Everyone Agreed. That Was the Problem.

There’s a special kind of silence that falls over school leadership teams just before a bad decision is made.

It’s not the silence of deep thought. It’s the silence of agreement.

Nods around the table. Smiles of polite enthusiasm. Maybe someone adds, "Great point!" for good measure. A motion is passed. A program is approved. A direction is chosen.

And just like that, the future shifts.

Not because the decision was wise. But because no one disagreed.

When I run strategy sessions with school leadership teams, I often begin with a warm-up exercise called "Wrong Answers." I might ask something like, "What’s the capital of Australia?" Invariably, most people answer with a city—usually Sydney or Melbourne.

Occasionally, someone throws in something from left field.

But what fascinates me is how quickly people box themselves in. They assume that because I’m asking, there must be a trick. They search for an alternative city—but still play by the rules I never set.

What I’m really after is something like "a sour jube," "a Newfoundland puppy," or "a stick of gelignite."

A wrong answer. A creatively, gloriously wrong answer. Because that kind of answer shows someone is thinking beyond the frame of the question.

In leadership teams, the same mental trap appears: people stay inside the perceived frame. They look for safe answers. Plausible ones. But not disruptive ones. And that’s the thinking that leads to silent agreement. Not because everyone believes it’s right—but because no one is willing to step outside the invisible box.

When Agreement is a Warning Sign

In schools, we prize harmony. Collegiality. Working as a team. These are worthy aims. But when harmony becomes habitual, it quietly starts to replace rigour. Groupthink doesn’t arrive with red flags and warning sirens—it shows up as smiles, consensus, and an agenda that finishes on time.

What appears to be unity may actually be fatigue. Or fear. Or social pressure dressed up as professionalism.

We want our teams to get along. But when everyone agrees, every time, we’re no longer doing strategy. We’re doing choreography.

Why Groupthink Derails Strategy

Strategy is about making hard choices. What will we prioritise? What will we walk away from? What risks are worth taking, and what do we protect at all costs? These decisions require discomfort. They require disagreement. And they need leaders to think, critically, and often counterintuitively.

Groupthink disrupts that process.

When teams fall into automatic agreement, they stop weighing trade-offs. Alternatives go unexplored. Risks go unnamed. The strategic path becomes a product of momentum, not intention. Instead of deciding between real options, the group drifts toward what feels safe—usually a slight variation on what they’re already doing.

This is especially dangerous in schools, where the stakes are high and the margin for error is slim. A flawed strategic direction might not collapse a school overnight, but it will quietly shape culture, staff load, enrolment, and reputation for years. That’s why strategic conversations need space for dissent, friction, and pause.

The Psychology Behind the Nods

Groupthink isn’t a new phenomenon. But in schools—where decision-making involves people, not products—it takes on subtler forms. A few key cognitive biases help explain why smart people keep making safe decisions together:

1. The Halo Effect
When a respected team member speaks first, their perspective often sets the tone for the entire conversation. The glow of past success or personal charisma can make a critique feel like disloyalty.

2. Cognitive Dissonance
Once we’ve committed to a path, it’s uncomfortable to question it. So we dismiss or downplay evidence that challenges earlier choices. We protect our identity as decisive, aligned leaders.

3. Confirmation Bias and the Sunk Cost Fallacy
We keep looking for signs that our current approach is working. We avoid uncomfortable questions like: "Should we have done this at all?" The more we've invested, the harder it is to walk away.

This blend of bias often leads to a culture where speaking up feels costly. Silence becomes the default, and agreement becomes the illusion.

The Real Cost in Schools

In school leadership, the consequences of groupthink aren’t always dramatic. They’re incremental. A new enrolment strategy gets waved through without robust testing. A curriculum change is framed as "non-negotiable" before discussion begins. A board presentation glosses over risk to project confidence.

Middle leaders begin to disengage—not because they don’t care, but because they’ve learned their voice doesn’t shift the dial. Governance becomes performance art. Everyone means well, but no one is pressing pause to ask: "Have we actually solved the right problem?"

This is where Charles Conn and Robert McLean’s Bulletproof Problem Solving offers a helpful intervention.

How to Break the Pattern

In their book, Conn and McLean outline a structured approach to decision-making that resists bias and fosters productive disagreement. Here are four techniques schools can borrow:

1. Disaggregate the Problem Before Debating Solutions
Too often, leadership teams jump straight to solutions. "Let’s move Year 9 to its own campus." "We need a new marketing campaign." The better starting point is: what’s the real problem we’re trying to solve? Is it student engagement? Space utilisation? Parent perception? Once disaggregated, the team can tackle each sub-problem with precision, rather than settling for a broad (and potentially flawed) fix.

2. Use Logic Trees to Map Thinking
Rather than going around the room asking for opinions, teams can use logic trees to visualise the problem. Start with a core question (“Why is Year 11 retention falling?”) and map possible branches. Is it academic pressure? Wellbeing? Competition? Each path can be tested with data and stakeholder insights. The tree becomes a shared canvas—not a debate, but a map.

3. Assign a Devil’s Advocate (and Mean It)
Every big decision deserves structured dissent. Not the token "Any other thoughts?" at the end of a rushed meeting. Assign someone the role of challenger from the start. Their job is to stress-test assumptions, surface risks, and force the team to justify its logic. Make it clear this isn’t undermining—it’s quality assurance. Better to be challenged in the boardroom than corrected by reality six months later.

4. Visualise and Test Assumptions
Most strategic errors in schools stem from untested assumptions. "Parents will love this." "Staff will get on board." "It won’t cost that much." Conn and McLean suggest teams should list their assumptions explicitly—then pressure-test each one. What data would prove us wrong? What feedback loops are in place? This moves decisions out of the realm of belief and into the realm of evidence.

A Better Kind of Disagreement

The best leadership teams I’ve seen don’t fear disagreement.

They know that clarity doesn’t emerge from consenting nods, but from the friction of ideas tested, stretched, and occasionally blown apart. Strategy, by its very nature, seeks conflict. It’s the process of opportunities to pursue and opportunities to ignore. It demands a choice to be made.

Conflict doesn’t have to be dramatic. It can sound like: “What evidence supports that?” or “What’s the risk if we’re wrong?” or “Is this solving our significant challenge?”. These aren’t obstacles but signs of rigour. And they encourage us to make meaningful choices.

If your meetings feel calm and efficient, but your initiatives aren’t gaining traction, you might have a thinking problem.

The goal isn’t to argue more. It’s to think better. And that requires a team culture where respectful challenge is the norm.

The goal is to seek clarity.