Why Your Quietest Person May Have Your Best Idea.
Diverse teams only outperform when someone turns their different views into clear decisions.
Many APAC SMEs hire for varied skills, backgrounds and ways of thinking. That is a sound talent strategy. Yet variety alone does not improve results. In a study of APAC board directors, effectiveness depended less on who sat in the room than on whose thinking shaped the outcome, and how (manuscript under review, 2026). Without skilled facilitation, diversity creates noise instead of clarity.
What the leader of the meeting does
Whoever runs your leadership meeting, whether founder, managing director or chair, carries this role. The research points to three habits.
Draw out quieter voices. Teams where members take roughly equal turns to speak show higher collective intelligence (Woolley et al., 2010).
Make challenge safe. Staff speak up when they believe they will not be punished for it (Edmondson, 1999). Leaders who invite input and show they value it raise that safety (Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006). Safety is what lets people ask the naïve or uncomfortable question.
Manage your own influence. Leaders who show humility, including admitting limits and valuing others’ strengths, tend to build more engaged teams (Owens et al., 2013). Speaking last is a simple tactic. When the leader goes first, others often fall into line.
Try this week
Ask each person for a view before you give yours.
Name one person who rarely speaks and ask for their view directly.
Ask, “What are we missing?” and wait for the answer.
What changes
Better facilitation costs nothing and protects your hiring investment. You paid for a range of views. This is how you get them.
References
Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383.
Manuscript under review. (2026). Opportunity from chaos: How APAC directors navigate open strategy through dialectical thinking and inclusive leadership. California Management Review.
Nembhard, I. M., & Edmondson, A. C. (2006). Making it safe: The effects of leader inclusiveness and professional status on psychological safety and improvement efforts in health care teams. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 27(7), 941–966.
Owens, B. P., Johnson, M. D., & Mitchell, T. R. (2013). Expressed humility in organizations: Implications for performance, teams, and leadership. Organization Science, 24(5), 1517–1538.
Woolley, A. W., Chabris, C. F., Pentland, A., Hashmi, N., & Malone, T. W. (2010). Evidence for a collective intelligence factor in the performance of human groups. Science, 330(6004), 686–688.
