The Professional Collaboration Series: Blog 3 of 8: The Courage Deficit: Why Knowing What to Say Isn't Enough

How organisations build or destroy the courage to disagree – and why it's the hardest dimension of all.

You've taught your team the right linguistic techniques. They know how to signal curiosity, acknowledge opposing perspectives, find common ground.

In the training room, it works beautifully.

Then they return to their actual work. A critical decision is being made. They can see the risk everyone else is missing. They know what they should say.

They stay silent.

This is the Courage Deficit – and it's the gap that behavioural training alone cannot bridge.

The Evidence in Plain Sight

The Harvard Business Review research we discussed in Blog 1 actually provides evidence for this problem. Hundreds of participants overwhelmingly agreed that expressing curiosity toward people who disagree with them was a good idea. Yet when asked to actually do so, participants often failed – they got caught up in making their own argument.

Consider the conditions: disagreements with strangers, relatively low stakes, no career consequences. Even here, people who knew curiosity was the right strategy still couldn't execute it.

Now consider real organisational disagreement:

• Your VP is presenting a strategic direction to the executive team
• You're the only person who sees a fundamental flaw
• Everyone else is nodding in agreement
• Your performance review is three weeks away
• Last quarter, someone who challenged this VP was reassigned

What happens to those carefully learned linguistic techniques now?

This isn't an intention-behaviour gap. It's fear. And fear doesn't respond to better scripts.

When Behaviours Collapse Under Pressure

The research identified a "behaviour-perception gap": even when we perform the behaviours we intend, there's no guarantee they'll be perceived as we hope. But under pressure, even our ability to perform those behaviours collapses.

Consider "Why would you think that?" In a calm moment, this might signal genuine curiosity. But in the heat of disagreement, especially when frustrated or threatened, the same words carry sarcasm or dismissal.

This is what happens when people try to use receptive language whilst experiencing the physiological stress of disagreement: elevated heart rate, narrowed focus, defensive arousal. The words might be right, but the delivery betrays the underlying fear.

You can teach someone to say "I'm curious about your perspective" in a training room. You cannot thereby teach them to mean it when their idea is being dismissed by someone with power over their career.

The Psychological Safety Confusion

This is where organisations typically invoke "psychological safety." But most organisations misunderstand what it means.

Psychological safety is not the absence of discomfort. It's not protecting people from challenge or creating an environment where everyone is nice and conflict never happens.

We've written previously about false harmony – teams that pride themselves on "getting along" whilst systematically avoiding substantive disagreement. These teams often feel psychologically comfortable. But they're not psychologically safe, because real challenge isn't permitted.

Psychological safety, properly understood, means: people can speak openly and challenge constructively to prevent problems or drive improvement without interpersonal fear or fear of retaliation or humiliation.

True psychological safety means:

• You can disagree with senior leaders without career consequences
• You can surface uncomfortable truths without being labelled negative
• You can question strategic directions without being seen as disloyal
• You can say "I don't know" without losing credibility

And critically, it works both directions: you can challenge and be challenged without interpreting challenge as personal attack.

Comfort in agreement isn't the test. Safety in disagreement is.

When Stakes Are High, Everything Changes

The behavioural techniques are valuable when disagreement is relatively low-stakes. But organisational disagreement is rarely low-stakes.

When stakes are high, several dynamics intensify:

Power dynamics become visible. Everyone is acutely aware of who has power to decide, who can influence, and who will be ignored.

Identity becomes activated. When someone challenges your championed approach, you're not just defending an idea – you're defending your judgement and credibility.

Consequences become real. Real resources, careers, and outcomes hang on the decision. Being seen as the person who slowed things down matters.

Time pressure intensifies. "We need to decide today" is when courage matters most and is hardest to summon.

In these conditions, teaching someone to preface their challenge with "I'm curious about your reasoning" is necessary but not sufficient. They need courage to speak at all – and that courage comes not from training but from organisational culture.

Leadership Vulnerability: Where Courage Originates

In our Professional Collaboration framework, "Leadership Vulnerability" is the mechanism through which courage is built in others.

Leaders create courage by demonstrating that challenge is not just safe but valued:

Admitting uncertainty publicly. "I don't have all the answers here" signals that challenge will be met with curiosity, not defensiveness.

