To lead a meeting, give it structure instead of more content. Ask what the meeting is for in the first 2 minutes, hear from people who haven’t spoken before you share your view, move debates from positions to conditions, state where you’re landing and what would change your mind, and close with the decision, an owner and a date.
Key takeaways
Leading a meeting means deciding what the conversation is for, who needs to be heard and how it ends.
Adding another data point or opinion makes you the expert in the room. The person who shapes the conversation has more influence than the person with the best point in it.
Steven Rogelberg’s work on meetings finds that the benefit you’d expect from putting capable people in a room together fails to show up 85 to 90 percent of the time.
In a study of 699 people, how evenly group members took turns talking predicted how well the group did. The group’s average IQ did not.
A clear position plus the condition that would change your mind invites real disagreement, which Charlan Nemeth’s research links to more original thinking than an assigned devil’s advocate.
When a meeting gets stuck, pay attention to who gets it moving again. Very often that person has said less than anyone else in the room, and what they did say was a question about what the conversation was for. After roughly a decade of working with first-time managers, I see this pattern over and over, and it says a lot about who is leading the room.
What does it mean to lead a meeting?
Leading a meeting means giving it structure: deciding what the conversation is for, who needs to be heard, and how it ends. You don’t need to be the person who sent the invite, and you don’t need the best idea in the room. A typical meeting has plenty of ideas in it. What it’s usually missing is someone to give those ideas a shape.
Steven Rogelberg at UNC Charlotte studies meetings, and he has looked at the research on whether groups solve problems better together than apart. As strategy+business reported, the boost you’d expect from bringing capable people together fails to show up 85 to 90 percent of the time. In the brainstorming studies he reviews, people who talked during the meeting produced fewer and lower-quality ideas than people working on their own.
Here’s what that looks like in practice. A leader is 25 minutes into a 45-minute meeting about a new reporting tool. Two people on her team are going back and forth about features, someone else has started a side conversation about budget, and nobody has said what the meeting is supposed to produce. Her instinct is to jump in with her own view on the tool, which would turn it into a longer argument. Instead she says, “Can I pause us for a second? What are we actually trying to decide today?” After a beat of silence, someone says, “Well, whether we pilot it next quarter.” Half the debate stops mattering right there, since nobody needs to settle every feature to decide on a pilot. They agree to run the pilot, and the meeting ends 10 minutes early.
From the outside, the question looks obvious. From inside the meeting, you’re caught up in a side topic that feels important and has nothing to do with what the group is trying to achieve.
Why does adding your expertise cost you authority in meetings?
Adding expertise in a meeting makes you the expert in the meeting, and the meeting still has nobody leading it. The number 1 behavior I see undercutting a new manager’s authority is trying to prove their value by adding content: another data point, another update, another opinion on the detail everyone is already arguing about.
It makes sense that managers do this. Their expertise, their knowledge and their ability to demonstrate competence are what got them promoted. Sometimes you do have the deepest expertise in the room, and sharing it is the right call. Just know that in that moment you’re playing the expert, and leading the meeting is a separate role. You can play both. You need to know which one you’re playing at any given moment.
What are the 5 lines to use when you lead a meeting?
The 5 lines below follow the order in which they come up: the opening, the discussion, the debate, the decision and the close.
1. “What are we here to decide or to brainstorm?”
Say this in the first 2 minutes. It turns a discussion into a decision, and it gives everyone a test for whether what they’re about to say is relevant. Does this point help us decide whether to run the pilot, or is it a detail that can wait until after we’ve decided?
If nobody can answer, propose an answer yourself: “I think we’re deciding whether to pilot this next quarter. Is that right?” If you didn’t set up the meeting, asking works better than declaring what kind of meeting it is. And if the honest answer is that the meeting isn’t deciding anything, say so, name what it is for (an update, a brainstorm), or ask whether it needs to happen at all.
I got this feedback myself once: “It’d be really helpful if you clarified in the beginning of a meeting if we’re brainstorming or if you’re aiming to make a decision today.” Sometimes I walked into a meeting wanting to leave with a clear decision. Other times I wanted to brainstorm a problem that couldn’t be decided that day. I had the frame in my head, and the rest of the group didn’t. Since then I try to set the frame early, and the difference is easy to see when everyone starts on the same page.
2. “Before I share where I am, I want to hear from people who haven’t spoken yet.”
Once the senior person in the room says what they think, the conversation bends toward it. People who disagree stop talking, and people who were undecided start agreeing with the leader. So hold your view back, speak last, and use the time to bring in the people who haven’t said anything yet.
Be specific about what you’re asking and why you’re asking them: “Sabrina, you’ve worked with this vendor before. What are we missing?” The person who hasn’t spoken often has a piece of information nobody else in the room has. That’s why they were invited.
3. “What would have to be true for this to work?”
This question comes from Roger Martin, the strategy professor who wrote Playing to Win with A.G. Lafley. When two people are dug into opposite positions, arguing harder doesn’t move either of them. Martin’s approach, which he describes in this McKinsey Author Talks interview, is to lay out what would have to be true and then test those conditions.
In a meeting, it sounds like this: “Let’s set aside whether it’s a good idea for a minute. What would have to be true for this to work?” The conversation moves from positions to conditions, and conditions are something you can check. Then ask which condition the group feels shakiest about. That’s where the real conversation is, and that’s where to spend your time. It also works well in a negotiation when the other person is inclined to say no.
4. “Here’s where I’m landing, and here’s what would change my mind.”
At some point, as the senior person in the room, you need to say what you think. This line lets you take a clear position without closing the door completely. People know you’ve made a call, and they know exactly what kind of argument would move you, which is far more useful than a general “Any thoughts on this?”
