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[00:00:23] Have you ever walked into a meeting prepared and realized within the first few minutes that everyone else seemed to be having a conversation you hadn't been part of? You've done the work, you've read the papers, you've thought through the risks, you know what you want to say. You may even have rehearsed the difficult parts in your head on the way in, and yet almost immediately, something feels off. A comment is made that seems to carry more weight than it should. Someone refers to a concern as though everyone already knows about it. A person you expected to be undecided sounds strangely certain. Another person supports the idea before it's really been discussed, and you find yourself trying to catch up. Not with the content, you understand the content, with the conversation beneath the conversation.

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[00:01:53] I've heard women describe this experience in many different ways. They'll say, "I felt like I was behind before I even opened my mouth," or, "It was as if everybody already knew what the real issue was," or, "I thought we were there to discuss it, but it seemed like the decision had already been made." Sometimes that's literally true. Sometimes the decision has effectively been made elsewhere, but often it's more subtle than that. The formal decision may still be open. The options may genuinely still be on the table.

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[00:03:49] We imagine the persuasive argument, the compelling presentation, the person who commands the room. We picture influence as a performance, something visible, something happening in the moment. But much of the influence that shapes a meeting has happened before anyone sits down, before the agenda is opened, before the first slide appears, before the person chairing the meeting says, "Right, shall we get started?"

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[00:05:00] The room has already had time to become familiar with it. People have already heard parts of the thinking. They've had space to ask questions privately. They've been able to absorb the idea without the pressure of responding publicly. By the time it appears in the meeting, it doesn't feel new. It feels considered. And familiar ideas often feel safer than unfamiliar ones.

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[00:05:58] Not necessarily better, just earlier. They've been preparing the people, not just the material. And I want to be careful here because this is often the point where women recoil. They think, "So I'm supposed to lobby people now? Do I have to become calculating? Is this just another way of saying I need to play politics?"

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[00:06:44] But that's not the whole story. Often, what's happening is far more human. People are trying to reduce uncertainty. They're trying to understand the implications. They're making sense of something before they're asked to take a position in front of other people. That's not necessarily sinister. It's how human beings process risk. We like time to think. We like to test ideas. We like to know whether someone else sees what we see. And the more important the decision, the more likely these conversations are to happen. The difficulty arises when some people understand this process instinctively, and others believe the formal meeting is the only conversation that counts.

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[00:08:05] In the last episode, we explored the hidden structures operating inside organizations. The formal structure you can see on the organization chart, and the informal network built through trust, credibility, relationships, and reputation. We talked about learning to see the system before rushing to navigate it. Today, we're going to move one step further because once you recognize that influence travels through relationships, another question becomes unavoidable.

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[00:09:18] One of the biggest myths about influence is that it's something one person does to another. We imagine influence as persuasion, someone making the compelling argument, delivering the perfect presentation, finding exactly the right words, and sometimes that happens. But if you've ever watched how important decisions are really made inside organizations, you'll notice something different.

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[00:10:49] In organizational psychology, we sometimes talk about uncertainty reduction. Whenever uncertainty increases, people naturally seek out information. Not just facts, but perspective, reassurance, alternative viewpoints, context. We look for the signals that help us understand whether our thinking is sound. That's a deeply human response. The interesting thing is that we often imagine everyone else makes decisions rationally while we make them relationally.

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[00:12:14] Competence remains essential, but competence only answers one question, "Can this person do the work?" Leadership decisions ask many more. "Do I trust their judgment? How do they respond under pressure? Will they bring people with them? Can they navigate uncertainty?" These questions can't be answered by a report. They're answered through accumulated experience, through repeated interactions, through hundreds of small observations over time.

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[00:13:16] Nobody announces that shift. There isn't a ceremony, no certificate arrives. It simply becomes true. And because it happens so gradually, we often don't notice it happening at all. We assume influence belongs to naturally charismatic people or people who are particularly confident or particularly extroverted. When you look more closely, something else is often going on. People aren't responding to confidence. They're responding to familiarity, to consistency, to trust that has been built over time.

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[00:14:40] It feels recognizable, and recognizable ideas often require less psychological effort to support. This is why the person introducing the idea in the meeting isn't always the person who created the momentum. Sometimes they're simply the visible part of a much longer conversation. Again, I want to pause here because it's very easy to hear this and conclude that organizations are somehow dishonest I don't think that's the right conclusion. Messy? Often. Human? Always.

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[00:16:06] That's a profound difference because once you understand that, the purpose of the meeting begins to change. Instead of seeing it as the place where influence begins, you begin to see it as the place where influence becomes visible. The real work has often been happening much earlier, not in secret, not through manipulation, but through ordinary human conversations, questions, curiosity, sense-making, the kind of conversations people have every day because they're trying to make good decisions.

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[00:17:03] I sometimes think about organizations as having two conversations running all the time. There's the formal conversation, that's the one with the agenda, the meeting invitation, the PowerPoint slides, the minutes, the decision paper. It's visible, it's structured, recorded. But alongside it sits another conversation, one that's much harder to see. It's made up of curiosity, questions, small moments of connection. Someone stopping by your desk and saying, "Can I get your thoughts on something?"

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[00:18:08] They probably weren't asking you to make the decision. They were asking you to help them think. That's what these conversations are for, sense-making. And sense-making is one of the most important things human beings do together. Because before we can decide, we usually need to understand. We need to work out what something means, whether it's risky, whether it aligns with what we already know, whether other people are seeing the same things we are.

