Leaders invest heavily in hiring great people. They bring in smart, experienced, high-performing individuals and expect that performance to scale across the business. But more often than not, it doesn’t.
Instead, organizations end up with a collection of strong individuals who aren’t consistently aligned, aren’t making decisions in the same way, and aren’t executing as a cohesive unit. The issue isn’t talent. It’s the system that surrounds that talent.
And one of the most overlooked parts of that system is meetings.
Meetings are where strategy turns into action. They’re where decisions get made, priorities are clarified, and accountability is established.
Yet despite how critical they are, most organizations don’t treat meetings as something that needs to be intentionally designed. There’s rarely a consistent approach. No clear operating standard. No shared expectation for how meetings should run.
As a result, meetings become inconsistent and often ineffective. Some are productive, many are not, and most depend heavily on who happens to be leading them.
This is exactly the type of “broken connective tissue” the HBR article points to. Without a consistent operating rhythm, individual talent never compounds into organizational excellence.
One of the biggest design flaws I see is who chairs meetings.
In most organizations, the default is that the CEO or most senior leader runs the meeting. It feels logical, but behaviorally, it’s often the wrong choice.
Many senior leaders—particularly founders and CEOs—tend to be high A (dominance), low C (formality), and lower patience profiles in Predictive Index terms. They are fast-moving, decisive, and action-oriented. These are exactly the traits that make them successful leaders.
But those same traits can create challenges when they’re facilitating a meeting.
When this profile chairs meetings, it often leads to:
In the moment, the meeting can feel productive because things are moving quickly. But over time, this creates misalignment, rework, and execution challenges across the organization.
This isn’t a capability issue. It’s a role alignment issue.
If meetings are a core part of your operating system, then who chairs them matters more than most leaders realize.
The best meeting chairs are not necessarily the most senior people in the room. They are the people best wired to facilitate balanced, high-quality decision-making.
From a behavioral standpoint, you’re typically looking for someone who brings:
This type of profile naturally balances the room. It slows things down just enough to improve the quality of thinking without losing momentum. It ensures that different perspectives are heard and that decisions are more robust.
When you get this right, meetings start to act as a multiplier of talent rather than a bottleneck.
This also creates a powerful opportunity that many organizations miss.
The HBR article talks about the importance of exposing and developing high-potential employees. One of the simplest and most effective ways to do this is to involve them directly in leadership forums.
Instead of defaulting to the CEO, you can intentionally select a high-potential individual with the right behavioral profile to chair meetings.
This gives them:
And importantly, it often improves the quality of the meeting itself.
If you want to take this a step further, connect it to how you assess and develop talent more broadly.
In the Head, Heart, Briefcase framework, most organizations heavily prioritize the Briefcase—skills, experience, and track record. Some incorporate the Head—cognitive ability and problem-solving. But the Heart—values, motivations, and cultural alignment—is often underexplored.
This is another area where high-potential employees can play a meaningful role.
Alongside chairing meetings, they can run a separate, values-based interview focused on the Heart. This creates a more complete picture of the candidate and adds an additional data point to improve predictability of success.
It also creates a better experience for everyone involved:
The core message from the HBR article is simple but powerful: excellence doesn’t come from individual talent alone. It comes from the systems that allow that talent to work together effectively.
Meetings are one of the most critical—and most overlooked—parts of that system.
So instead of asking, “Who’s the most senior person to run this meeting?”
Start asking, “Who is best designed to run this meeting?”
Because when you align meetings to the right behaviors, you don’t just improve conversations. You improve decisions, execution, and ultimately, organizational performance.
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