Intel’s culture of constructive confrontation (sometimes referred to as “disagree and commit”) exemplifies a pattern of decision making cultivated by Level 5 leaders in our research. They stimulated dialogue, debate, and disagreement as an indispensable ingredient in making supremely good decisions. They also created a climate where evidence, logic, and facts would trump personality, power, and politics. As a member of a Level 5 team, you have not only the opportunity to engage in the dialogue, you have the responsibility to do so. If you fail to advance your argument, if you fail to disagree with the most powerful person in the room, if you fail to bring solid logic and evidence to the debate, if you attack a person rather than the problem, then you’re failing in that responsibility.

Here’s how to avoid the traps that inhibit a questioning culture in many organizations:

1. Avoid Using Questions Like a Hammer. In companies that swing the questioning pendulum too far in the direction of intense inquiry, you often find know-it-alls using questions as a way to stroke their ego and show off. When questions are used as a hammer to drive an existing viewpoint rather than as a flashlight to shine light on new ones, you don’t elicit productive reflection. To remedy this, focus on empowering rather than disempowering questions, which we’ll outline in the ModEl Practices section of this chapter. When in doubt, offer a healthy mix of authentic empathy and sharp curiosity in your questions. I once offered the following private feedback to a constant questioner who was grandstanding a bit and creating unneeded tension in the room: ‘Wisdom is whatever is left after you’ve run out of your opinions. Be careful not to use questions as a means of just expressing a strongly held belief.’

1. Know When It’s Time for Questioning and When It’s Time for Efficiency in Decision-making and Execution. A questioning culture can slow things down and, if it’s a hierarchical organization like the military, it can lead to confusion in strategy or lack of leadership direction. So it’s important to recognize if your organization isn’t built for questioning at times when the pressure is on, deadlines are looming, and stakes are high.

3. Foster Candor and Psychological Safety. Part of the reason many employees don’t feel comfortable asking tough questions is a fear of reprisal for being a ‘troublemaker’—or even losing their job. Author Edgar Schein poses a very important question that leaders can be asked as a measure to determine the level of psychological safety in an organization: ‘If I am about to make a mistake, will you tell me?’ If there is not enough candor and safety built into an organization’s culture to honestly answer yes, then the next question becomes, ‘What do we need to do differently to develop and create that kind of culture?’ Without it, people may take a less candid CYA (Cover Your Ass) approach to communication.

4. Be Clear That Alignment Is the Ultimate Goal of Questioning. A questioning culture is not synonymous with democratic decision making, although they’re often confused to be the same. Companies that do this well make very clear when it’s the right time for questions and potential disagreements and when it’s time to align. It’s critical to be explicit about this. Pat Lencioni’s book Five Dysfunctions of a Team (which we used as an Airbnb leadership team) gives good direction on how to clarify the difference between debate and alignment.

5. Make Sure Senior Leaders Are Actively Engaged in the Questioning Process. If senior leaders don’t actively take part in the questions and debate, whether it’s because they’re not in the room or because they are preoccupied on their phones or laptops, it sends a deadening signal to everyone else. Additionally, when a truth has been uncovered through the questioning process, but senior leadership doesn’t see it or take action, this can dissuade energy expended by the group in a future debate.

For smaller initiatives, you don’t need to farm for dissent, but you’d still be wise to let everyone know what you’re doing and to take the temperature of your initiative. Let’s go back to your employee, Sheila, the woman who came to you with an idea you’re against. After explaining why you don’t agree, you can suggest that she socialize the idea with her peers and other leaders in the company. This means that she sets up multiple meetings, where she outlines her proposal and enters into discussions in order to stress-test her thinking and collect numerous opinions and data points before making her decision. Socializing is a type of farming for dissent with less emphasis on the dissent and more on the farming.

We wanted to open dialogue and increase understanding through a balance of advocacy and inquiry. This approach includes three key tools: (1) advocating your own position and then inviting responses (e.g., “This is how I see the situation, and why; to what extent do you see it differently?”); (2) paraphrasing what you believe to be the other person’s view and inquiring as to the validity of your understanding (e.g., “It sounds to me like your

argument is this; to what extent does that capture your argument accurately?”); and (3) explaining a gap in your understanding of the other person’s views, and asking for more information (e.g., “It sounds like you think this acquisition is a bad idea. I’m not sure I understand how you got there. Could you tell me more?”). These kinds of phrases, which blend advocacy and inquiry, can have a powerful effect on the group dynamic. While it may feel more forceful to advocate, advocacy is actually a weaker move than balancing advocacy and inquiry. Inquiry leads the other person to genuinely reflect and hear your advocacy rather than ignoring it and making their own advocacy in response.

We all ultimately want to find the strategy that is best for our business. Rather than asking individuals to find that answer for themselves and then fight it out, this approach enables the team to uncover the strongest option together. A standard process is characterized by arguments about what is true. By turning instead to exploring what would have to be true, teams go from battling one another to working together to explore ideas. Rather than attempting to bury real disagreements, this approach surfaces differences and resolves them, resulting in more-robust strategies and stronger commitment to them.