The first of the "17 beliefs Things I Believe" is "Sometimes The Best Management is No Management at All." I was reminded of it by a reader named Sandy who asked "I wonder what we can tell to leaders about how to be less intimidating, even when their influence on subordinates is unintentional?"  A damn good question, and one answer -- and I would love to hear others -- is that sometimes the best thing a person that high status leaders can do is to physically remove themselves from the setting so that their mere presence doesn't stifle the thinking and suggestions in a group of otherwise similar-status peers. 

Two examples come to mind quickly.  First, and most famously, was what happened in October of 1962 when President John F. Kennedy's advisers were debating about what to do about the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the Soviet Union was taking steps to place missiles topped with nuclear weapons just 90 miles from Florida.  Kennedy not only gathered experts with diverse opinions and knowledge and encouraged them to express their opinion. As Irving Janis reports in his writings on Groupthink, at one point, Kennedy divided the larger group (pictured above) into multiple sub-groups and asked each to develop solutions -- in order to avoid excessive and premature consensus. Kennedy also reduced the potentially stifling effects of his status as president by being deliberately absent from these subgroup meetings,  Although historians and psychologists continue to debate how important such measures to avoid groupthink were for producing the decisions that ultimately defused the crisis, I think that the more general lesson holds: sometimes the best way for a leader to reduce undue influence is to leave the room or avoid going to meetings where his or her presence will dampen frank discussion and deep examination of facts.