"you can't reliably avoid having high-stakes situations which you need a meetings which are inevitably going to be high-stakes to address, or that senior developers won't be to a certain degree on the spot in those meetings."
Sure you can. You can send out the problem before the meeting so the developer can think through the issue and make notes before he is put on the spot. You can also help the developer during the meeting by simply making the meeting positive instead of negative.
"You don't always have the luxury of making decisions in the way you'd prefer without paying a cost."
Snap decisions are often bad decisions. If you need to make a very important decision in a hurry it means someone already made a mistake in not considering this issue earlier. That happens, but you need to realize that the resulting decision is highly unlikely to be a good decision, let alone optimal. A mark of a good team is being able to avoid these kind of situations through research and planning.
Again, I'll go back to the same point: if you have created an atmosphere in a meeting that is causing people to freeze up due to high stress, you need to fix your meetings. There is something very wrong.
Sure you can. You can send out the problem before the meeting so the developer can think through the issue and make notes before he is put on the spot. You can also help the developer during the meeting by simply making the meeting positive instead of negative.
"You don't always have the luxury of making decisions in the way you'd prefer without paying a cost."
Snap decisions are often bad decisions. If you need to make a very important decision in a hurry it means someone already made a mistake in not considering this issue earlier. That happens, but you need to realize that the resulting decision is highly unlikely to be a good decision, let alone optimal. A mark of a good team is being able to avoid these kind of situations through research and planning.
Again, I'll go back to the same point: if you have created an atmosphere in a meeting that is causing people to freeze up due to high stress, you need to fix your meetings. There is something very wrong.