My daughter Bailey is a Captain in the Air Force, and she dropped a phrase on me that I can’t get out of my head: throw spears.
At first, I winced. Spears? That sounds violent. But Bailey explained it with clarity and pride. In her world, it’s not an attack—it’s a ritual. When someone presents a plan or an idea, the rest of the room is expected to challenge it. To find the blind spots. To poke holes before reality does.
It’s basically saying, “Don’t let me walk into failure because you were too polite to speak up.”
That phrase has stayed with me because it nails what every high-performing team should be striving for: a culture where critique isn’t a threat, it’s an expectation. Where poking holes in a plan isn’t rude, it’s respectful. Because when people care about the mission, they want the plan to succeed more than they want your feelings protected.
Throwing spears is how healthy teams say, “Let’s make this stronger together.”
I adopted it immediately. When I was Chief of Police, I started using “throw spears” in command staff meetings. When policies, operational plans, or new initiatives were on the table, I’d ask the room to poke holes. The language gave permission to challenge without apology. It reframed critique as a responsibility, not a risk. And here’s the beautiful part: people leaned into it.
Instead of whispering their doubts in the hallway or nodding in the meeting only to sabotage later, they brought their concerns into the open. That’s when I realized something important: most people do see the flaws in a plan. They just don’t speak up because they don’t want to be labeled negative, difficult, or disloyal. But when you normalize dissent, you give people a safe runway to tell the truth. And truth is always cheaper than failure.
Now I use it everywhere. After my keynotes, when people say “Great job,” I thank them, then ask, “Okay, but where are the spears?” I don’t need polite nods or empty praise. I need to know what didn’t land, what was confusing, and what I completely missed. If I’m going to preach disruption, I’d better be willing to receive it.
And this isn’t just about boardrooms or briefing rooms. My friend Karie does this with her kids. She skips the “spears” language, but the spirit is the same. Every so often, she asks her daughters how she’s doing as a mom. The younger ones predictably request more sweets and later bedtimes. But her oldest cuts deeper: “You don’t always listen to me when I’m talking.”
Ouch. But instead of getting defensive, Karie listens. She adjusts. Because she knows the asking matters just as much as the answer. She’s not just raising kids—she’s building a feedback loop grounded in love and honesty. She’s modeling what it looks like to be challengeable, even in the most personal role of all.
That’s the kind of culture we should strive to build in our organizations. One where feedback isn’t a quarterly HR survey that everyone rushes through in under three minutes. It’s a rhythm. A reflex. Something that happens naturally because people trust they won’t be punished for being honest.
The truth is, leaders tend to overestimate how well things are going because people rarely tell them otherwise. Stanford researchers Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton call it the CEO disease—the higher you climb, the more people sugarcoat. And leaders eat it up because, let’s face it, hearing what’s wrong sucks. Once you know the truth, you can’t unknow it. You lose the safety of plausible deniability.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: ignorance doesn’t protect you. It just delays the fallout.
The best leaders I’ve worked with don’t chase praise. They hunt for problems. They don’t look for reassurance—they look for resistance. They know storms are coming, so they’d rather see the radar than bask under imaginary rainbows.
In fact, research from Harvard Business Review shows that teams that engage in what’s called “task conflict”—disagreement over ideas, plans, and strategies—outperform teams that avoid conflict altogether. Not surprisingly, the same research shows that “relationship conflict” (making it personal, attacking character instead of ideas) tanks performance. In other words, spears thrown at the idea are healthy. Spears thrown at the person are toxic.
Strong leaders get the difference. They invite the tension, they reward the people who say, “I see it differently,” and they model what it looks like to be challengeable.
So here’s the challenge: the next time someone hands you a plan, don’t just nod politely. Don’t offer hollow compliments that make you feel nice but help no one. Throw spears. Not to wound—but to strengthen.
Because disruption doesn’t happen when we tiptoe around the truth. It happens when we care enough to challenge each other into greatness. And criticism, when it comes from a sincere place of caring, is a gift.
If you’re a leader, here’s the hard question: are you challengeable? Do your people trust you enough to throw spears—or are they too busy protecting your ego?
The answer to that question might be the sharpest spear of all.
Keep on disrupting, my fellow disrupters!
If this resonated…
Forward it to someone — Help me grow our tribe of disrupters!
🖤 Onward and upward,
Kristen
