Where You Hold a Meeting Matters

The power of place is stronger than most leaders realize.

The best managers are thoughtful about how they hold meetings.

• They invite the right people.

• They keep it short and focused on value.

• They know when it should be an email instead.

But there’s a less-discussed facet of meetings that wise managers pay attention to: where the meeting happens.

These smart managers realize that the location of a meeting shapes the tone, influences power dynamics, and impacts how comfortable or open participants feel.

The elephant in the room, of course, is that a great deal of meetings now happen virtually. Some estimates say 77% of all workplace meetings are now virtual. (Thanks, COVID.)

But I’m a firm believer, along with most CEOs, that face-to-face meetings still hold a critical place in business, and may actually become even more important when the default is to hop on Zoom/Teams/Google Meet. This means that, more than ever, the physical location of the meeting matters too.

Understanding the Dynamics of “Turf”

Think of the meeting location as a stage for a pl…