36 M C K I N S EY Q UA RT E R LY - - - - - - - - - - - - Courageous Leadership: Lead With Heart PROFESSIONAL DISSENT: LEGITIMIZING THE MINORITY VIEW Teams with high psychological safety are two to three times more likely to generate breakthrough ideas—yet dissent is often quietly suppressed through hierarchy, fear of reprisal, or simple iner tia. Professional dissent is the courage to voice a contrarian view, even at personal risk. Yet fewer employees feel safe challenging a superior’s view, and most leaders themselves admit to avoiding upward challenges. This silence damages per formance. Research shows that transformations are 5.3 times more likely to succeed when lead ers role model behavioral change, and cultures that encourage dissent consistently outperform those that don’t. So professional dissent is not simply a behavioral norm; it is one of the most important forms of a courageous conversation in leadership. The CEO sets the tone for whether such conversations are welcomed, ignored, or quietly discouraged. Examples abound. In sport, a Premier League manager told us his most important conver sations were not with star players but with assistant coaches willing to challenge his tactics midseason. “That saved our campaign,” he said. The CEO of a global manufacturing firm begins each executive meeting with the question: “What are we not seeing? What are we not saying?” Over time, this shifted the culture from guarded compliance to open contribution. During the pandemic, governments that encouraged scien tific debate generally adapted faster than those that demanded consensus. In the arts, a young violinist questioned a conductor’s interpretation; the conductor listened, adjusted, and the whole performance lifted. For CEOs, the task is to legiti mize dissent so it becomes routine rather than risky—shifting challenge from an exception to an expected part of how the team thinks and decides. Structured mechanisms can help embed this. Premortems, in which teams imagine a decision has failed and explore why, can create psychological safety, expose blind spots, and strengthen foresight. When CEOs consistently invite chal lenge—and respond with curiosity rather than defensiveness—they - transform dissent from a dicey act into a natu ral, courageous conversation that strengthens decision-making. Designating one member of a meeting as a “chief challenger,” responsible fo r testing assumptions, helps build the craft of dissent. And defining challenge capability as an executive skill both elevates and democratizes truth seek ing. When constructive dissent is recognized and rewarded, it stops being a personality trait and becomes a discipline. Leaders sometimes worry that encouraging dissent will slow decision-making or fragment execution. In practice, the opposite is often true. As Cyrus the Great observed, “Diversity in counsel, unity in command.” The executive craft lies in drawing out diverse perspectives, testing assumptions rigorously, and then forging unified momentum from that input. Superior reasoning and open discussion sharpen the decision; deci sive leadership then turns that clarity into action. The best CEOs keep their teams on the right side of the talk-to-do ratio: robust debate followed by disciplined execution. Many CEOs apply a practical discipline when disagreements arise between senior executives. Rather than immediately rendering judgment, they give both leaders the opportunity and the obliga tion to resolve the issue together. The CEO makes it clear that if an agreement cannot be reached, they will decide—but deliberately holds back from doing so at first. This approach, which we have seen work well in several organizations, develops leadership maturity while reinforcing accountability for enterprise outcomes. Leaders use other techniques to cultivate this capability. For example, some rotate a “learning observer” in meet ings—a person tasked with noticing how dissent, challenge, and deci sion-making unfold and offering a brief reflection at the end. Others periodically convene short feedback sessions among executives, asking colleagues to share one observation about what is strengthening the team’s decision quality and one sug gestion for improvement. Practices such as these shift dissent from a moment of friction to a source of collective learning. - An online version of this article is available on McKinsey.com