The Silence in the Meeting

Originally written in Traditional Chinese: 會議裡的安靜：根回し的安靜，和聲音沒有地方去的安靜

More than ten years ago, I worked with a leader whose rule puzzled our whole team: there should be no discussion in meetings.

All discussion, he believed, should happen before the meeting. The meeting itself was only for presenting the results already agreed. Discussing things in the meeting was, to him, strange and something that should not happen. We quietly wondered: then why meet at all?

Years later, on day one of my Minerva Immersion Week in Tokyo, a Japanese colleague described nemawashi: before a formal meeting, you align with everyone one by one, up, down and sideways. The meeting only confirms. In that moment I understood. That leader was practicing nemawashi. We just did not have the word, or know it was a whole culture's habit. I thought he was strange. In fact, I could not read him.

Think of an orchestra. Before the concert, the whole orchestra tunes to the oboe's A. The performance the audience hears was tuned long before. A nemawashi meeting is a performance, not a rehearsal. So its silence is not a lack of voices. Everyone's voice was heard beforehand.

Back in education in Taiwan, I see a different silence. Most teachers have been trained to keep their voices low and their opinions to themselves. Do less, don't stand out, don't take on extra work: that is how you get through safely. That silence is the opposite of nemawashi. Nemawashi meetings are quiet because voices were heard before. Many of our meetings are quiet because voices never had anywhere to go.

To be clear, I am not saying everyone should adopt nemawashi. It has a cost: if only some people are consulted beforehand, everyone else arrives feeling the decision was made without them. That is probably why our team found it strange. We did not know how to step into that circle. The real question is not whether to discuss in the meeting. It is whether every voice has a place to be heard before the decision.

AI adds a new tool. Its best place is not presenting slides in the meeting, but tuning with you before it. Before proposing something, ask AI to play each stakeholder. This is simple to write and genuinely hard to do. AI is only as realistic as the information you give it. Say "play my boss" and you get a textbook boss. First tell it what this person cares about most, how they reacted to similar things before, what pressures and constraints they carry, and what they fear this plan would do to them. Then ask: "You are the person most likely to oppose this. Where would you push back, and why?" AI cannot find that information on its own. It depends on whether you have been listening and paying attention. AI does not save you the work of understanding a person. It forces you to do that work first. (Describe roles and situations; do not paste other people's names or private details.) Then go talk to the real people, one by one. AI rehearses. People tune.

Try this week: three days before your next proposal, ask the two people most likely to object one question: "What worries you most about this direction?"

This is a puzzle from ten years ago that one day in Tokyo finally solved for me.

The Silence in the Meeting

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