When Harvard Business School Associate Professor Francesca Gino invites high-powered business leaders to address her class, she often observes an interesting phenomenon. The guest speakers announce that they are just as interested in learning from the students as teaching them, and encourage them to ask questions and make comments. In reality, however, the speakers often do the opposite—dominating the time and not allowing for much discussion at all.
Surprisingly, however, the best groups were those who had formal leaders not influenced ahead of time to feel powerful—they solved the mystery nearly 80 percent of the time.
[This article was provided with permission from Harvard Business School Working Knowledge.]