If you are not in a position of authority, then you can help protect troublemakers by making sure they are invited to meetings. And when they do say something that creates disequilibrium, you can choose to be curious: ask them to say more about their idea rather than allow everyone else in the room to ignore them.

An organization’s culture is made up of its folklore (the stories that people frequently tell that indicate what is most important), its rituals (such as how new employees are welcomed into the company), its group norms (including styles of deference and dress codes), and its meeting protocols (like modes of problem solving and decision making).

So before the retreat even begins, provide coaching as needed to discourage the senior authority from engaging in these and other conversation-stopping behaviors. We sometimes use the standard that, if someone were to watch a videotape of the off-site, it would be impossible to tell which person was the senior authority in the group.

Find a low-risk context in which to experience being incompetent.

The difference between a beginner and the master—is that the master practices a whole lot more. —YEHUDI MENUHIN

Adaptive challenges can only be addressed through changes in people’s priorities, beliefs, habits, and loyalties. Making progress requires going beyond any authoritative expertise to mobilize discovery, shedding certain entrenched ways, tolerating losses, and generating the new capacity to thrive anew.

Make Each Word Count In speaking from the heart, make each word count, clearly communicating the one overarching point that you care most about and making one supporting point at a time.

In any meeting in any organization, there are really four meetings taking place at once. First, there is the public, explicit conversation, the ostensible reason for coming together. Second, there is the informal chat, hallway conversation, or premeeting meeting that took place before the meeting but that did not include everyone who was at the

Sometimes, those conversations will reveal that your assumptions about these loyalty groups and their expectations of you are mostly in your head.