Leadership Must Make Room for the Truth

An institution can have talented people, detailed reports and impressive strategy documents yet still make poor decisions. The missing ingredient is often not information. It is whether people closest to the work can speak truthfully about what they see before a concern becomes a crisis.

Board Intelligence's Summer 2026 index, reported on 14 July, found that only 37% of directors saw their board as an essential tool for value creation. Eighty-six per cent said that rigid or inconsistent decision processes had contributed to a delayed, rushed or poor decision within the previous six months. Directors pointed especially to decision frameworks, unclear responsibilities and the quality of board information. The lesson is not that boards need more papers. It is that institutions need better conditions for evidence, challenge and judgement to meet.

Speaking up is sometimes described as a soft cultural preference. It is not. It is a governance capability. A finance officer who identifies a weak control, a lecturer who notices disengagement, a pastor who sees a safeguarding concern, a junior public officer who detects an unfair process and an associate who questions an optimistic client assumption are all contributing intelligence to the institution.

Research published in Scientific Reports this year found a positive association between shared leadership and civil servants' voice behaviour, working through psychological capital and organisational identification. The cross-sectional design means it…