Be a better leader: Knowing the dangers of ‘yes men’ | Garrett Reisman | Big Think

When it comes to leadership, this is a trap that you can fall into, especially if you're a very successful leader. If you have a great track record and you've achieved your goal, and you're in charge of a big organization, you can end up surrounding yourself with yes-men.

Because let's face it, we all like to be told that we're correct, right? Very few people like to be surrounded by people who say, "No, no, no, no, no, that's wrong." You know, we all have a tendency to want to be reassured that we're on the right track and that we're smart and that we're good-looking. You know, we want to hear nice things.

But the problem is, when you're a leader, you can fall into a situation where you have groupthink or where people—very smart people, especially skilled in certain areas—know better, but they're afraid to tell you. This is especially true if you demonstrate qualities of being vindictive; if you penalize people for speaking out or having a dissenting view. If you come down on them because you think that's causing inefficiencies or slowing you down, then people really clam up.

This is a very, very dangerous trap for a leader to fall into. So we train to avoid that, and I think it's extremely important. It really is incumbent upon the leader themselves, because this is not gonna happen naturally. If the leader exhibits behavior where they penalize people for having contrary views, then very quickly they're going to see the results. Especially if you start firing people and showing them the door, then other people are going to get the message.

The danger there is that you could blunder into a mistake. No matter how smart you are and how well you know what you're doing, you're going to make a mistake at some point. If there's nobody there to feel confident in telling you, "Hey, just a second, boss, maybe we should rethink this," then that's extremely dangerous.

When we did our leadership training for space flight, the example I'll give you was that I was a leader one day. We were out in the deserts of Utah and we had to find a source of water. We were running out of water in the middle of the summer in Utah, and that's very dangerous. So we had a map, and we knew where there was a source of water. We were following this map, using compasses, trying to make sure that we were going in the right direction using the landmarks.

Our map was our only guide; we didn't have GPS as that was not part of the exercise. I looked at it, I analyzed it, I looked at the map, and I said, "Okay, I think we’re that mountain over there. That’s the one that leads us to the water." But here's what I want you to do: I turned to the rest of the team that was in charge that day and said, "I want every single one of you to tell me why that is the wrong mountain. Okay, prove to me that I'm wrong, that I picked the wrong one. And if one of you can do that, maybe you might save us all."

So, it turned out that that was the right mountain. I was kind of happy about that. But the point was, I empowered my team to tell me I was wrong. We got to that mountain, and behind it, there was the water. We all lived to tell the tale; it was great!

But what if it wasn't the right mountain? What if the last guy who told me I was wrong got sent packing? You know, or I insulted them, or belittled them, or shamed them? How likely would it be that my team would say, "I don't think that's the right mountain," and saved all of us? I think the odds would be very, very small.

So that’s a really, really important lesson for a leader. But you have to force yourself to do it, because it's not really in our nature as humans to ask people to tell us that we're wrong.

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