A DV E RT I S E M E N T

Hard Truths About the Meeting

After the Meeting
Leaders must encourage respectful debate during meetings and use related
strategies to avoid toxic post-meeting dynamics.

Phillip G. Clampitt • May 06, 2024 Reading Time: 13 min

Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images

A leader attempting to quash the meeting after the

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opining, snarking, or rejoicing after a big game. The hard
truth: Win or lose, there will be post-meeting
speculations, opinions, and queries. As Dave Kievet, CEO
of the Boldt Group, put it, “The meeting after the
meeting is inevitable. The only question is whether you
are going to participate in that conversation or not.” But
leaders can minimize the mischief and mayhem that the
meeting after the meeting can create, and positively
influence the group’s ongoing dialogues about
initiatives, performance, and work climate.

We’ve all experienced the meeting after the meeting —

when several participants informally (and often
spontaneously) carry on a candid, sensemaking
conversation about the meeting they just attended.
These unplanned gatherings tend to be freewheeling
because participants perceive the stakes to be lower
than speaking up during the formal meeting. People
assume minimal reputational costs and diminished
accountability. So tolerance for fuzzily formed
opinions/arguments becomes heightened as they seek
to frame or categorize the uncertainties and unstated
sentiments inherent in any formal meeting.1 For
instance, if the leader made an insensitive joke,
participants may ponder whether it was designed to
insult or was just a poor attempt to break the ice.
Checking in with others afterward may help people
make sense of the unspoken and perhaps unintended
motive for the leader’s remark.
Leaders must understand that the meeting after the
meeting often generates moments of clarification,
grousing, or pushback. In turn, these outcomes cultivate
workplace climates ranging from supportive to toxic, as
in these three examples:

• Sharing a backstory on a new initiative may produce

enough clarity that others in the informal post-meeting
meeting get reassured and on board. On the flip side,
attacking a person’s character, questioning someone’s
motives, or spreading rumors may bring clarity to some
people but undermine workplace culture.

• In the military, grousing, often punctuated with a few

choice expletives, frequently enhances team solidarity.
However, grousing taken to the extreme can gnaw away
at the working environment by legitimizing constant
grumbling and persistent disenchantment while
escalating levels of disengagement.

• In some cases, the search for clarity and a tolerance

for grousing evolve into a steady stream of pushback.
When a leader presents an organizational policy,
directive, or decision, resistance can take many forms,
ranging from voicing concerns and raising questions to
active opposition and sabotage.2 Devil’s advocates can
use the meeting after the meeting to spread rumors,
sow doubt, and undermine leaders, unleashing
demonlike waves of resistance. But leaders can also
skillfully use a devil’s advocate’s pushback to tweak
policies for the better and ease implementation of the
decision at hand.
Through decades of C-suite observations, executive
interviews, and research, I’ve identified the most
common ways leaders push team dynamics and culture
in a toxic direction. Let’s explore five strategies to help
leaders transform these post-meeting dynamics in a
positive way.

How Leaders Leave the

Meeting Room Door Open
to Trouble
Leaders may unwittingly contribute to toxic post-
meeting undercurrents. Consider whether any of the
following meeting behaviors sound familiar.

Spraying and praying. The “spray and pray” approach

in a meeting rests on the flawed notion that sharing
more information is better. The problem: People can
connect the information dots in any number of ways,
which can set off multiple discussions outside the
meeting. In contrast, effective leaders share information
and connect the dots to help people make sense of it.

At one
construction
firm, an
extensive study
of regular
meetings among
executives, division heads, and team leaders prompted a
big change. Their responses to one question proved
revealing: “What three words best describe meetings at
the company?” The winner, by a landslide, was
“informative,” followed by “repetitive” and “redundant.”
This sparked a discussion: Was the primary role of most
meetings to be merely informative? The executive team
decided that meetings should instead be used to seek
clarification, facilitate sensemaking, and encourage
respectful debate. Otherwise, the leaders would
inadvertently relegate those discussions to the meetings
after the meeting.

