And as a reviewer, I felt I needed to choose my words carefully in front of such a big crowd, which meant I couldn’t be as casual and direct as I would have liked.

In my experience, it’s unlikely that the structure of a decision meeting makes it a good forum for generating ideas.

Can you rally the troops for a spectacular gambit? Can you brainstorm some MacGyver-esque tactics to get you out of your tricky bind? Can you roll up your sleeves and pitch in on making cold calls or selling glasses of lemonade?

What kinds of challenges are interesting to you and why? Can you describe a favorite project? This tells me what a candidate is passionate about. What do you consider your greatest strengths? What would your peers agree are your areas of growth? This question gets both at a candidate’s self-awareness and what his actual strengths and weaknesses mig

“I want to learn to become a better presenter, so I’d be grateful if you kept an eye out for opportunities where I can get in front of others.

One example I think of is Sheryl Sandberg admitting in her book Lean In that she was so worried what her colleagues might think of her leaving work at 5:00 p.m. that she’d sneakily exit the building when no one was watching. Another

People feel that their side wasn’t presented well, so they don’t trust the resulting decision. Decisions take a long time to make, which delays progress. While important and hard-to-reverse decisions deserve deep consideration, be wary of spending too much time on small, easy-to-reverse decisions. Decisions keep flip-flopping back and forth, which

When a beloved manager on my team, Robyn Morris, left after many years to pursue a different passion, I was talking with one of his successors about how much we all missed him and deeply felt his absence.

The power of diversity helps our team avoid biases, make better decisions, and think more creatively.