The guidance I provide in this chapter focuses on meetings with a purpose, just as every “meeting” I have had with a prisoner has a purpose. Even so, this chapter may also help you introduce purpose into those regular staff meetings that occur regardless of whether or not anyone has a point to make.

Most people I meet in a business environment have never done what I’m about to tell you to do: Prior to your initial meeting with someone, exploit all source documents available to you. Read articles, online references, and whatever else you can find to know as much as possible about the company and the person or people with whom you’ll be meeting. How do I know that most people don’t do this? They blather on about themselves and ask superficial questions about me. If they had done the tiniest bit of research, they would know that the reason I’m a certain type of business consultant is that I have interrogation expertise. They wouldn’t make fools of themselves asking irrelevant or vague questions.

Much of what you learn about your subject(s) may never come up in conversation but, as you will see when I go into approaches, your in-depth knowledge can affect how you go about getting your desired outcome.

Ask questions of people ancillary to your main contact after you do your document research. These would be people you know have dealt with her in the past or see her now through business or social connections. Keep in mind that it’s the nature of people to hold back a little piece of information when questioned about something. They may not even be conscious of it, but asking, “What else can you tell me about her?” will often pull out pertinent details.

Interrogators collect information from the people around the prisoners—namely, guards. The business equivalents of guards are co-workers. If you have access to one of them—a receptionist, for example—in casual conversation you can ask questions that will make your first meeting with the person go more smoothly. “I had a quick question before our meeting tomorrow. Can he take a call right now?” “No, he’s in a meeting for the next 30 minutes.” “He sounds like a busy guy. Does he travel a lot, too?” Ancillary people will give you more information than the primary source will give you about himself.

You ask these questions because you want insights into the person’s various roles, as well a sense of her priorities and how she does business. Again, I’ll go into this in the approaches section.

Other critical elements of preparation include:

Elements to consider in determining the approach you use in a business situation mirror those I’ve used with prisoners. With each factor, consider what approaches automatically fall off the list of possibilities. For any business situation, of course, fear-up harsh will not apply. Fear-up mild rarely is appropriate, and certainly never with someone you need to adopt a solicitous stance with. The exception to this is when you detect the pain of a prospect and you know you have the solution. You may want to magnify the impact of the problem before showing him that, for a fee, you can stitch that cut. Establish identity and the rapid-fire approach also don’t fit well into the business environment, so you’re left with these eight: direct, incentive, emotional, fear down, pride and ego, futility, repetition, and silence. Remember that the approach comes late in the game, after you set up everything else. Understanding the person’s basic style, type, position, and needs will enable you to find his pain. You want to get to a point where he has two options: one that involves you solving his problem and another in which he continues to suffer alone. Approaches are levers that help create or magnify the wound you will suture—for a fee.

Going into the meeting, you should have a grasp of the following:

How many times have you sat in a meeting and wondered if the intent was to prevent progress, delay action, muddy the agenda, or stroke someone’s ego? Sounds similar to what a savvy prisoner would do in a meeting with an interrogator. Don’t let anyone undermine your meeting in that way. Set up some rules for yourself and for anyone who has to be responsive to you.

At the very beginning, verbally tell everyone the following, regardless of whether or not it’s written in a formal notice or e-mail:

Remember that authority is given most of the time, not taken. In other words, by the way other people respond to you, they give you authority. When you make it clear, even in a meeting of your peers, that you have a plan to move the meeting forward, people often will be inclined to cede authority to you.

Even in a meeting between two people, in which you are the one making a pitch to a decision-maker, you can use the same model. You’d probably handle it with more subtlety, though:

You’ve no doubt heard the three most important considerations in real estate: location, location, location. The location of the “real estate” you stake out in a meeting is important, too, as is the size of your territory.

Position at a table matters. If it didn’t, why would a father traditionally sit at the head of the table? Why would the president of a board of directors sit at the head table? It does matter. Territory is a primordial drive for humans, as it is for any primate.

When you take a seat at a meeting, stake out territory that helps you make the right statement. That does not mean you should set up your laptop at the end, if you are not the one running the meeting. In fact, in a small meeting with client, you will very likely want that person to feel honored by having the slot at the head of the table.

When people arrive at a meeting and begin to spread out their papers, laptop, briefcase, and cell phone, they are claiming turf. They are posturing—making themselves as big as possible—whether or not they realize it. Subliminally, other people at the meeting get that the person holding the most real estate must be the most important.

I have a friend who served for years as a consultant to several large trade associations. Because each of the 30 people sitting around the board table represented a corporate member of “equal importance,” the host association arranged chairs in an equidistant manner. When people walked into the room, they started out with comparable territory. As the consultant, however, she always had hand-outs and other deliverables for the group. Not only did she find the people sitting on either side of her giving up some of their turf for her materials, but she also began commandeering an extra table to hold them. This land-grab exercise of hers became such an integral part of her participation in meetings, that the group began automatically providing extra space for her. As a corollary, they looked forward to seeing the display of deliverables—which ended up in their hands by the end of the meeting. The dual impression was that she had importance (she held a lot of ground), but she was also like Santa Claus (she gave them stuff they wanted).

