Three Meeting Red Flags That Skilled Leaders Notice

Have your meetings become routine? The underlying dynamics of meetings often go unnoticed and unchecked. But savvy leaders run meetings like elite sports coaches choregraph games using a series of plays. These leaders scan for potentially destructive meeting red flags and seize subtle opportunities to enhance team success and individual growth.

In recent years, meeting dynamics have shifted because of the increased frequency of virtual meetings and a corresponding normalization of side chats during in-person, hybrid, and virtual meetings. The widespread presence of distracting electronic tools (such as phones, iPads, and laptops) in face-to-face meetings also makes it difficult for meeting leaders to gauge the attention levels of participants — many of whom erroneously believe they have multitasking superpowers. Finally, the presence of AI tools that monitor real-time interactions as virtual meeting “attendees” and notetakers also alters meeting dynamics.

These dynamics only intensify the challenges of running a productive meeting. Collectively, we’ve observed, evaluated, and led thousands of team discussions over several decades. Based on our observations, experience, and related research, we’ve identified three key roles that the smartest meeting leaders pay attention to, and three red-flag meeting dynamics they notice and address.

Essential Roles a Meeting Leader Must Play

Meeting leaders typically assume three interrelated roles, starting with the most visible one.

• Shaper: Leaders craft agendas, regulate the flow of conversations, and influence decision-making.
• Participant: Like other meeting attendees, leaders share relevant information, express viewpoints, and query others in an attempt to advance discussions.
• Observer: Leaders observe interactions among meeting participants, spot dysfunctional patterns, and detect inflection points in the discussion. This is the least visible role.

Most meeting leaders seamlessly (and unconsciously) shift between these three roles. After all, it’s hard to effectively influence decision-making (shaper role) without detecting discussion inflection points (observer role) or expressing a viewpoint (participant role).

Yet, these seamless shifts can prove challenging for meeting participants, particularly if the person leading it also has hierarchical power. For example, attendees may be confused whether a meeting leader is simply offering a new perspective or adding insight on an issue as a participant, or trying to dominate the decision-making process as a shaper.

Sometimes meeting leaders emphasize one role at the expense of the other two. For instance, some leaders dominate discussions (shaper role), failing to see how their own behavior may be undermining group creativity, perspective-sharing, and buy-in (observer role).

The most skilled and effective meeting leaders often place the greatest emphasis on their observer role. These leaders have a group dynamic “radar” that’s particularly attuned to three common warning signs that a meeting is headed for an unproductive outcome:

1. Pseudo-attentiveness. Think about why judges request that jurors turn off their phones and computers and that they not discuss the case or impressions with fellow jurors until they have heard all the evidence, both sides’ arguments, and rebuttals. These instructions aim to stop jurors from becoming distracted, making hasty judgments, seeking only confirmatory evidence, or overly influencing others who might have differing views.

In most meetings, however, this type of caution gets thrown out the virtual window, as people routinely feign attentiveness. The main cause is the acceptance and legitimization of side chats, which may be visible or invisible to group leaders.1

Side chats distract, setting up competing forces for attention, upsetting the rhythm of collective decision-making, and often encouraging the very kinds of premature deliberations judges seek to limit.

For example, leaders often start a meeting by sharing the decision to be made by the group, before discussing the decision-making process or the benefits and potential costs of the decision.2

One challenge is to get everyone to listen attentively to the entire discussion. If side chatters truly tune in only during the decision announcement portion of the meeting and ignore the rest, they may spawn pockets of resistance to initiatives. This is unfortunate: If these side chatters had heard the whole story, the ideas might have enjoyed broader support. What’s more, leaders need those differing views — to tweak plans, rethink details, or, in some cases, stop an ill-advised initiative.

That’s why savvy leaders monitor group dynamics during meetings to identify those participants who may be visible but not fully engaged: These leaders know meeting attendance does not equate with attentiveness.

