The best things I learned in training: Leaders speak last

I was running a Train the Trainer in Japan for a group of colleagues (it was on applying Self Determination Theory to leadership behaviours) and we were talking about how to create a space where employees can contribute and speak up. In that discussion one of my colleagues shared that in an engineering company he had worked at the rule was when generating ideas, the most senior people in the room (title and tenure) always spoke last

When I dug a little deeper he shared that if the senior people speak first those more junior will not dare / be brave / disrespectful enough to voice a different or divergent idea. And that means missing out on potentially better ideas

And since then I have a) observed that this is broadly true across cultures and b) when the most senior people speak last a very broad range of ideas can be generated

Try it, you'll love the results