In a large meeting that you did not call, sit on the same side of the table as the person in charge of the meeting. The best location is next to the person. The proximity accomplishes two things: It associates you with that person’s authority, and it makes it far less likely that the person will confront you. And if you’re standing, perhaps giving a presentation, and a person at the meeting confronts you, walk toward him. Stand in front of him while you’re talking to him. In short, the closer you are to someone in a large setting, the harder it is for him to yell at you. And standing over someone holds tremendous power, especially when you carry a baton, whether figurative (authority) or real (a pointer).

Your objective may not be to reduce conflict, however, but to manage it so you can do a power play. I did this at the initial meeting for The Guantanamo Guidebook with people at a TV channel in the UK. When I walked into the room, I saw a horseshoe-shaped table. On one side of the table sat the head of the network, her lawyer, and a production staff of six of their people. Of the gentlemen who sat on the other side, one was their military advisor, and the other I guessed was the psychologist for the project—someone to look out for the good of the volunteers. I sat next to him. I intentionally chose that spot rather than a chair with my team so that words coming out of my mouth would appear to be coming from “us,” or really, from him. I opened with, “The first thing I’m concerned about is the welfare of these people. We’re going to leave baggage. I want to be sure they’re taken care of. It’s your lawsuit, but it’s my conscience.” By doing that, I established a primary concern that they could not attack. The producer then brought up the subject of the using the Koran as an interrogation “weapon.” I got stern: “Listen carefully to what I’m going to say. That ain’t going to happen. This is an ethical issue. We are not going to throw the Koran around. It has nothing to do with what I believe. It has to do with someone’s religion, and not just the bad guys.” They pushed back and pushed back, but the message from the “good guys’” side of the table prevailed. I had made myself one of the experts looking out for their good and the good of the volunteers.

Another type of power play could involve you going into a meeting with the intent of being elected to the head position. Your rivals are also at the meeting. You might even be relatively unknown compared to the competition. One strategy is to use the slightest hint of controversy to establish yourself as a coalition-builder. Wedge yourself in the middle and point out directly how the other candidates are on opposite sides. If you can, make them appear to be at odds to the detriment of the group, and then you rise above them.

In contrast, if you’re going head to head with an incumbent and you want to win at all costs, first push him into a debate. Next, steer it to a topic that will cause him to behave emotionally. You want him to leak negative emotion—that is, to behave badly. Finally, remind him publicly that the debate is about the issues. It isn’t personal. Your objective is to project presidential authority, to convey, in the words of Alexander Haig after President Ronald Reagan was shot: “I am in control here.”

A common source of discord at meetings is that people disagree on how to solve a problem. Use control questions, leading questions, and repeat questions to keep the group on track and in cognitive thought. Expect a bad decision to come out of a meeting in which the one who made the most noise won the argument.

In a one-on-one meeting, the touchiest situation would involve some kind of disciplinary action, especially firing. When you fire someone, you can distance yourself from the anxiety by firing the role, not the person. You have to be able to say, “This isn’t about you; it’s about your performance.” An element of planning and preparation helps in this situation. Do monthly counseling with your employees regardless of performance. If someone does well, counsel her in writing. If she does poorly, counsel her in writing. All the good things go on the left and the bad things on the right. When the person gets in serious trouble, hold up that sheet and look at it. Let it guide your judgment.

In a meeting of any size, you have enormous control over how hot issues are handled if you effectively manipulate roles. Your must bring the right person to the dance and you invite the person(s) you want to dance with. You can’t necessarily predict what role others will bring into a meeting, but you can work on the premise that any role can only be maintained as long as there is a context for it. Take a great actor portraying King Arthur in Camelot and put him in the middle of a play about urban gangs. He won’t be able to maintain his character because no one around him treats him as they would King Arthur in Camelot; no one around him sees him as King Arthur. And if he does manage to continue his portrayal as scripted, it becomes comic because of the incongruity between him and the other actors.

What would the actor have to do to “stay in character?” He would have to leave the script and redefine the role. In a contentious meeting with a CEO, then, you can use trappings, background information, and your own roles and rituals to shift the context just enough to force a role change. You take on the tough decision, you make the problem your problem, and you use body language that signals strength and protection. The result is that you bring out the energetic, relaxed guy who started the company with his own invention. It’s the guy who didn’t worry about a board of directors or about the PR campaign for a new product.

In personal relationships, people do this all the time. Your husband had a lousy day at work and comes home, still the disgruntled employee, but you “parent” him so he shifts into the role of coddled child. The trick, if there is one, is simply committing wholeheartedly to your role the way a good actor does.

I had a rough meeting with someone at a company where I’d done a lot of consulting. He pushed and got confrontational in a way that struck me as inappropriate. I said, “Look, I know your son and have a lot of respect for him. His name means integrity to me.” This man had spent years of his life building that kid into a fine man, so my saying those words pushed aside his tough guy and drew out the father. At that point, I regained control, despite his rank in the company, and we moved forward.