This Is the Hidden Cost of Being Too Agreeable at Work

Picture this: It’s a scorching hot afternoon in Texas. Luckily, you’ve got a shady porch, a pitcher of ice-cold lemonade and a very effective fan. You’re enjoying passing the afternoon playing dominoes with your family when suddenly, out-of-the-blue, your father-in-law comes up with a terrible idea: why not drive to Abilene for dinner, more than 50 miles away?

Why not? Here’s why not, you think. The car doesn’t have air conditioning. It will be a cramped, sweltering and miserable road trip, hours in each direction. Before you can say anything, your wife says the trip sounds fun. Your mother-in-law says the same. You hate to be disagreeable, so you say the only thing you think is allowed: Sounds great. 

The trip is just as bad as you imagined, and, adding insult to injury, your meal is bad, too. After all that, you have to pile back into the car and make the reverse journey home. 

At long last, you get back to the porch and the fan. Everyone is silent for a long time. Lying through your teeth, you say to the group, “Well, that was fun!” 

No one agrees. One by one, every family member confesses they thought it was an awful plan before leaving — but felt pressured to go by everyone else. Even your father-in-law said he’d have preferred to stay home — he was just worried everyone else was bored. 

This was an actual experience lived by the management professor Jerry Harvey, who published the story in 1974, calling it “the Abilene Paradox.” Ultimately, his point wasn’t really about road trips; it was about the perils of phony consensus. Here’s why being too agreeable is a genuine risk that can hurt your team. 

The cost of false alignment

Everyone loves consensus. We assume that if agreement is unanimous, we must be doing something right. 

Unfortunately, agreeableness comes with a cost. I’m reminded of the show Silicon Valley, one of the best depictions of startup culture I’ve seen. A beta version of the fictional startup Pied Piper’s platform is released to almost universal adoration — except for a board member named Monica, who hates it. As the only non-engineer to try it, she assumes she’s in the wrong, so she keeps her feedback quiet. Turns out, she’s spot on — the product is a huge flop with the general public. 

This is what false consensus looks like in practice. Monica was the odd one out, and it seemed like the failure was with her for not understanding the platform’s value. She felt pressure to fall in step with its many fans, because frankly, it was easier. When you’re the one dissenting voice, all eyes turn to you. Suddenly, you have to justify your thinking and defend your reasoning. That’s a whole lot harder than simply saying, “yep, looks good!” 

In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, the consultant and speaker Patrick Lencioni concludes that smart teams make bad decisions thanks to a preference for keeping things pleasant at the expense of keeping them honest. When people don’t feel safe to disagree openly, it’s not that they don’t stop disagreeing; they just move the conversation to the sidelines. “It’s as simple as this,” Lencioni writes. “When people don’t unload their opinions and feel like they’ve been listened to, they won’t really get on board.”

The alternative to consensus (hint: it’s not dictatorship) 

If false consensus is the problem, the obvious fix sounds like this: the leader decides, everyone else falls in line. But that’s not the answer, either.

As leaders, I believe it’s our job to gather information, weigh options, analyze data and yes, hear opinions. Jeff Bezos uses a principle he calls “disagree and commit,” in which teams are encouraged to voice their opinions and argue in favor of what they actually believe. But once a decision has been made, everyone gets on board, including people who voted the other way. 

Bezos has applied this rule to himself: when he’s deferred to a direct report’s judgment over his own, he’s been explicit about what that means. “I’m not going to be second-guessing it, I’m not going to be sniping at it, I’m not going to be saying ‘I told you so.’ I’m going to try actively to help make sure it works,” he said. 

When you’re the head of a company, the buck stops with you, but that doesn’t mean you’re always right. There have been times at Jotform where I’ve learned this the hard way — I’ve wasted time and energy seeking a consensus that was never going to materialize. Now, I follow a version of Bezos’s principle: I listen, I consult, I gather data. When I make a decision — even if that decision is at odds with my original thinking — I own it. 

In order to hear dissent, you need to create a culture that makes space for differing opinions. Harvey’s sweltering Texas family and Silicon Valley’s Monica had one important thing in common, which was that they didn’t feel comfortable sharing what they actually thought. Leaders have to make sure they’re fostering an environment where raising an objection won’t come with negative consequences. 

Artificial consensus might be peaceful and efficient. But it’s also built on a fundamental lie. Good leaders will aspire to something deeper, messier and ultimately, better for everyone. 

Picture this: It’s a scorching hot afternoon in Texas. Luckily, you’ve got a shady porch, a pitcher of ice-cold lemonade and a very effective fan. You’re enjoying passing the afternoon playing dominoes with your family when suddenly, out-of-the-blue, your father-in-law comes up with a terrible idea: why not drive to Abilene for dinner, more than 50 miles away?

Why not? Here’s why not, you think. The car doesn’t have air conditioning. It will be a cramped, sweltering and miserable road trip, hours in each direction. Before you can say anything, your wife says the trip sounds fun. Your mother-in-law says the same. You hate to be disagreeable, so you say the only thing you think is allowed: Sounds great. 

The trip is just as bad as you imagined, and, adding insult to injury, your meal is bad, too. After all that, you have to pile back into the car and make the reverse journey home.