She called a meeting of the full team—twelve people—and said: “I want to change something about how we work together. From now on, when you disagree with something in this room, I want you to say so in this room. I’m not interested in consensus for its own sake. I’m interested in being right. Those are different things. You will never be penalized for a disagreement you voice clearly and honestly. You will occasionally be asked to defend your position. That’s the deal.”
A woman named Priya, the senior research analyst, looked at Emily steadily from across the table and said, “Is that actually how it works, or is that what we say and then it turns out not to be how it works?”
Emily looked back at her. “Give me six months and judge it by what you see, not what I say right now. Fair?”
Priya considered. “Fair.”
It became how it worked.