For engineering or other pragmatic types? Definitely. For those who are used to hard reality and know how to make it fit in a nice way or move on like field sales? Often.

For most everyone else? There is often a need to provide at least some surface ‘here is why everything is not actually super terrible so you should stay’ sugar coating or it is not going to go down well.

The larger the group, the more apparent the effect and I suspect it’s due to lack of trust and/or familiarity with the speaker. If you’ve had your sleeves rolled up and been in the trenches with someone, you either know you can’t trust them already (and in which case, why are you still here?!?), or can trust them well and can see a positive outcome if it works.

If you can’t trust them, it’s just a signal that things are terrible and don’t know how terrible they really are - and what choice does someone have to anchor and assume it’s worse (or maybe a little better).