If the buck stops with you, how do you reconcile with the fact that you want your people to own their role and feel empowered to use their creative thinking within that role? I've got good news: you do not have to give up your power in order to grant power to others.

Are your group or team conversations truly reflecting the full range of thinking happening inside the heads of those in the room? It needs to if you are to truly harness the collective intelligence potential that is greater than the smartest people in the room would be alone. (And this is not a given, by the way.)

There is one question you can ask that will help you actually hear the truth right then and there from the people who have information or perspectives that you can't yet see.

I recently offered to help a community group I'm a part of to prepare for an upcoming meeting that promised to be potentially divisive. Having facilitated groups in dialogue and decision making for years, I knew how to approach this in a way that would address both the human need for the inclusion side of things, as well as the tactical, how-do-we-move-forward side of things.

I received a "thanks but no thanks" response to my offer. I didn't trust that the reasons given for not wanting my support were the real reasons, even if the real reasons remained unconscious to the decision makers.

Even though being inclusive is a popular leadership trait these days, there are still reasons that leaders don't ask for input. Whether you're a leader feeling hesitant about seeing what everyone thinks of your idea, or you're an individual contributor wondering why your leader never asks, here are my thoughts.

One of my early coaches used to say to me that his main goal was to show me how to coach myself. I haven't forgotten this inspiring vision, and it has integrated with my thinking to this day. But even though I have learned how to coach myself, without a coach in front of me, there are many thought patterns that I bail out of instead of doing the hard thinking that would require holding my own feet to the fire.

Have you been in an important meeting during which you sat on the edge of your seat, trying to jump in at the right time, only to – when you finally do – get the floor swept away again by someone else? This is stressful and anxiety-provoking, and these emotions have the negative effect of impeding our best thinking.

Besides a few bobs, I've had long hair most of my life. I have spent years trying myriad ways to keep my hair out of my face, It might be a combination of having a relatively small forehead and a habit of slightly tucking my chin down that caused my hair to fall in my face very easily. Even just seeing it in my peripheral vision bugged me!

Most teams have experienced a moment in which a team member throws a wrench into the conversation. A "yeah, but" kind of offering. It might be a warning of what's to come, the lingering dissatisfaction with a past decision, or simply an alternative perspective of the topic at hand.

In The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge illuminates the key to achieving personal mastery. I think of personal mastery as becoming the best version of ourselves. It doesn't mean that we don't have more to work on (we always do). It does mean that we get to master-level effectiveness in knowing ourselves and knowing how to achieve that which we intend to achieve.

If meetings have been a drag in 2021, and you're resigned to the fact that there are too many, the five tips below will help you make your meetings more productive and efficient so you can have fewer of them.