If a person with power speaks, they tend to set the tone for the rest of the discussion. So you don't want the... — Ed Catmull

If a person with power speaks, they tend to set the tone for the rest of the discussion. So you don't want them to speak at the beginning.

Author: Ed Catmull

Insight: There's something almost invisible about how power works in a room. When the boss speaks first, they don't just share their opinion—they accidentally create invisible boundaries around what seems possible to say next. Everyone else is now responding to them, not thinking freely. It's like they've drawn the first line on a blank canvas, and suddenly everyone else is painting within its borders instead of imagining their own. This matters in meetings, family dinners, creative projects, anywhere people are supposed to think together. If you want genuine ideas rather than flattery or safe agreement, you need the people without power to go first. They can be weird, half-baked, even contradictory—and that's the point. Their messier thinking gives others permission to do the same. Once that happens, the person with power can actually learn something instead of just hearing echoes of what they already think. The counterintuitive part: letting others lead doesn't mean the powerful person has less influence. It means they have better information to influence with. You get smarter conversations, better decisions, and people who feel genuinely heard rather than managed. That's actually stronger than dominance.

Source: Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration, p. 96, 2014