The best leaders invite people to challenge them … and don’t punish them when they do

Leaders should foster a culture of positive, constructive challenge, which can help mitigate risks and improve decision making, according to experts at Imperial College Business School. In a new white paper, researchers from Imperial’s Centre for Responsible Leadership analysed the strategies that leaders can implement to successfully elicit challenge from their teams. The paper contains key lessons and evidence-based recommendations for leaders to encourage challenge, that can be applied to a wide range of organisations.

The Centre for Responsible Leadership at Imperial College Business School produces research that helps leaders make decisions with a long-term view, prioritising sustainability and diversity alongside effective delivery.

Professor Celia Moore, Academic Director of the Centre for Responsible Leadership at Imperial and lead author of the white paper, said: “The consequences of a corporate culture where teams are hesitant to challenge leaders can be dire. This can include financial damage and service failure. Despite this, concrete guidance on what leaders can do about this has been lacking. We wrote this paper to offer business leaders evidence-based strategies that can make a real difference in preventing failure within their organisations.”

In March 2021, for example, global investment bank and financial service provider Credit Suisse lost $5.5 billion following the collapse of asset manager Archegos Capital, with a report finding that “a cultural unwillingness to engage in challenging discussions” was a major factor.

According to Professor Moore, creating challenge is an important part of the workplace experience. “Staff hesitate to offer challenge if they feel vulnerable. Leaders need to be clear that speaking up and disagreeing will not incur risk,” she said.

Effective strategies

According to new evidence presented in the report, it’s important for leaders to ask the right questions to generate meaningful challenge from employees. The report found that open-ended questions and general queries were less likely to result in challenge.

Instead, leaders should focus on questions that specifically ask for disagreement (e.g. ‘does anyone think there is a better idea?’) or that build an invitation for challenge into the conversation (e.g. ‘what would stop you taking this option?’).

The report also revealed that leaders need to acknowledge challenges as legitimate, while focusing on the idea at hand (e.g. ‘that’s a fair challenge, and we could definitely go with that option’). Acknowledgement that was too general or that strayed into gratitude was found to be much less effective.

The Imperial team found that individuals are more likely to speak up if others are also participating and the environment is inclusive. Leaders can encourage a more open and inclusive environment by using humour and interacting with team members about unrelated, conversational topics.

Adequate time must also be allocated to allow thorough debate and challenge of ideas. Even when challenges emerge early, short meetings risk shutting down discussion before ideas can be properly explored.

Finally, the authors recommend making team members more accountable for their views, as this makes them more likely to provide healthy challenge. This could be through forcing them to commit to a specific idea (e.g. ‘which do you prefer, option A or B?’), or asking them to vote on ideas.

Key recommendations

• Solicit and specify: Leaders need to ask precise questions that clearly indicate they are seeking challenge.
• Acknowledge: Legitimately acknowledge team members’ challenges to reinforce that their input is valued.
• Interaction and humour: Incorporate humour and casual interaction to create a more relaxed and open environment.
• Time management: Ensure that meetings are long enough to allow for thorough discussion and challenge.
• Accountability: Hold team members accountable for their contributions and decisions to encourage them to voice their opinions.

On the back of these findings, the Centre for Responsible Leadership is offering masterclasses for leadership teams on how to elicit constructive challenge. These are available in person and online.