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[00:19:12] At first glance, that can feel deeply unfair. You might conclude that quality doesn't matter or that politics has won again. But often, something much simpler has happened. One proposal entered the room as an idea, the other entered as a familiar conversation. One asked people to begin thinking, the other asked people to continue thinking. Those aren't the same thing. Human beings generally find it easier to continue a conversation than to start one. It doesn't mean the second idea is better. It means it's already had time to settle, to gather questions, to become less unfamiliar. One of the hidden assumptions many of us carry is that fairness means everyone should encounter an idea for the first time at exactly the same moment. That's almost never how organizations work. Not because anyone is trying to exclude people, because work is continuous, conversations overlap, projects evolve, relationships develop, ideas mature gradually.

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[00:21:10] They wait until the meeting to contribute, until the presentation to explain their thinking, until the decision point to ask important questions. All perfectly reasonable. If you believe the meeting is where the conversation begins. But what if it isn't? What if the meeting is simply where everyone's individual thinking becomes collective thinking?

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[00:22:30] That's political intelligence. Not manipulating the conversation, but understanding the conversation that's already unfolding. Because once you can recognize where conversations begin, you stop treating meetings as isolated events. You begin seeing them as one moment in a much longer chain of meaning-making. And when you see that, you also begin to recognize something else. The people with the greatest influence aren't necessarily the people talking the most. They're often the people helping others make sense of uncertainty before certainty is expected, and that's a very different kind of influence.

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[00:24:03] They're not the same thing. Political maneuvering is about controlling outcomes. Sense-making is about understanding them. One asks, "How do I get people onto my side?" The other asks, "What are people seeing that I haven't seen yet?" One begins with persuasion, the other begins with curiosity, and curiosity is where I think influence becomes much more ethical and more effective.

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[00:25:29] They've had their questions heard, their concerns acknowledged, their experience respected, and perhaps most importantly, they've had time to make the idea partly their own. That's how collaboration works, not through surprise, through participation.

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[00:26:16] I'm talking about something much quieter, much more generous, much more aligned with thoughtful leadership. It's the difference between saying, "Here's my idea," and asking, "Can we think about this together?" One positions you as the owner of the answer. The other positions you as someone genuinely interested in making the thinking stronger. The irony is the second approach often creates far more influence than the first because people don't feel managed, they feel respected, they feel included. Their intelligence is being invited into the conversation rather than bypassed.

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[00:27:44] That's not networking, that's relationship. And organizations run on relationships, not because people are playing favorites, but because trust is one of the ways human beings manage complexity. When the environment is uncertain, we naturally turn towards people whose judgment we've come to respect, not because they're always right, but because they've earned our confidence.

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[00:28:37] And perhaps that's the biggest shift I'd like to offer today. What if influence isn't something you build in the meeting or even for the meeting? What if influence is simply the accumulated result of hundreds of ordinary conversations handled with curiosity, integrity, and genuine interest in understanding other people? That's a very different picture. It doesn't ask you to become someone more political. It asks you to become someone more connected. Not connected in the sense of knowing more people, connected in the sense of understanding people, understanding how they think, what matters to them, what concerns them, what they're trying to achieve.

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[00:29:58] One of the things I've learned over the years is that leadership development often makes change feel much bigger than it needs to be. We talk about becoming more influential, building our executive presence, developing strategic relationships. And while all of those things matter, they can also feel overwhelming, especially if you've spent your career believing that good work should speak for itself.

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[00:30:41] The next time you're preparing for an important meeting, I'd like you to ask yourself one question: who would benefit from thinking about this before we're all sitting around the table? Not because you want to persuade them, but because you want to understand them. Maybe it's someone who's likely to be affected by the decision. Maybe it's someone whose judgment you respect. Maybe it's someone who always noticed risks that you overlook. Or perhaps it's someone who sees the organization from a completely different perspective. Then simply have a conversation. Not a presentation, not a rehearsal, a conversation.

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[00:31:44] Notice what happens when you approach the conversation with curiosity rather than certainty. Notice what you learn. Notice how your own thinking evolves, because something interesting happens when we stop treating preparation as something we do alone. Our ideas become stronger, not because we've defended them more effectively, but because we've allowed them to be shaped by other people's thinking.

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[00:33:00] But when you've already had one or two thoughtful conversations, that pressure softens. You're no longer carrying the whole idea by yourself. You've already tested it. You've already discovered where people have questions. You've already learned which parts resonate and which parts need more thinking. The meeting becomes less about defending your position and more about continuing a conversation that's already begun, and that's a much lighter place to lead from.

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[00:34:35] And sometimes the most influential thing you can do isn't speaking more persuasively in the meeting. It's asking one thoughtful question to one trusted person a few days beforehand. That single conversation might not change the outcome, but it will almost certainly change your understanding. And understanding is where influence begins.

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[00:35:45] As we finish today, I'd like to leave you with one final thought. The easiest conversations to notice are the ones we can hear, the meeting, the presentation, the debate, the decision. They're visible, they're scheduled, they feel important. But some of the most influential conversations inside an organization leave no record at all.

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[00:37:14] That doesn't mean you need to be part of every conversation. It doesn't mean you suspend your days trying to influence everyone around you. In fact, it's quite the opposite. It means you can become much more intentional. You begin asking yourself, where are the conversations that genuinely matter? Who might help me see something I haven't seen? How can I enter these conversations with curiosity rather than certainty? Those are very different questions from how do I get people to agree with me? Because ultimately, influence isn't about getting your own way. It's about helping better thinking emerge.

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[00:38:29] Some people seem to read these invisible currents almost instinctively. They know when a room is ready to move. They notice what isn't being said. They sense shifts before they become obvious. It's almost though they're reading something everyone else is missing. In our next episode, that's exactly what we're going to explore. Because one of the most underrated leadership capabilities isn't speaking, it's reading the room. Until then, don't just pay attention to what happens in the meeting. Pay attention to what happens before anyone sits down. You might discover that's where influence has been quietly beginning all along.

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