The Case for Muting the Boss

If so, you are not alone, says Sanjay Khosla, an executive coach and senior fellow and adjunct professor of marketing at the Kellogg School. Many leaders convene strategic-planning meetings that bring together colleagues from across functions and management levels but fail to capitalize on the talent in the room.

Often, these leaders drive their agendas instead of conducting “discovery workshops” where new ideas and junior talent may flourish, says Khosla. As a result, employees disengage and hold back from sharing information.

“This goes against the most fundamental principle of leadership: listening,” Khosla says. “If a leader believes they know everything, that is a problem.”

To drive better company strategy, he says, leaders should implement a different, perhaps surprising, tactic for strategic-planning meetings: mute the boss. By intentionally keeping silent, leaders create space for new ideas and talent development—which fuels innovation.

“Muting the boss is a development tool as well as a tool that leaves room for broader contributions to the business’s strategic vision,” Khosla says.

But getting the leaders in the room to dial themselves down isn’t easy. The process requires deliberate planning, communication, and oversight. Below, Khosla explains when and why muting the boss is necessary, how to pull it off, which challenges to anticipate, and when to unmute.

Make room for your team to shine

When faced with strategic business decisions—like how much to invest in new product development or how to evaluate a market opportunity—it’s hard for some seasoned leaders to let go of control. They’ve ascended to leadership through years of honing their skills and insight. They carry the responsibility of decision-making.

Whether you’re a CEO or the head of a business unit or function, it’s your role as leader to assess a dizzying amount of information to allocate resources—financial, operational, and talent—that drive business results, Khosla says. So it’s only natural that leaders would be inclined toward setting the parameters of strategic conversations.

It’s no surprise that “command and control” becomes a default approach, he says. “Plus, a lot of bosses have strong personalities.”

Khosla knows this from experience. As an executive coach, Khosla has seen many of the executives he coaches go through strategic-planning meetings and assume that because they are the leader, they need to come up with all the answers. Khosla says that this is a mistake.

“If you bring people together saying you want their input, but your behavior signals otherwise, employees won’t feel invested,” Khosla says. “When it comes time to implement [ideas], your strategy won’t work; people tend to resist when they feel forced.”

Leaders need a structure that keeps their strong personality in check so others can shine; otherwise, they risk perpetuating what Khosla calls a “negative spiral” of disengagement.

“The whole idea is to create an environment where everyone can speak their mind,” he says. “It’s a safe environment where you’re actually unleashing people’s potential to help the business.”

Prepare specific objectives in advance

Still, being muted is easier said than done.

It’s easier for leaders to embrace the concept when they view it not as giving up control but as creating value, Khosla says. He advises leaders to focus on the two main benefits of being muted while getting the whole group involved: better information and higher engagement.

“We improve the process so the leader can make better decisions,” he says.

One step that will help leaders follow through with being muted is to define the meeting’s objectives with a narrow, actionable focus. If everyone involved knows what the team is trying to achieve, then the potential for getting sidetracked is greatly reduced.

For example, aiming to “be more innovative” is too vague. Instead, leaders need to figure out the strategic, high-impact objective that the team can make progress toward together, he says.

One company Khosla is currently advising is struggling to scale its artificial intelligence platform. After some discussion, the group determined that they were pursuing too many customer groups. In the process, they were spreading themselves thin and were not making an impact.

Instead of simply “scaling,” the team shifted its objective to focus on its highest-performing customers and how the company could scale its relationships with that group. Then they asked which specific actions they could take that are bold and different. Once they did this, the group felt excited and empowered because the objective was simple and clear: develop an action plan with clarity about “who does what by when.”

This process of defining the objective often requires several back-and-forth conversations with colleagues, Khosla explains. But it is worth the preparation.

“Unless you get alignment on the objective up front, you end up going nowhere and wasting everyone’s time,” he says.

Empower the right voices

Assembling people with the right mix of skill, function, and experience for strategic-planning sessions can help leaders get comfortable with being muted.

