Brad gathered the pirates in Pixar’s theater and told them that although a bunch of bean counters and corporate suits might not believe in them, he did. After rallying them he went out of his way to seek out their ideas. “I want people who are disgruntled because they have a better way of doing things and they are having trouble finding an avenue,” Brad told me. “Racing cars that are just spinning their wheels in a garage rather than racing. You open that garage door, and man, those people will take you somewhere.” The pirates rose to the occasion, finding economical alternatives to expensive techniques and easy workarounds for hard problems. When it came time to animate the superhero family, they didn’t toil over the intricate contours of interlocking muscles. Instead they figured out that sliding simple oval shapes against one another could become the building blocks of complex muscles.

When I asked Brad how he recognized the value of pirates, he told me it was because he is one. Growing up, when he went to dinner at friends’ houses, he was taken aback by the polite questions their parents asked about their day at school. Bird family dinners were more like a food fight, where they all vented, debated, and spoke their minds. Brad found the exchanges contentious but fun, and he brought that mentality into his first dream job at Disney. From an early age, he had been mentored and trained by a group of old Disney masters to put quality first, and he was frustrated that their replacements—who now supervised the new generation at the studio—weren’t upholding the same standards. Within a few months of launching his animation career at Disney, Brad was criticizing senior leaders for taking on conventional projects and producing substandard work. They told him to be quiet and do his job. When he refused, they fired him.

I’ve watched too many leaders shield themselves from task conflict. As they gain power, they tune out boat-rockers and listen to bootlickers. They become politicians, surrounding themselves with agreeable yes-men and becoming more susceptible to seduction by sycophants. Research reveals that when their firms perform poorly, CEOs who indulge flattery and conformity become overconfident. They stick to their existing strategic plans instead of changing course—which sets them on a collision course with failure.

We learn more from people who challenge our thought process than those who affirm our conclusions. Strong leaders engage their critics and make themselves stronger. Weak leaders silence their critics and make themselves weaker. This reaction isn’t limited to people in power. Although we might be on board with the principle, in practice we often miss out on the value of a challenge network.

In one experiment, when people were criticized rather than praised by a partner, they were over four times more likely to request a new partner. Across a range of workplaces, when employees received tough feedback from colleagues, their default response was to avoid those coworkers or drop them from their networks altogether—and their performance suffered over the following year.

Some organizations and occupations counter those tendencies by building challenge networks into their cultures. From time to time the Pentagon and the White House have used aptly named “murder boards” to stir up task conflict, enlisting tough-minded committees to shoot down plans and candidates. At X, Google’s “moonshot factory,” there’s a rapid evaluation team that’s charged with rethinking proposals: members conduct independent assessments and only advance the ones that emerge as both audacious and achievable. In science, a challenge network is often a cornerstone of the peer-review process. We submit articles anonymously, and they’re reviewed blindly by independent experts. I’ll never forget the rejection letter I once received in which one of the reviewers encouraged me to go back and read the work of Adam Grant. Dude, I am Adam Grant.

When I write a book, I like to enlist my own challenge network. I recruit a group of my most thoughtful critics and ask them to tear each chapter apart. I’ve learned that it’s important to consider their values along with their personalities—I’m looking for disagreeable people who are givers, not takers. Disagreeable givers often make the best critics: their intent is to elevate the work, not feed their own egos. They don’t criticize because they’re insecure; they challenge because they care. They dish out tough love.*

Ernest Hemingway once said, “The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof sh*t detector.” My challenge network is my sh*t detector. I think of it as a good fight club. The first rule: avoiding an argument is bad manners. Silence disrespects the value of your views and our ability to have a civil disagreement.

Brad Bird lives by that rule. He has legendary arguments with his long-standing producer, John Walker. When making The Incredibles, they fought about every character detail, right down to their hair—from how receding the hairline should be on the superhero dad to whether the teenage daughter’s hair should be long and flowing. At one point, Brad wanted the baby to morph into goo, taking on a jellylike shape, but John put his foot down. It would be too difficult to animate, and they were too far behind schedule. “I’m just trying to herd you toward the finish,” John said, laughing. “I’m just trying to get us across the line, man.” Pounding his fist, Brad shot back: “I’m trying to get us across the line in first place.”

Eventually John talked Brad out of it, and the goo was gone. “I love working with John, because he’ll give me the bad news straight to my face,” Brad says. “It’s good that we disagree. It’s good that we fight it out. It makes the stuff stronger.”

Those fights have helped Brad win two Oscars—and made him a better learner and a better leader. For John’s part, he didn’t flat-out refuse to animate a gooey baby. He just told Brad he would have to wait a little bit. Sure enough, when they got around to releasing a sequel to The Incredibles fourteen years later, the baby got into a fight with a raccoon and transformed into goo. That scene might be the hardest I’ve ever seen my kids laugh.

DON’T AGREE TO DISAGREE

Hashing out competing views has potential downsides—risks that need to be managed. On the first Incredibles film, a rising star named Nicole Grindle had managed the simulation of the hair, watching John and Brad’s interactions from a distance. When Nicole came in to produce the sequel with John, one of her concerns was that the volume of the arguments between the two highly accomplished leaders might drown out the voices of people who were less comfortable speaking up: newcomers, introverts, women, and minorities. It’s common for people who lack power or status to shift into politician mode, suppressing their dissenting views in favor of conforming to the HIPPO—the HIghest Paid Person’s Opinion. Sometimes they have no other choice if they want to survive.

To make sure their desire for approval didn’t prevent them from introducing task conflict, Nicole encouraged new people to bring their divergent ideas to the table. Some voiced them directly to the group; others went to her for feedback and support. Although Nicole wasn’t a pirate, as she found herself advocating for different perspectives she became more comfortable challenging Brad on characters and dialogue. “Brad is still the ornery guy who first came to Pixar, so you have to be ready for a spirited debate when you put forward a contrary point of view.”

The notion of a spirited debate captures something important about how and why good fights happen. If you watch Brad argue with his colleagues—or the pirates fight with one another—you can quickly see that the tension is intellectual, not emotional. The tone is vigorous and feisty rather than combative or aggressive. They don’t disagree just for the sake of it; they disagree because they care. “Whether you disagree loudly, or quietly yet persistently put forward a different perspective,” Nicole explains, “we come together to support the common goal of excellence—of making great films.”

After seeing their interactions up close, I finally understood what had long felt like a contradiction in my own personality: how I could be highly agreeable and still cherish a good argument. Agreeableness is about seeking social harmony, not cognitive consensus. It’s possible to disagree without being disagreeable. Although I’m terrified of hurting other people’s feelings, when it comes to challenging their thoughts, I have no fear. In fact, when I argue with someone, it’s not a display of disrespect—it’s a sign of respect. It means I value their views enough to contest them. If their opinions didn’t matter to me, I wouldn’t bother. I know I have chemistry with someone when we find it delightful to prove each other wrong.

Agreeable people don’t always steer clear of conflict. They’re highly attuned to the people around them and often adapt to the norms in the room. My favorite demonstration is an experiment by my colleagues Jennifer Chatman and Sigal Barsade. Agreeable people were significantly more accommodating than disagreeable ones—as long as they were in a cooperative team. When they were assigned to a competitive team, they acted just as disagreeably as their disagreeable teammates.