Ignoring aspirational differences. Leaders often bring

together a group of participants with diverse historical,
technical, and aspirational backgrounds, hoping to
integrate various perspectives into a decision. Yet
leaders must remember that these differing
backgrounds mean people will have different concerns
about a proposal. In one university meeting, a new policy
about limiting ad hoc hiring was briefly announced as a
“cost-saving effort.” Senior faculty members took the
news at face value. But in subsequent meetings after the
meeting, junior faculty members turned to senior faculty
members and asked, “What’s really going on here? Do I
have to be concerned about my position, too?” The
junior faculty members were attempting to make sense
of the initiative by tapping into historical background
and their own job security anxieties.

Normalizing faux queries. Leaders can easily

overestimate the degree of understanding, alignment,
and buy-in to a decision when they simultaneously
solicit and limit questions, as in these examples:

• A manager rolled out a departmental reorganization

during a 30-minute meeting. They spent 25 minutes
outlining the plan and rationale and wrapped up with
this: “I have only five minutes for any of your questions.”

• A division leader shared a new work-at-home policy

with their team. They ended the discussion with, “I think
you’ll all agree that this new approach that I developed
with HR makes the most sense for our team, right?”

• A senior executive outlined a new product line to

employees who were tasked with marketing it. The
executive ended the presentation with, “If you have any
questions or suggestions, please email me. I’ll get back
to you as soon as I can.”

These are all faux queries — ones that limit questioning

by constricting the input time frame, asking leading
questions, and restricting the communication channel,
respectively.

Five Ways to Better Handle

Post-Meeting Meetings
What leaders do before, during, and after the formal
meeting greatly influences the dynamics of later
gatherings. The five strategies below can help leaders
put the brakes on — rather than accelerate — the more
toxic features of many meetings after the meeting.
1. Improve meeting choreography. Choreographers
carefully consider the number of dancers on the stage,
the sequence of movements, and the set. Just as dance
integrates these elements, so, too, does meeting
choreography: A leader can shape the conversational
space before, during, and after a discussion, thereby
influencing the acceptance of key decisions, the
performance of critical personnel, and team spirit.

My research suggests that to enhance meeting

choreography, leaders should focus attention on why
(why are we having the meeting?), who (who should
attend?), what (what should we discuss?), when (when
should the discussion take place?), where (where should
the meeting be held?), and how (how should the
meeting be conducted?). When you address all six
critical dynamics, the likelihood of a post-meeting
kerfuffle dramatically decreases. Leaders often struggle
with three of these factors in particular: who, why, and
how.

Who should be included depends on why the meeting is

being held. But politics often drives these critical
choices for leaders. For example, in one company,
attending a lot of meetings signaled executive status,
regardless of the meeting’s purpose. This translated into
inviting a lot of people to meetings simply because the
meeting leaders wanted people to feel important and
not left out. A better norm to encourage is decreasing
the invitation list to include only those who would add
the most value. One useful rule of thumb: As meeting
size increases, so does the likelihood of more divisive
after-meetings.

Also, beware of organizational inertia driving the rhythm

of meeting schedules. Periodically examine the purpose,
effectiveness, and rhythm of leadership meetings. This
not only helps eliminate idle post-meeting chatter but
also comes as a welcome relief to many meeting-
fatigued executives.

How the meeting

should occur —
virtually or in-
person —
continues to
drive
considerable debate these days among researchers. If
the pandemic taught us anything, it’s how to become
more functionally adept at virtual meetings. But that
doesn’t mean all meetings should be held in the online
medium, which is prone to attention-diverting
distractions, including snarky sidebars via direct
messaging. Face-to-face meetings encourage
speculation, collaboration, and innovation inside the
meeting room rather than outside it afterward. In fact, a
recent study suggests that top-notch collaborative
innovation best occurs in face-to-face meetings, not
virtually.3

2. Craft routine protocols for communicating change.

Organizational leaders often must announce changes,
from introducing new product lines to decreeing layoffs
or restructuring. Any major change, welcome or not,
naturally sparks post-meeting discussions — for
leaders, those can be dangerous embers. Researchers
have found that only 50% of all decisions are ever
implemented and sustained.4 How do leaders increase
that percentage? My research identified seven key
factors that leaders need to address when
communicating major decisions:

1. What was the decision?

2. How was the decision made?

3. Why was the decision made?

4. What were some of the rejected alternatives to the

announced decision?

