A genuine speak-up culture does not reveal itself in a mission statement. Instead, it shows in a single moment: when someone says “stop” to their superior. Few fields demonstrate how much can depend on that moment as clearly as aviation. After all, a lack of dissent in the cockpit has already cost hundreds of lives.
Guam, 1997: Two Men Could Have Noticed
It is 6 August 1997, shortly before two o’clock in the morning. A Korean Air Boeing 747 with 254 people on board is approaching Guam. Outside, it is raining and pitch dark. In the cockpit sit an experienced captain, his first officer and the flight engineer. The approach is not going as it should, and at least two of the three men have the chance to notice.
At 1:42 am, the aircraft strikes Nimitz Hill, around five kilometres short of the runway. 228 people die.
For three years, the US National Transportation Safety Board investigated the crash. It identified the captain’s errors in preparing and executing the approach as the cause. In the same sentence, however, it added a second finding: the first officer and flight engineer failed to monitor and cross-check him effectively. The report also names the reason openly. A first officer may hesitate to challenge a captain’s decision, because doing so could be perceived as an attack on his authority.
A Question of Culture? That Is Too Convenient
Such disasters are often explained by pointing to Korean culture. Malcolm Gladwell told the story roughly this way in his book “Outliers”. Personally, I find that interpretation too convenient, because it lets the rest of us off the hook.
A look at Tenerife shows why. On 27 March 1977, fog lies over the runway and two jumbo jets stand on the ground. The KLM captain, who is also head of his airline’s flight training and the face of its advertising campaign, begins the take-off. His flight engineer asks whether the Pan Am aircraft might still be on the runway. The captain replies emphatically that it has cleared. Yet it had not. With 583 deaths, it remains the worst accident in aviation history to this day. And it happened in a Dutch cockpit.
The flight engineer was right, and he even said so. However, he said it only as a question, only once and only quietly. Moreover, he said it against the answer of a man whose word carried particular weight within that airline.
Speak-Up Culture Starts at the Conference Table
When did someone last tell you: “Boss, you are wrong”? That does not mean your board colleague or your long-standing sparring partner. It means someone whose next promotion depends at least a little on you.
If you need to think about it for a while, that does not necessarily mean you are right so often. It may equally mean that nobody dares anymore.
The most honest pushback I have received in recent years came from Mireille, my accountant. When a fake email in my name requested 5,000 euros, she asked me across the desk instead of simply making the transfer. Strictly speaking, she was challenging a fraudster. In that moment, however, she believed it was me. And she asked anyway.
By now, we have plenty of terms for such moments: error culture, speaking up, flat hierarchies. They all appear in the mission statement. What truly matters, though, is only the moment when someone actually says “stop” – and what you do next.
The New Authority in the Cockpit Is AI
For the past year or two, a further authority has joined the room. The dangerous sentence used to be: “The board will know what it is doing.” Today, there is a second one: “The AI will have analysed that correctly.”
The treacherous part is that AI does not hesitate. It delivers no results with reservations; instead, it phrases things cleanly, structures them cleanly and sounds convinced. Imagine a board paper: 30 pages, clean data, three scenarios and a clear recommendation, partly produced by AI. The document looks excellent. Nevertheless, nobody asks which assumption the recommendation actually rests on.
That is not an AI problem. It is the flight engineer in Tenerife all over again.
This is exactly what Matt Abrahams, who teaches strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Zapier CEO Wade Foster recently discussed in the Harvard Business Review. They are by no means advising against AI. They do, however, warn against handing thinking, judgement and empathy over to the machine. Abrahams describes the risk as a “comprehension gap”: AI produces results that look finished, although nobody has genuinely worked through the thinking behind them. And anyone who has not worked through a thought cannot challenge it either.
How seriously trust is now being taken can also be seen on LinkedIn. The platform has announced new features against fake profiles. According to the company, 115 million members and more than 700,000 businesses have already used its existing verification tools. In future, verified members will also be able to confirm that someone actually worked or studied with them. Technology can therefore check who someone is. Whether their recommendation is sound, however, it cannot check.
Resisting authority is also something that must be practiced. Photo: Dall-E by DIKT
What Aviation Made of It
From accidents like these, aviation developed Crew Resource Management. Its core is simple: anyone in the cockpit who sees a problem must speak up, and keep doing so until the message has landed. Conversely, the captain has a duty to listen. This has little to do with courtesy, because it is quite simply accident prevention.
Four Principles for a Living Speak-Up Culture
- Dissent is not disloyalty. Anyone who questions your decision is not working against you. At best, they are saving you from a mistake.
- The higher you sit, the quieter the opposing voice becomes. Power changes what people tell you. That is why “my door is always open” is not enough. Actively invite dissent, ideally before you share your own opinion.
- Every AI analysis needs a human counterpart. The question is not “What does the system recommend?” Rather, it is “Which assumption lies within it, what is missing, and who signs off on it in the end?”
- Train the act of stopping. That applies to the unusual payment, the board paper, the communication strategy and, equally, the CEO’s decision. Who is allowed to say “stop” in your organisation – and what happens to them afterwards?
The most dangerous leader is not the one who makes mistakes. We all make mistakes, captains included. It only becomes dangerous when nobody is allowed to correct them anymore.
So at your next leadership meeting, ask: “When did you last disagree with me?” Then say nothing. No explanation, no justification of the decision back then.
And if the silence lasts a long time, that is an answer too.
Sources
- National Transportation Safety Board (2000): Controlled Flight Into Terrain, Korean Air Flight 801, Boeing 747-300, HL7468, Nimitz Hill, Guam, August 6, 1997. Aircraft Accident Report NTSB/AAR-00/01.
- Investigation report on the Tenerife disaster, 27 March 1977 (Spanish investigation commission and statement by the Netherlands Aviation Safety Board).
- Gladwell, Malcolm (2008): Outliers: The Story of Success.
- Abrahams, M., Foster, W. et al. (24 September 2026): How AI Is Changing Communication: Weighing Efficiency with Efficacy. HBR IdeaCast, Harvard Business Review.
- LinkedIn Corporate Communications (23 September 2026): LinkedIn expands verification to help members and businesses build trust on and off LinkedIn.
Dr. Nikolai A. Behr CSP® ist Keynote Speaker, Kommunikationsexperte und Medientrainer für Führung, Vertrauen und empathische Kommunikation in Zeiten von Wandel und KI.