The meeting went well. Everyone agreed.”

I have heard some version of this from many senior leaders. When I ask how they know the team is aligned, the answer is often the same.

“Because nobody disagreed.”

That is usually where the real conversation begins.

The higher you rise, the harder agreement is to read

Silence in a senior room can mean several things. People may support the direction. They may trust your judgement. They may have decided the issue is not worth the fight. Or they may have learned that disagreeing with you costs more than staying quiet.

From the head of the table, these can look almost identical. McKinsey reports that team leaders tend to have a more favourable perception of their teams’ effectiveness than team members themselves.

This is why the distinction between harmony and alignment matters. Harmony describes how a team interacts: respectful conversation, strong relationships, smooth meetings. Alignment describes what the team holds in common once the meeting ends: a shared understanding of the direction, the assumptions and trade-offs behind it, and a commitment to act on it consistently.

A team can have both. The risk begins when harmony is taken as proof of alignment.

McKinsey documented this gap more than two decades ago. The five executives on one energy company’s top team were each asked to list the company’s ten highest priorities. Between them they produced 23. Only two appeared on every list.

Everyone can nod at the same strategy and leave with a different understanding of what matters most.

What happens to dissent as your authority grows?

Authority changes the room. A thought you offer tentatively may be heard as a preference. A preference quickly becomes the assumed decision.

Then notice what happens when someone does challenge you. Do you become curious? Or does your response, however unintended, signal that disagreement has a price?

Amy Edmondson and Michaela Kerrissey describe psychological safety as a shared belief that it is acceptable to speak up candidly, and they are clear that it is not about being nice. For executive teams making decisions with incomplete information and significant consequences, a range of well-informed views is essential.

McKinsey’s 2025 research suggests that this remains a challenge for top teams. In a survey of 354 top-team members across 28 companies, psychological safety and conflict management were among the lowest-rated dimensions of team health. Psychological safety was also among the factors most strongly correlated with team performance, although the authors are explicit that correlation does not establish causation.

So I might ask an executive:

  • Who disagreed with you in your last important meeting?
  • Which assumptions were tested before the decision was made?
  • Whose perspective was missing?
  • What might people say after the meeting that they would not say during it?

That last question is often the most revealing. People return to their functions and interpret the decision through their own priorities. Commitments become qualified. Execution fragments.

The meeting felt aligned. What happens next tells you whether it was.

Making challenge possible

Leaders do not need to manufacture disagreement. They do need to make thoughtful challenge possible, and that starts with their own behaviour.

  • Speak later.
  • Invite someone to make the strongest case against the preferred option.
  • Hear from quieter voices before those who usually dominate.
  • When challenged, explore the other person’s reasoning before defending your own.
  • Before closing, ask each executive what they believe was decided and what they personally commit to next.

The next time everyone agrees with you, let that agreement make you curious.

What would you hear if everyone in the room felt free to disagree with you?