The decision was already made before anyone asked for your input, and the phones lighting up around the table just confirmed it. In this episode, we’re talking about the meeting before the meeting, the text messages during the meeting, and the decisions happening around you instead of with you. You'll learn why this pattern erodes trust so fast that good people start calculating their exit, how to recognize when you're being triangulated around, and what to do if you realize you're participating in it yourself.  Because when people stop believing the process in the room is real, your meetings become theater and your best ideas never make it to the table. Key takeaways: Why creating room for healthy challenge is how you get to the best idea (not just good workplace culture) How to recognize and address triangulation when you feel it in the room Why once your team realizes the real decisions happen outside the room, trust breaks faster than you can rebuild it What to do if you're being triangulated around, and how to raise it as a question to your leader What to examine in yourself if you're the one sending the text or having the pre-meeting (we've all been guilty) This episode is for you if you've ever walked out of a meeting wondering why you were even in the room. Want to explore what systemic change could look like in your organization? Visit sparkthefirm.com to learn more about working together. __ Strong Face is for leaders caught between caring for their people and enforcing a system that wasn't built to do so, without losing themselves in the process.   Hosted by Tamara Steward, organizational consultant and founder of Spark the Firm, each episode takes one situation you're likely living through at work right now or have seen before, and shows you what's actually broken, and what's yours to fix.