What insight does an IC have on what the person at the top even does? I can basically only comment on my interactions with direct management and I otherwise don't know how they spend their day.
That's not important - you're not discussing how to do their job, but what your own view is of your part of the work and those around you. The leader can then synthesize all these views and see if there are any surprises.
(another case similar to "you should listen to a customer when they say there's something wrong with the design of your product, but you should absolutely not pay attention to what they think the solution should be")
By having a 5 min group meeting where only the manager speaks. Manager is not allowed to talk about what direction the team should go and what the team should do. Anything else will give instant insights on whats going on at the isolated top.
