Your Team Isn't Aligned. They're Just Too Scared to Speak Up
By Derek Neighbors on October 31, 2025
The courage to speak truth when everyone else performs agreement isn’t dramatic. It’s the everyday andreia that separates teams who execute excellence from those who collectively choose failure.
The Unanimous Vote
The meeting ended exactly as they always do.
The senior leadership team had just approved a strategic initiative that would consume six months and significant resources. When the CEO asked for objections, silence. When he asked for concerns, more silence. When he declared “we’re aligned,” everyone nodded.
Unanimous buy-in. Perfect consensus. Ready to execute.
Except here’s what actually happened in the hallways afterward: Five different leaders pulled me aside separately. Each one expressed serious doubts about the initiative. Each one thought it was fundamentally flawed. Each one believed it would fail.
And each one thought they were the only person in that room with concerns.
They had just collectively agreed to pursue a strategy that not a single individual actually wanted. Welcome to the Abilene Paradox.
The Myth We Tell Ourselves
We believe that when teams nod along in meetings, they’re aligned. That silence means agreement. That if no one objects, everyone must be on board. We celebrate “unanimous buy-in” as proof of strong leadership and cohesive teams.
It seems logical. People want to avoid unnecessary conflict. If everyone else seems to agree, you probably just don’t see what they see. Better to stay quiet than to be the difficult one, the negative voice, the person who slows things down.
Leadership loves this myth. “Everyone agreed in the meeting” becomes code for “no one had the courage to disagree with me.” “The team is aligned on the direction” actually means “the team is aligned on not being the person who creates tension.”
But here’s the reality: That silence isn’t consensus. It’s fear dressed up as professionalism.
The Reality of False Consensus
In 1974, management professor Jerry Harvey wrote about a sweltering day in Texas when his family decided to drive 100+ miles to Abilene for dinner. The trip was miserable. Hot, uncomfortable, the food mediocre. Afterward, his mother-in-law mentioned she would’ve preferred to stay home. His father-in-law agreed. His wife agreed. Harvey himself had never wanted to go.
Each person only agreed because they thought everyone else wanted it. The entire family had a miserable evening doing something not a single member actually wanted to do.
This same pattern plays out in organizations constantly:
The tech company choosing a technology stack no engineer actually believes in. Each one assuming the others see something they don’t.
The leadership team agreeing to unrealistic goals everyone privately knows are impossible. Each leader performing confidence while harboring doubt.
The marketing campaign approved despite everyone having better ideas. Each person staying silent because “marketing seemed enthusiastic about it.”
The process changes that make work harder for everyone. Implemented because no one spoke up when there was still time to stop it.
The Hidden Cost
When teams operate on false consensus, the damage runs deeper than failed initiatives.
Resources get wasted. You spend six months executing a plan no one believed in. Money, time, energy all poured into something everyone privately knew wouldn’t work.
Trust erodes. When the initiative fails, people don’t just lose faith in the idea. They lose faith in each other. “Why didn’t anyone speak up?” becomes the unspoken question that poisons future collaboration.
Resentment festers. That unexpressed disagreement doesn’t disappear. It goes underground, emerging as passive resistance, cynicism, and disengagement.
Better ideas die in silence. Somewhere in that quiet room, someone had a genuinely good alternative. It never got airtime because speaking up felt risky.
People stop trying. After enough rounds of performing agreement while privately disagreeing, team members learn their voice doesn’t matter. They stop offering insights. They stop caring about outcomes. They become professionally present but intellectually absent.
The Greeks had concepts for what we lose in this pattern:
Andreia (courage) means more than facing physical danger. It’s the everyday courage to speak truth when speaking feels risky. To say “I disagree” when everyone else is nodding.
Phronesis (practical wisdom) requires honest assessment of reality. You can’t develop judgment when you’re pretending to agree with things you don’t believe.
Arete (excellence) becomes impossible. You can’t pursue excellence while building your decisions on a foundation of unexpressed doubt.
Eudaimonia (human flourishing) requires authenticity. Neither individuals nor teams can flourish when everyone’s performing a role rather than contributing truth.
What Actually Works
Breaking the Abilene pattern isn’t about creating conflict for its own sake. It’s about creating conditions where truth-telling is safer than silence.
Lead with Your Own Doubts
Leaders set the permission structure for dissent. If you want honest feedback, you have to model uncertainty first.