Changing their mind based on challenge. When a leader visibly changes their position because someone challenged them effectively, they send a powerful message: challenge works here.

Rewarding dissent even when uncomfortable. The true test is whether leaders reward challenge that threatens their preferred direction.

Acknowledging when they got it wrong. Leaders who can say "I was wrong, and I'm glad you pushed back" create permission for others to push back next time.

Going first with difficult truths. Leaders who surface uncomfortable realities make it safer for others to do the same.

This is why the Courage Deficit is fundamentally a culture problem, and why it starts with leadership. You cannot train courage into people when their leaders punish dissent.

The Paradox of Courage

The moment when courage is most needed is precisely when showing it feels most dangerous.

When everyone else agrees and you don't, speaking up feels like making yourself a target. When a decision is nearly final, raising concerns feels obstructionist. When senior leaders are aligned, challenging feels like career suicide.

But here's the paradox: courage to disagree, properly framed and received, doesn't signal disloyalty – it demonstrates commitment to shared success.

When someone challenges a decision, they're saying: "This matters enough that I'm willing to risk discomfort to get it right." That's not opposition. That's partnership.

In organisations with genuine psychological safety, disagreement is interpreted as evidence of engagement. In organisations without it, the same behaviour is labelled "not a team player" or "always negative."

The behaviour is identical. The interpretation – and therefore the courage required – is completely different.

What Destroys Courage (Even Unintentionally)

Most leaders don't intentionally destroy courage to disagree. But they do it anyway:

"Let's take this offline." The message to everyone: disagreement isn't welcome in this forum.

"We don't have time to revisit this." People learn their concerns don't matter as much as speed.

"I need everyone aligned on this." Demanding alignment before surfacing disagreement creates false consensus.

Praising those who "get on board quickly." When responsiveness is rewarded more than thoughtful challenge, people learn what gets recognised.

None of these explicitly punish dissent. But together, they signal that challenge is tolerated at best, not valued. And that's enough to erode courage.

Building Courage as Organisational Capability

Courage develops through repeated practice with positive outcomes, through evidence that challenge is valuable, through cultural reinforcement that disagreement strengthens rather than damages.

Specifically:

Start with small disagreements. Build the muscle on lower-stakes issues where risk is lower.

Debrief after disagreement. When a team navigates disagreement well, name it. When it goes poorly, examine why without blame.

Protect those who challenge. When someone faces social consequences for disagreeing, leaders must visibly intervene.

Celebrate changed minds. Create stories about times when challenge led to better decisions. These become cultural artifacts that build courage in others.

Make "no surprises" real. Build courage to share bad news early by never punishing the messenger.

From our Professional Collaboration framework, the culture dimension requires commitment to common purpose, team psychological safety, no surprises, agreed sense of identity, and alignment of accountability and responsibility.

These aren't aspirational statements. They're the cultural conditions under which courage can develop and persist.

Without them, you can teach people every linguistic technique in the world. They still won't use them when it matters.

Key Takeaways

1. The Courage Deficit exists because behavioural training doesn't address fear. Teaching what to say is necessary but not sufficient when organisational culture punishes those who say it.
2. Psychological safety means safety to challenge and be challenged, not protection from discomfort. Teams that never disagree aren't psychologically safe – they're suppressing information.
3. Courage is organisational capability, not individual heroism. It develops through repeated practice, leadership vulnerability, and cultural reinforcement that disagreement strengthens collaboration.
4. Leaders build courage by going first. Admitting uncertainty, changing their mind, rewarding dissent, and protecting those who speak up. This cannot be delegated.

Culture creates the conditions for courage – or destroys it. But even with the right culture, people need licence to disagree. And that's where Structure comes in.

Next in the series: "The Licence Problem, Part 1: Why Structure Determines Who Can Challenge Whom"  –  How organisational structures, role clarity, and accountability frameworks formally grant or deny permission for constructive disagreement.

For more on building psychological safety and addressing false harmony, see our previous insights at advance-consultancy.com. To discuss how we can help your organisation build the cultural conditions for courage, contact us at enquiries@advance-consultancy.com.