Why Leaders Lose the Room in High-Stakes Meetings

Nancy Duarte explains how, under pressure, a leader's default decision-making style can intensify and distort the messages their teams actually hear, causing colleagues to disengage and withhold input. For boards and CEOs, the piece offers concrete safeguards—forcing pauses before decisions lock, clarifying who is advising versus deciding, and testing shared understanding—to protect high-quality collective decisions during critical moments. This matters because decision quality erodes precisely when stakes are highest and dissent goes silent.