A room becomes less honest when every disagreement must first sound like admiration.

Requiring praise before disagreement sounds like courtesy and works like a tax. Once every objection has to be wrapped in admiration, people spend their energy on the wrapping, and the objection arrives softened past the point of usefulness. Some listeners learn to hear only the compliment. Others stop raising things at all, and that version of the problem is the one nobody can see.

Try opening once with the plain thing you think, said kindly and without preamble. If you are the person things are being wrapped for, say out loud that you would rather have it straight.