2. Marginalized voices. Skilled meeting leaders pay particular attention to people who are not contributing to the discussion. Sometimes a team has conversational hogs who refuse to share the floor, marginalizing the voices of others. But when people self-censor and refuse to take a shot at offering perspectives that differ from the dominant view, it produces the same conversational dynamic. People may rebuff the opportunity to participate because they lack self-confidence, feel unable to fully defend an idea, or make a political calculation about the high costs of raising certain issues. Such silence is not golden. Broad Reach Healthcare CEO Bill Bogdanovich put it this way: “The lack of interactivity and engagement is something that really diminishes the value of getting folks together.”3

In one sense, it doesn’t really matter why some voices aren’t heard. The potentially negative consequences to leaders and their teams are the same. Pushback against initiatives gets driven underground, possibly encouraging resistance or just half-hearted support.

Perhaps most troubling of all, marginalization can contribute to employee disengagement in subtle ways. By all outward appearances, marginalized members may appear to be on the conversational ball court, even though they may never engage with others in the discussion’s ebb and flow as people pass comments around. Less-skilled meeting leaders may well think, “That person had a chance to contribute but didn’t choose to do so.” Such dynamics may breed a sense, among both the leader and colleagues, that a team member’s opinion doesn’t count. In contrast, a skilled leader is able to detect signs that participants are being marginalized. This is an important skill because people who feel like they’re not being heard may quiet quit or choose to take their talents elsewhere.

3. Faux consensus. Consensus is often considered the ideal outcome of discussions. Yet, some meeting leaders manufacture consensus by leaning too far into their shaper role — perhaps restricting information-sharing, signaling power distinctions, and/or invoking artificial time constraints.

Suppressing or discounting certain information may discourage alternative perspectives and cut off lanes of conversational traffic, thereby avoiding opportunities to merge viewpoints. Ditto for invoking power distinctions via remarks like “No need to go down that rabbit hole, because this is what the CEO wants.” Constructing an overpacked agenda, or making comments such as “We have to reach a decision today” or “The deadline looms on,” have a way of forcing decisions. These tactics marginalize other viewpoints, discourage vocal pushback, and shift the discussion in the desired (if Machiavellian) direction toward a predetermined outcome.

The appearance of consensus may well emerge, but the reality is often quite different. In fact, meeting leaders may fool themselves about the degree of support for a decision, but it’s acquiescence, not collaboration. Employees may be nodding their heads in apparent agreement, but their minds left the meeting room long ago. They may begin to voice concerns in side chats, breeding cynicism if not rebellion. Faux consensus deprives the team of learning how to resolve an issue and how to effectively collaborate amid uncertainties. The organization and team will likely be blindsided by competitors willing to grapple with these vagaries instead of artificially manufacturing a consensus.

How to Prevent Destructive Dynamics in Meetings

How can you recognize these red flags as they emerge? How can you take active steps to inhibit these destructive team dynamics? Skilled leaders often do so using these subtle techniques.

1. Pare down the agenda and make generous use of collaborative tools.

In decision-making meetings, aggressive agendas enhance the likelihood that the three red flags will unfurl. People may nod along in a quest to quickly tick off the agenda checkboxes by reaching “agreement,” but perspectives get shut out in the process. The number of agenda items crossed off the list does not equal quality decision-making.

Simple collaborative tools can keep the red flags safely stowed away, plus improve decision-making and enhance buy-in. In face-to-face meetings, we have observed that properly used whiteboards almost magically cultivate group focus while ensuring that all relevant voices — even dissenting ones — are legitimized.

The simple act of writing concerns or summarizing perspectives on a physical or digital whiteboard depersonalizes issues, making them ripe for a problem/opportunity-focused discussion. For larger groups, polling platforms can also help capture input without distraction. Open-ended questions in the voting process enable leaders to acknowledge everyone’s perspectives. This, in turn, builds a culture of respect, if not always agreement or consensus.

2. Detect and engage with preexisting relational networks.

Preexisting professional and personal relationships always influence meeting dynamics, but they profoundly influence side-chat dynamics. After all, who are you going to connect with on the more anonymous channels? Someone you already know. Still, many meeting leaders operate like ostriches with their heads head buried in the sand, blissfully ignoring side chats. In some meetings we’ve observed, leaders assumed that if something was not said during the main meeting, it simply “didn’t count.” This misguided perception sidelines the voices that the leader needs to help advance an initiative — and often leads to unpleasant surprises when a project fails to launch or doesn’t fulfill its potential.

