, or strong. Ask something much simpler.
Who can tell the leader they're wrong?
And then watch carefully what happens to the person who does.
If the answer is nobody, the wrong person is in charge.
— Steffen Patrick