For example: “Here’s where I’m landing: we pilot with one team. If the integration cost comes in over our budget, I’ll change my mind.”
5. “So we’ve decided X. Who owns it and by when?”
Say this in the last 5 minutes, out loud, with a short pause after it, even when it feels obvious. A meeting that ends with everyone nodding and “we’re good to go” sends people out with different memories of what was agreed. The test is whether everyone could repeat the decision the same way on their way out.
For example: “Okay, so we’re piloting with the design team, Markus owns the setup, and we’ll review results on the 15th. Did I get that right?”
Can you use these lines in a meeting you don’t run?
Yes. Lines 1, 3 and 5 work from any seat, including in your boss’s meetings. Rephrase them slightly: “Can I check what we’re aiming to land today?” or “Before we wrap, can I play back what I think we decided?” Whoever runs the meeting will usually be grateful you said it out loud, and everyone else will appreciate that someone helped the meeting land.
What does the research say about how groups make decisions?
Three findings explain why these lines work. The first comes from Anita Williams Woolley at Carnegie Mellon, with colleagues at MIT and Union College. They put 699 people into groups of 2 to 5 and gave them tasks ranging from visual puzzles to negotiations and brainstorming. The average intelligence of the group and the intelligence of its smartest member did not significantly predict how well the group did. Two things did: how evenly people took turns talking, and how well they read each other. Groups where one person dominated did worse, according to the ScienceDaily summary of the study, published in Science in 2010. That is the case for line 2.
The second is what researchers call the hidden profile. Garold Stasser and William Titus set up group decisions in which each person held some information only they knew, and the better option became clear only if people pooled those unique pieces. The groups spent their time on what everyone already knew and regularly missed the better option (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1985). That’s line 2 again, and it’s why the person who hasn’t spoken matters so much.
The third comes from Charlan Nemeth at UC Berkeley and her colleagues, who compared groups that heard a genuine dissenter with groups that heard someone assigned to play devil’s advocate (European Journal of Social Psychology, 2001). Real dissent produced more original thinking and more consideration of the other side. The devil’s advocate mostly made people dig in on their first position.
That’s line 4. When you state a clear position and attach a condition to it, you invite real disagreement, and people can see what’s settled and where there’s room to push back. Playing devil’s advocate is still a useful tool, but it’s less specific, and it often takes longer to get to the core of the issue because people play devil’s advocate on everything that was up for discussion.
What do you say when someone hijacks a meeting?
Bring the meeting back to its purpose without confronting the person in the room. When someone dominates or takes the meeting on a tangent, say: “Let’s hold that for a second. First, what are we deciding today?” You’re asking them to pause and pointing everyone back to why the meeting exists, and that typically ends the tangent.
When someone reopens a decision that’s already been made, be firm: “We decided that on the 4th. If something’s changed, tell me what, and we’ll look at it after this meeting.” That protects the decision and still leaves a real door open. Decisions can change when new information emerges, and the same information argued again isn’t a reason. If it becomes a pattern, raise it in a one-on-one, not in front of the whole group.
How can your team help land a meeting that’s drifting?
Give your team a phrase anyone can use when a meeting drifts, and set it up in a calm moment, not in the heat of a meeting. For example: “New rule. If anyone feels like we’re circling, say ‘landing gear’ or ‘let’s land the plane.’ Whoever is running the meeting then has to name the decision or wrap up.”
If you come across as assertive, or some people on your team feel a bit intimidated by you, you need to give them the mandate explicitly. It takes the awkwardness out of interrupting. Nobody has to tell a colleague they’re wasting everyone’s time or make a sarcastic joke. They call it, and everyone knows what it means and what happens next.
In practice: a team member says, “Landing gear.” The manager says, “Okay, fair. We’re deciding whether the launch moves to March. Can we do that in the next 5 minutes?” The team member says, “Yes, I think we can if finance signs off on the extra week.” Now the conversation moves to finance, and the meeting can land.
Why do new managers talk more in meetings after a promotion?
Many new managers talk more in meetings than they did before the promotion. Some of that is nerves, and some of it is feeling that you have to prove you deserve the seat by showing your expertise. As an individual contributor, your value in meetings was your content: the analysis, the expertise, the answer. As a leader, your value is the structure you give everyone else’s contributions.
That takes getting used to, because it can feel like you’re contributing less. Your team needs the structure more than it needs another opinion from you. If you notice the room is missing information, treat it as a chance to coach, and expect more of it in the room next time.
Frequently asked questions
What if I’m not the senior person in the room?
Use lines 1, 3 and 5 as questions. “Can I check what we’re aiming to land today?” and “Before we wrap, can I play back what I think we decided?” work in any meeting, including your boss’s.
What if the meeting doesn’t need a decision?
Say so at the start. Name what the meeting is for, such as an update or a brainstorm, and if nobody can name a purpose, ask whether the meeting needs to happen at all.
How do I call on someone without putting them on the spot?
Tie the question to what they know. “You’ve worked with this vendor before, what are we missing?” tells them why you’re asking. If someone regularly seems disengaged or unprepared, raise it with them one-on-one rather than in the room.
When should I share my own opinion?
After the people who haven’t spoken have weighed in, and in the form of line 4: where you’re landing and what would change your mind.
What to try in your next meeting
Say line 1 at the start and line 5 at the end, and say as little as possible in between unless someone asks you directly. Then watch how the meeting goes and how people treat you in it. Afterward, look back at last week: how many of your meetings ended with a decision, an owner and a date?
The free cliff notes for this episode have all 5 lines and the scripts in one place: resources.archova.org/336. If you want to build these habits with coaching and a small group of peers, take a look at the Leadership Accelerator, our 12-week program for new and early-stage managers. You can also schedule a Leadership Strategy Call with me.
