Nudge-Letter October 2026
You’ve seen this before
A problem surfaces. Leadership wonders why no one saw it coming. An investigation begins. Then comes the uncomfortable truth. People had seen it coming. They just hadn’t spoken up.Not because they had nothing to say. Perhaps they weren’t sure it was their place to question. Perhaps they had seen what happened to someone who challenged a decision. Or perhaps staying silent simply felt safer.And so, the concerns remained unspoken. The warning signs went unreported. The silence continued, until the problem became too big to ignore.The question for leaders is: What might your people know today that their silence is keeping from you?
What’s really happening
An organisation doesn’t have to tell people to remain silent. It only has to make speaking up feel risky.A suggestion dismissed without consideration. A question met with impatience. Someone criticised publicly for pointing out a mistake. A leader who invites opinions but becomes defensive when challenged.People notice. They watch what happens when someone disagrees, admits uncertainty or brings bad news. And they adjust their behaviour.Over time, speaking up becomes a calculation. Why question a decision if it makes you look difficult? Why admit a mistake if it could This is where psychological safety matters. Not as a promise of comfort or agreement, but as the confidence that people can question, challenge and acknowledge mistakes without fear of humiliation or repercussions.Silence rarely shows up as a line item in business reports. Yet its cost can be felt in lost opportunities, preventable failures and, sometimes, the very survival of an organisation.
A Case In Point
At Nokia, research into its smartphone decline found that middle managers, fearing senior leaders’ reactions, often softened or withheld bad news. Leadership was making critical decisions without a complete picture.At Volkswagen, the emissions scandal exposed a culture where challenging ambitious targets or bringing unwelcome news to leadership was discouraged. The consequences were enormous.These may be extreme examples, but the underlying problem is familiar.People closest to the work often see risks, problems and opportunities first. Yet that information may never reach decision-makers, or may travel too slowly, because speaking up isn’t always encouraged or supported.In PwC India’s 2023 Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey (source), only 35% of non-manager employees said their managers encouraged dissent and debate.The business can pay twice: in problems that could have been prevented but weren’t, and in decisions that unnecessarily travel upwards, consuming leadership bandwidth and slowing the organisation down.The first step is to make speaking up easier.But is that enough? We’ll return to that in our next Nudge-Letter.
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Recommended Read
Why do people withhold concerns, questions and ideas even when their organisation needs to hear them?
And how leaders can create conditions where speaking up becomes easier—and why that matters for learning, innovation and preventing failures.
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Semco Style is growing and we are looking to welcome more professionals who share the passion of organizations human again.
Are you a solopreneur HR, OD, AGILE, or business transformation consultant who believes that culture should not be like a season, full of team-building activities, but a reason to belong? Click here and tell us a little about yourself.We’ll set up a conversation to explore how we could partner in this journey.
Try This
Make disagreement safe to practise.In your next leadership or team meeting, before finalising an important decision, introduce an Objection Round.Invite everyone to raise one concern, challenge an assumption or point out something the team may have overlooked.The purpose isn’t to oppose the decision, but to improve it.As the leader, listen without interrupting, defending or immediately explaining your position. Ask questions to understand the concerns and thank people for raising them.Don’t expect everyone to speak up the first time. They’ll be watching how you respond, especially when someone disagrees.The real test isn’t whether you invite objections. It’s how you respond when someone actually raises one.
What Shifts
When people feel free to question decisions and raise concerns, leaders gain access to information they might otherwise never hear.
- Risks surface earlier.
- Assumptions get challenged.
- Decisions benefit from perspectives closer to the work.
- Speaking up becomes part of people’s responsibility rather than a personal risk.
The shift is from leaders discovering problems too late to people raising concerns while there’s still time to act.It doesn’t mean every objection must be accepted or every decision made by consensus. It means decisions can be made with a fuller picture of what the organisation knows.
Curious about this nudge and want to know more about how you can implement this?
Write to us, and we will connect
Interested in more nudges from us?
More from our “Nudge” series
From our “Impact Stories” section
Semco Style is growing…
Semco Style is growing and we are looking to welcome more professionals who share the passion of organizations human again.Are you a solopreneur HR, OD, AGILE, or business transformation consultant who believes that culture should not be like a season full of team-building activities but a reason to belong? Click here and tell us a little about yourself.We’ll set up a conversation to explore how we could partner in this journey.