5. How does the decision fit into the organizational

mission and vision?

6. How does the decision impact the organization?

7. How does the decision impact employees?

If a leader addresses all seven factors, it doubles the

likelihood that employees will embrace the decision or
change.5

This is not a rigid rubric: It can be adapted to all types of

changes. For example, if the rationale for the decision is
widely understood, leaders may make better use of
people’s time by focusing on how the decision fits with
the organizational mission and vision.

One of the items leaders most frequently overlook is

how a decision was made. Routinely discussing this
issue, for any type of change, helps educate employees
about the decision-making process and suggests how
they can influence future decisions.

Leaders who routinely address the whole set of seven

factors shape employee expectations over time, head off
mischievous chatter, and boost the likelihood that
employees will embrace the change.

3. Bridge gaps between differing backgrounds and

experiences. If leaders do not bridge the gaps between
group members during the meeting, then attendees will
seek to span them outside the meeting. This causes
division and disruption that the leader can’t immediately
address. Post-meeting grumblings by people who were
not encouraged to join the in-meeting discussion can
also slow implementation of change.

When bringing together diverse perspectives, expertise,

and experiences, skilled leaders bridge the gaps in a
variety of ways, including the following:

• Sharing white papers or background reading before a

meeting. (“These readings will help inform our
discussion.”)

• Acknowledging differing perspectives. (“We all have

different experiences in the room. I want to make sure
we consider those differences to enhance our
discussion.”)

• Encouraging participants to offer differing points of

view. (“Would someone offer a different perspective on
the same issue?”)
• Soliciting input from the group about what issues
might need further clarification (“Are there any issues
we’ve discussed that might warrant further
explanation?”)

• Inviting a devil’s advocate to the meeting or asking

someone to temporarily play that role. (“How might a
devil’s advocate respond to this issue or decision?”)

Those tactics aim to reveal and legitimize differing

perspectives rooted in information and experiential
gaps. They prime the collaborative pump — legitimizing
both the unique expertise of each individual and what
people can discover together.

4. Channel emotions and depersonalize concerns.

Acknowledging attendees’ concerns (whether valid or
not) fosters a spirit of respect and encourages people to
voice vague and perhaps politically incorrect sentiments
during the formal meeting rather than afterward. By
bringing down the emotion in the room, a leader can
convert emotive and passionate reactions into ideas
worthy of further contemplation and reasoned debate.

Some emotions may take the form of ill-stated

objections. For example, one leader announced a major
organizational change involving shifts in job roles, which
created unvocalized fears and vaguely stated employee
anxieties. But, through skillful questioning in the
meeting, she discerned the underlying source of the
fear, which was moving out of personal comfort zones to
learn new skills. The leader addressed the related plans
for training and built employees’ confidence for their
new roles. Note how dealing with a training issue is far
more manageable than addressing loosely articulated
fears.

Depersonalizing concerns means that the leader

separates the issue from the team member; it’s no
longer “Liam’s concern” or “Donna’s problem”; instead,
everyone is in it together as the emergent issues
become the focal point of the conversation.

This often overlooked leadership skill set is difficult to

learn. Nonthreatening verbal inquiries, coupled with real-
time meeting summaries that instantly legitimize the
concerns for all to see, often set the right tone. This
could be as simple as writing the concerns on a
whiteboard or keeping a live-shared written record
summarizing issues with member names omitted. At
the very least, team members will have proof that they
were heard, which can take the sting out an emotional
issue. The added advantage: Fears, anxieties, and
befuddlements are stripped away from one individual
and “owned” by the group, which can then respond to or
resolve them.

