A short spoken segment (from a YouTube talk by Jason M. Lemkin) advising leaders and team members to actively make others comfortable in large meetings so they will speak up. Key tactics: act as an icebreaker by making a comment or question to start discussion, use humor/laughter to lighten the mood, and create a relaxed environment to enable better ideas and performance.
You know, the bigger our teams get, the more people, I think, are often reticent to speak up. Be an icebreaker, even if it's to just make one comment or one question to get things rolling, especially when you're in a brainstorm or something else. Be that icebreaker. It makes other people comfortable. So figure out how to make people around you more comfortable and then everyone relaxes and then you get your best work. It's unusual in our business because we are so going for performance all the time, but if laughter really makes a big difference in lightening the load, and then all of a sudden some amazing comment will come out of somebody because they've relaxed and they can move.
