Leadership Is Language: The Hidden Power of What You Say--and What You Don't

by L. David Marquet

At each of the next three tables, an executive stood up, gave a variation of the same speech, and said the exact same number, five. The answer was eight sails. Every table had it wrong. We then passed out the dissent cards—two reds and eight blacks to every table—and had them repeat the exercise. The people with the red cards had to dissent from the group. And here’s the key: I did not show them the video again, so they could not revise their answer by looking more closely. The only new information they had was that their previous answer, five, was wrong. After two minutes, it was time to share their results. This time there was no speech, but the answers were seven, eight, seven, eight. I could not believe it. By introducing nothing but a dissenter, we got the groups much closer to the truth, to reality. The point is that we do not want a “harmonious conversation.” What we want is an accurate picture of reality. Harmonious and wrong means out of business or dead people. Harmonious means thirty-three dead on El Faro, seven dead on the space shuttle Challenger.