5. Elevate the value of pushback in the formal

meeting. To get the most ROI from pushback, strive to
deal with it during the meeting and not in the meeting
after the meeting. During the formal meeting, leaders
can negotiate tweaks to policies or procedures to ease
their implementation — and can even reimagine
decisions. However, in post-meeting, conversational cul-
de-sacs, few of these benefits can be realized.

Skilled leaders not only encourage pushback during the

meeting but also reroute pushback that may happen
before and after the meetings. One executive used her
regularly scheduled coaching sessions with direct
reports to unearth possible concerns before group
meetings. She encouraged these people to bring their
concerns to the group setting, but if an employee wasn’t
comfortable doing so, she would share the “possible
pushback” in the formal meeting.

Of course, some pushback surfaces after the meeting

because attendees have had time to think further about
the issues. Leaders can reroute these beneficial aha
moments into the decision-making process or a follow-
up group meeting.

Unfortunately, some employees may have qualms about

sharing contrary views in meetings. Leaders need to
address such fears by educating the employee about the
value of debate and everyone’s voice. The CEO of Capital
Credit Union, Laurie Butz, put it this way:

I believe that the hardest part of leadership is

creating an environment where people feel like their
voice matters. If they have concerns or issues about
decisions, direction, or actions being taken, they
need to feel like they can share those views without
concern for short- or long-term backlash. It takes an
intentional commitment to establish and maintain a
“listening” type of environment. And listening
 doesn’t mean agreeing. It doesn’t mean everyone has
an equal voice. It doesn’t mean that it is a vote to see
how many agree and that majority rules. It does,
however, mean that as a leader, we must constantly
remind ourselves that we must allow discussion,
open debate, dialogue, and disagreement to occur in
the meeting. If we don’t, then it will happen anyway
after the meeting where, as a leader, you will have
less ability to influence it to move in a positive
direction.6

In short, Butz elevates the pushback during the meeting

and discourages it in the meeting after the meeting. And
if an issue or sentiment emerges after the meeting, she
quickly reroutes it to more productive and safe spaces.

Asking employees not to partake in post-meeting

discussions can backfire because participants may view
the request as anti-collaborative. Leaders may be seen
as attempting to quash meaningful input, avoid
clarifying issues, and discourage pushback, thereby
encouraging more mischief and possible mayhem.7

Instead, skilled leaders head off counterproductive

behaviors using the strategies discussed above and
champion collaboration during meetings to help the
team seize opportunities and make better decisions.

Topics
 Leadership Leadership Skills Leading Change

Culture

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Phillip G. Clampitt, Ph.D., is the John P. Blair Endowed Chair in

Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and
consults with companies around the world on leadership,
communication, and strategic decision-making issues. His
latest book, Leading With Care in a Tough World (Rodin Books,
2022), was coauthored with Bob DeKoch.

REFERENCES

1. K.E. Weick, “Sensemaking in Organizations” (Thousand

Oaks, California: Sage Publications, 1995).

2. P.G. Clampitt and B. DeKoch, “Five Ways Leaders Can

Transform Pushback Into Progress,” MIT Sloan Management
Review, Oct. 9, 2023, https://sloanreview.mit.edu.

3. D. Adam, “What Science Says About Hybrid Working — and

How to Make It a Success,” Nature, March 4, 2024,
www.nature.com.

4. P. Nutt, “Surprising but True: Half the Decisions in

Organizations Fail,” The Academy of Management Executive 13,
no. 4 (November 1999): 75-90.

5. P.G. Clampitt and M.L. Williams, “Decision Downloading,”

MIT Sloan Management Review 48, no. 2 (winter 2007): 77-82.

6. Laurie Butz, interview with author, July 31, 2023.

7. S.L. Annunzio, “How Bosses Can Stop the ‘Meeting After the
Meeting,’” The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 25, 2024, www.wsj.com.

TAGS:
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