Try this in your next meeting: “I’m not sure this is right. What am I missing?” Show your team that changing your mind publicly doesn’t end careers. Demonstrate that you value being corrected more than being right.
Every time you reward someone for speaking up, even when they’re wrong, you make it marginally safer for the next person to voice concern.
Name the Pattern
Sometimes the most powerful intervention is simply calling out what’s happening.
When you sense false consensus, say it: “I’m hearing a lot of agreement. Is this genuine, or are we doing the Abilene thing right now? Because I need to know what you’re not saying.”
Give the pattern a name. Make it discussable. Create explicit permission to acknowledge when the group is performing alignment rather than actually aligned.
Make Dissent Safer Than Silence
Most organizations have this backward. Speaking up feels risky. Staying quiet feels safe. This guarantees bad decisions.
Flip it. Make silence the career-limiting move. When initiatives fail, ask publicly: “Who knew this wouldn’t work and didn’t speak up?” Not to punish, but to surface the cost of false consensus.
Celebrate the person who spoke up, even if they were wrong. Make heroes out of productive dissent. Track decisions versus outcomes, and make visible who saved projects by voicing concerns early.
Practice the Andreia Test
Before any major decision, ask yourself three questions:
“What am I not saying that needs to be said?”
“If I’m wrong about my concerns, what happens? If I’m right and stay silent, what’s the cost?”
“What would I need to feel safe speaking this truth?”
The Greeks understood that andreia isn’t absence of fear. It’s action despite fear. It’s choosing truth over comfort. It’s recognizing that speaking up might be awkward, but staying silent guarantees regret.
Build the Muscle
Truth-telling is a skill that requires practice. Start with low-stakes disagreements. Use questions instead of declarations: “Have we considered what happens if X?” Find allies. One other person who shares your concern makes speaking up exponentially easier.
Organizations can accelerate this by making “speaking up” a performance criterion. Measure and reward truth-telling. Post-mortem failed initiatives to surface who knew better and stayed silent. Fire people for compliance, not dissent. Make it crystal clear that comfortable agreement isn’t what you value.
The Hard Truth About Power
Here’s what most leadership advice won’t tell you: when silence becomes self-preservation, no amount of “psychological safety” workshops fixes it.
If you’re the leader complaining about team silence while punishing dissent, you’re not dealing with a culture problem. You are the culture problem.
People don’t stay silent because they lack courage. They stay silent because they’ve watched what happens to people who speak up. They’ve seen the subtle retaliation. The delayed promotion. The sudden “misalignment” with company values. The being frozen out of key meetings.
Leaders who genuinely want truth-telling must make the first move. Not with words. With sacrifice. Publicly change your mind when challenged. Visibly reward the person who made you uncomfortable. Admit when you were wrong and someone else was right.
Until power makes itself vulnerable first, asking for honesty from the powerless is just asking them to take risks you won’t.
The Test
Want to know if your team is aligned or just performing agreement?
Ask yourself:
When was the last time someone changed the leader’s mind in a meeting?
How often do decisions get implemented exactly as first proposed versus getting refined through genuine debate?
Do people speak differently in hallways than they do in conference rooms?
When’s the last time a “unanimous” decision got reversed because someone found the courage to speak up?
If you can’t answer these questions with evidence of real dissent, you don’t have alignment. You have performative agreement where everyone plays their role while privately knowing better.
Final Thoughts
Somewhere in your organization right now, a team is driving to Abilene.
Everyone in that room is nodding along to a decision they privately oppose. Each person thinks they’re the only one with doubts. Each one is staying silent because speaking up feels riskier than going along. And the collective result will be something nobody actually wanted.
The only thing that stops this trip to misery is one person with enough andreia to say, “Wait. Do we actually want to do this?”
But here’s the truth nobody wants to say: andreia isn’t evenly distributed in organizations. The burden to break silence lies heavier on those with positional power.
If you’re the leader, your courage sets the limits of your team’s truth. Your willingness to be wrong determines how right your team can be. Your comfort with being challenged creates the ceiling for how much challenge your organization can handle.
The meeting where everyone agrees immediately isn’t a sign of great leadership. It’s a sign that no one felt safe disagreeing. And if you’re the most powerful person in that room, that’s on you.
The question isn’t whether your team is aligned. The question is whether you’ve made it safe enough for them to admit when they’re not.
Ready to build teams where truth-telling matters more than comfortable agreement? MasteryLab provides the frameworks and community for leaders who value honest feedback over false consensus.
