Ask CEOs what they spend most time doing and the answer is always the same: attending meetings.

Then ask how much time they devote to improving their meeting skills and you’ll get blank looks. We spend most of our time on an activity we were never trained for.

What happens in most meetings? The most senior person — who usually called the meeting — sits at the head of a table. Others drift in. If you’re lucky, you start only 5 or 10 minutes late. The issue, problem or question is identified, and then the ritual begins. Just like some people at school always sat in the front row, some in meetings always speak first — and there will always be the laggards who wait to see how the wind is blowing. And then there are what psychologists call the ‘social loafers’ — the individuals who always turn up and contribute nothing. For half an hour or more, a vast amount of second-guessing occurs, as everyone gropes for the answer that will receive the leader’s blessing.

What’s wrong with this picture? Well, first of all, meetings are expensive. If 6 people are 10 minutes late, the firm’s lost an hour of productive labor. Then, there’s rarely much conflict (a topic for a later post). The range of options proposed tends to be pretty narrow and everyone leaves less energetic than they arrived. But the biggest problem of all is the boss, the person who called the meeting. Because his or her presence alone encourages everyone to compete for attention and approval. Whether we like it or not, leaders set an invisible agenda which implicitly curtails thought and exploration.

I’ve seen two relatively successful attempts at combating this. Donna Shirley, who ran NASA’s only successful mission to Mars, always made a point of not sitting at the head of the table. She wanted to be part of the team, not its focal point. Her highly collaborative style was controversial within NASA — but it worked.

If anyone’s more impressive than Shirley, it may be Mona Eliassen, CEO of the Eliassen Group. Eliassen doesn’t chair her own meetings; she gets a facilitator or someone else in the business to do it. Monthly and quarterly management meetings are run by someone from outside the company who has no power to make the final decision; that’s left up to the team. But more often, because she suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome, she doesn’t turn up at all. She has devoted years to developing her leadership team, and she expects them to be able to find solutions that secure everyone’s support.

One of the mistakes I see leaders make most often (and that I know I’ve been guilty of) is to underestimate the power of one’s own presence. This has nothing to do with charisma. If you’re the most senior person in the room, people will defer to you, and that usually means they’ll think less. So if you have a very hard problem to solve, call a meeting — and don’t turn up. You may be dazzled by the results.