“Diversity of thought is a competitive advantage,” Khosla says.

The number of people in a meeting can vary in size. Between ten and twenty-five participants should provide a healthy range of perspectives. And before you fill the room with the usual seasoned leaders, Khosla says, identify high-potential employees of all levels with a track record of success—“champions of change.” This broadens the pool of ideas and acts as an incentive for more-junior team members to offer fresh perspectives.

In the session, the discussion should be future-focused and biased toward action. Think: “So what, now what?!” This doesn’t preclude learning from past experience, but it tends to help teams avoid the analysis-paralysis trap.

For example, during a recent discovery workshop Khosla observed, the team was discussing ways to improve customer experience. A retail-store manager shared direct customer feedback that reshaped the team’s approach. Her insights, gathered from daily interactions on the front lines, helped senior leaders recognize blind spots in their strategy. A concrete plan emerged to scale some of these insights across the company.

Because many company rising stars are close to day-to-day functions, they may have insights that senior leaders are too far from to see. In this case, the store manager’s idea had caught fire, and it left her feeling empowered that her idea was heard.

It’s important to remember that muting the boss won’t automatically make your junior staff confident voicing their opinions while in a meeting with a group of senior leaders. So breaking the larger group up into smaller “syndicates,” each composed of a range of management levels and functions, provides more room for everyone to contribute.

“Small groups create safety,” Khosla says. “So design the meeting for these groups to huddle for important conversations—from brainstorming to problem-solving—and then report back to the full team.”

Appoint a facilitator

Another important step for muting the boss is to have a meeting facilitator. This person should be a trusted, senior colleague who knows the business, its people, and its challenges well. They should also have strong communication, management, and relational skills.

“Their essential role is objectivity,” Khosla says. “They make sure that silent people speak and the boss remains muted. Their goal is to make sure you hear from everyone, without judgment.”

During meetings, staying muted can be challenging and uncomfortable for bosses at first, especially in hierarchical cultures. So Khosla emphasizes that the facilitator must monitor the leader’s verbal and nonverbal communication and, when needed, intervene.

Khosla describes a strategic-planning meeting he observed in which the leader continually checked his phone and fidgeted as small groups presented their ideas—a behavior that the participants noticed. During a break, Khosla pulled the boss aside to point out that, even though he stayed silent, his actions signaled that he wasn’t interested.

“Even a mute boss can say a lot,” Khosla says. “Muting the boss is not simply not speaking, but also watching your body language.”

Sometimes, difficult topics arise that challenge or trigger a response from the leader. In another meeting Khosla facilitated, a team member surfaced one of the company’s most pressing issues: “leadership doesn’t listen.” As group after group shared examples, the leader appeared visibly upset, with his head down and face reddened while everyone watched.

To prevent a defensive debate or escalation of complaints, Khosla called a break to check in with the leader. Although upset, the leader recognized that the groups’ candor proved that the meeting had achieved its primary goal of creating a space where employees felt empowered and heard. The pause enabled the leader to process and recommit to listening, rather than react.

What changed? The boss went a step beyond simply recognizing the impact of listening on the employees. He apologized, acknowledged his behavior, and publicly recommitted to being muted and absorbing his team’s comments before making a decision.

“As a result, the team started relating to him more and appreciating his humility and vulnerability,” Khosla says. “Listening and respecting different points of view has become a core value of the company.”

Know when to unmute

As helpful as muting the boss can be for promoting new voices and strategic possibilities, there comes a point when the boss has the final say. So, when is the appropriate time to hit unmute?

“Wait until the end of the meeting, when the group agrees on next steps,” Khosla says.

Sometimes, the session has provided enough information for the leader to take action and assign responsibilities. But often, more time is needed. In this case, the leader must commit to reviewing the meeting’s outcomes and reconvening with a decision.

“Of course, the boss will make the decision at the end, when ready,” Khosla says. “But in the discovery workshop, their job is to simply listen and create an environment where everyone can thrive.”