This is one of the worst things a leader can say, and you can trust me on this.

In my work as a Diversity & Inclusion practitioner, one of the ways in which I have always defined an inclusive culture is a workplace where employees are not only free, but actively encouraged, to dissent.

Now, of course, inclusion works both ways. Dissent needs to be expressed in a way that doesn’t devolve into personal attacks. You can disagree with an idea without devaluing the person who came up with it. But in an inclusive culture, folks need to be able to hear the words “I disagree” and listen to what comes after with an open mind.

The ability to dissent is core to inclusion because it is a hallmark of authenticity. Authenticity is usually described as “bringing your whole self to work,” which sounds nice, but most of us don’t want to work next to someone who says everything they’re thinking as it occurs to them. That’s not authentic so much as reckless and lacking in social skills. Therefore, I like to frame authenticity as the ability to bring your best self to work. It means being able to speak, act, and work in a way that aligns to your values. And it also means bringing your best thinking to work. Most of us were hired at least in part because of the knowledge we bring to the table, so how does it make sense for you to hide that knowledge?

The ability to dissent is also core to diversity because diversity of thought is often a not-so-distant cousin of diversity of identity. One of the reasons we want to lead diverse groups of people is so all of those different perspectives can be shared, leading to greater innovation and business success, so how does it profit the business when those who are different and therefore see things differently can’t speak up and share those perspectives?

So what stops people from disagreeing? There can be a lot of factors, but when looking at this purely at the team level, it usually boils down to leadership. Some leaders just don’t want to hear it. Team members who openly disagree with either a leader or the prevailing direction of a group might experience a form of retaliation, either in the moment or soon after. New members of that same team might notice a conspicuous silence whenever the group is asked to contribute, and might play along as they acclimate themselves to their new peers. Soon enough, it will be an unspoken norm on the team: when the boss speaks, everyone nods and gets back to work.

And occasionally, there are some verbal cues that alert a team not to dissent. An example might be, “let’s not take too much time here.” What’s spoken is a concern about time management, but what’s communicated is a desire for everyone’s acquiescence. Let’s just go along to get along, shall we? After all, we’ve all got a lot on our plates.

And that might be true, but wouldn’t you like to invest a little more time and be sure you’re incorporating the best thinking from your entire team? Isn’t that preferable to racing through your work and producing mediocre results?

But my absolute favorite – and by “favorite” I mean least favorite – tool that leaders use to squash dissent is this one: “I’m going to ask you to trust me on this one.”

What I find so insidious about this sentence – one that I’ve heard many, many times in my adult life, nearly always spoken by an authority figure to a group of people who do or might disagree with the direction being proposed – is that it uses the language of trust to communicate how little trust exists in the room.

The leader who speaks these words to their team doesn’t trust their knowledge, skills, and experience to offer anything of value in that moment. That leader doesn’t trust their own idea to hold up to scrutiny. And anyone within hearing range of that leader certainly can’t trust them to listen to anything they might say at that moment other than "Yes, of course."

Make no mistake – that leader isn’t asking for your trust; they’re instructing you to obey. But rather than being honest about the command-and-control style of leadership they’re currently exercising, they wrap it up in a pretty package and use “trust” as the bow on top. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to describe that sentence as a form of gaslighting.

Sadly, it’s a form of manipulation so effective, it might even be working on the person uttering those words. They themselves might believe they’re humbly requesting your trust. Their direct reports might very well find it difficult or impossible to disabuse them of their delusion, so it’s up to leaders themselves to fix this.

Leaders, if this sounds like a sentence you might have spoken at any point, please take this moment to recognize it for what it is. If you want to be the kind of inclusive leader you likely profess to be, take stock of your fears. What’s the worst that could happen if someone disagrees with your direction? What’s the worst that could happen if you discover that this one, single idea wasn’t as brilliant as you thought? What might happen if you listen to your team, make some changes, and prove to them that their voices actually matter? You might be afraid that you’ll lose credibility, but I’m betting the opposite would happen. You might just end up with a team who would follow you anywhere.