I had concerns, but the room moved on.
No safe way to disagree
Disagreeing is possible but costly. It slows the meeting, challenges someone senior, or has gone badly before. So people keep their concerns to themselves, or hint instead of saying them plainly.
- Agreement comes quickly, with no visible disagreement.
- Concerns come out after the meeting, in private.
- Junior people raise problems as hints or questions, not plain statements.
Who: three people who were in a recent decision, asked one at a time. Ask: "Did you have a concern you didn't raise? What stopped you?" Count: how many say yes, and whether the reason is fear, a sense it wouldn't matter, or rank. You're probably looking at this pattern if several held back concerns. Probably not if people raised their concerns and were heard. If not, compare it with The fact only one person holds never comes up.
Knowledge that never left someone's head. In that pattern, nothing asked for it. In this pattern, speaking up felt too costly.
Give people three phrases to keep ready. I'm curious. I'm concerned. I need us to stop.
Agree one rule out loud: raise a concern, get no real answer, raise it again. Still nothing, you are expected to stop the work.
Ask the most senior person to sit one review out. Have someone summarize the feedback for them after.
In interviews with 40 employees, 85% said they had felt unable to raise an important issue with a supervisor, most often concerns about management and direction (Milliken, Morrison, and Hewlin, 2003). Emerging: a small interview study. Unspoken rules like "bring a solution with every problem" hold people back even where leaders invite them to speak (Detert and Edmondson, 2011). Emerging.