Effective meeting leaders scan discussions with radarlike sweeps, seeking to engage people in differing networks. In other words, these leaders pay extra attention to their own observer role. They make sure they solicit input from at least one person in each of the key network nodes, with simple questions such as “What are your thoughts at this point?” (direct query) or “How do you think the people you regularly interact with will react?” (indirect query). Such open-ended queries help leaders gauge sentiments and learn about unexpected issues.

3. Designate a side-chat wrangler.

People want to be heard, but they often don’t know whether their words will be welcomed or viewed in an understanding light. Because of power and reputational differences within a group meeting, who gives voice to an idea or perspective often overshadows the quality of insights. But smart leaders know that beneficial ideas, or less-valuable ones, can emerge from someone of high or low group status.

Designating someone in the group to corral ideas that might not make it into the primary conversation is one way to mitigate status differences. It also lets the leader legitimize new ideas, disparate sentiments, and fresh perspectives. In turn, the leader sends powerful signals about the value of contributions from everyone in the meeting, regardless of status.

Even people who disagree with the meeting direction value being heard, which means they can begin to offer more reasoned, less emotional debate. Or they can begin to adapt.

An effective side-chat wrangler filters out emotion-laden reactions that often accompany pushback while focusing attention on key issues. Skilled side-chat wranglers serve as a conversational pause button, slowing down people who are pushing for faux consensus and elevating the voices of less vocal participants.

4. Build a supportive middle ground by identifying specific areas of disagreement.

Leaders who pepper their remarks with words like “alignment” or phrases like “Let’s get everybody on the same page” may be exerting subtle political pressure to get meeting participants to conform and suppress pushback. Alignment at the right stage in a discussion or decision-making process makes perfect sense. But too much “alignment” too early in the discussion can lead to trouble.

More savvy leaders recognize that consensus is not always possible or even desirable. It may well be healthier to clearly identify disagreements so that they can be resolved later or through experimentation. After all, lingering doubts may open the door to innovative perspectives or solutions.

Collaboration designed to surface views rather than force a singular viewpoint may, in fact, build a supportive middle ground. When Rick Fantini, retired vice president of HR at packaging company Menasha Corp., sensed a meeting impasse, he would say, “I realize everybody will not totally agree with this path forward, but can we at least say, ‘I can live with this now, until more clarity emerges’?”4 He did not force consensus; he left the door open to tweaks in the future.

5. Set and remind participants about the meeting norms.

Norms will vary by the type of meeting, but setting expectations and boundaries for the discussion and follow-up is key. Some of the more useful ones we’ve noticed skilled leaders use include the following:

• Agree that everyone will read the preparatory material before (not during) the meeting. As Donna Peters, an executive coach for Fortune 50 companies, noted, “When you have three people in the group that did the pre-read and three who did not, you risk faux collaboration. Why? Because those people who were not prepared are not going to admit they didn’t do the homework or even ask relevant questions. Meetings with uneven background knowledge just waste everybody’s time.”5 In short, this norm allows time for people to absorb, contemplate, and question information to arrive at better decisions.
• Query people with dissenting views before you offer rebuttals. People who voice pushback can better accept alternative views if they feel they were heard and understood. This builds a climate of respect, if not complete alignment. Asking questions for clarification may also limit someone from dominating the discussion and encourages participants to think more deeply about vaguely articulated reactions.
• Assign explicit follow-ups at the end of the meeting. As we’ve noted, a cynical or rebellious meeting after the meeting can have toxic effects on an entire group. One of the best ways a leader can avoid this outcome is to channel any negative sentiment into a more productive post-meeting discussion. Simply assigning deliberate and focused post-meeting tasks often does the trick. To properly conclude a meeting, Bogdanovich suggested, “share the key takeaways and who will do what. This encourages clarity about meeting outcomes and creates focus for follow-up meetings.”6

All of these tactics help meeting leaders excel in their linked roles of shaper, participant, and observer and help prevent the three meeting red flags from popping up. The result: The inherent potential of a team’s meetings will be released as you strive to elevate thinking, uplift spirits, and unify people to improve the organization.