Hot Mic Moment, Or Was It?

It is a foggy, damp morning on the patio, my coffee is steaming as I sip it and the moist air actually chills me. The misty morning resembles an October morning rather than August. As I enjoy the coffee, I am thinking about an experience I had many years ago that hit me while I was working yesterday.

I was part of a series of product and services planning meetings, the discussions were species specific, and the day I remember was all about beef cattle. Many people asked why I was there as the Swine Nutritionist, but I was able to offer an outsider's perspective on products and services, and some of my words may have been helpful. I don't remember the specifics of what I said, but I do have one big memory.

As we broke the meeting to allow people to use the restroom or check messages, everyone heard something that caused us to pause:

"Well, this is a waste of f****** time!"

One of our sales team had not muted their microphone, and we all heard their opinion of this meeting.

At the time, the discussion was about his break of social norms and business protocol, but when this memory hit me yesterday, I thought back to his words: waste of time.

I was not concerned about his breaking protocol. It hit me that it was a waste of time because of two things. First, the organizer and leader of the meeting, my boss, had not explained how powerful this meeting would be and how he would follow up with the suggestions. Second, this salesman felt powerless, his suggestions and time would result in no changes.

In the end this salesman was right, it was a waste of time, but that was not because of this meeting, it was because of ancient, well entrenched silos in that organization. I have carried that hot mic moment for years as a story about protocol. Yesterday I realized it was never about the microphone at all.

But what about similar situations in your world where you ask people to participate, offer ideas, or share what they see?

Every time someone speaks up, they are taking a risk. They are handing you something they thought about, maybe worried over, and trusting you will do something with it besides nod.

That salesman's hot mic gave us all a good laugh. An unfiltered, four-letter verdict on a meeting he did not choose to attend. But the joke is on the rest of us, because he was right, and it was not his fault.

It was not his job to make that meeting worth his time. That was my boss's job, the one running it. And he never explained why it mattered, never followed up on a single idea that came out of it, never gave anyone in that room a reason to believe their time was anything but spent.

People do not stop speaking up because they are shy. They stop because they have done the math. They have offered ideas before and watched them disappear into a folder nobody opened again. Eventually silence is not a personality trait, it is a rational response to a leader who never showed them it mattered.

So laugh at the microphone if you want. I still do. But if you are the one running the meeting, the room, the company, his words were not really about him.

They were a review of your leadership. And you were not in the room to hear it.