The Guide to Getting in the Room Where It Happens

Have you ever shown up to a meeting thinking you’ve got great ideas, piercing insights and the motivation to make a positive impact, only to discover the decisions you thought were still on the table have already been made? You’re left wondering if you were the only person who didn’t know. How did that happen? The play Hamilton popularized the phrase “the room where it happens,” which speaks to a very real unwritten playbook for power and influence in organizations that continues today in much the same way it did in the 18th century. University of Virginia Darden School of Business Professor of Practice Toni Irving brought her decades of experience in finance, health care, consulting, government and nonprofit management to the table in a discussion with the Batten Institute’s Sean Carr on the practicalities of getting in “the room where it happens.”

Read full transcript below:

Toni Irving:                         

You have to have very strong relationships with people who don't seem like they would drive your success. People that you haven't anticipated can save you. You have to be kind to everyone. You have to pay attention to everyone. You have to humanize everyone. You have to listen to everyone.

Sean Carr:

Have you ever shown up to a meeting thinking you've got great ideas, piercing insights, and the motivation to make a positive impact, only to discover that the decisions you thought were still on the table had already been made. You're left wondering "How did that happen?" Were you the only person who didn't know? Well, sometimes there's an unwritten playbook for power and influence in organizations and those who don't know it can be left out and overlooked. Tony Irving is a professor of practice at the University of Virginia at Darden School of Business, who brings decades of leadership experience from finance, healthcare, consulting, government, and nonprofit management. She's an expert on the practicalities of getting in the room where it happens. I'm Sean Carr. Welcome to Darden Ideas to Action, Toni, thank you so much for making time to speak with us. We are not in a studio.

We are in our private homes speaking virtually on a socially distant compliant version of Ideas to Action. Thanks for being here.

Toni Irving:                         

So happy to be here, Sean.

Sean Carr:                           

You have an incredible background. It's such a pleasure to talk to you, to learn from your experience as a senior advisor in the governor's office. You've launched your own social impact fund. You have been very active in various communities around the country and you bring leadership experience to Darden. One of the interesting things you've learned is how to make sure you have a presence when important decisions are made or, to borrow a phrase from Hamilton, to be in the room where it happens. What does that mean?

Toni Irving:                         

The Hamilton show was one of my favorites. I saw it so many times and it really did impress upon me how much of it was relevant to today. Just this idea that decisions get made and you want to be in the space and part of the conversation where decisions get made, and really those things oftentimes happen outside of the official meeting, right? That it's not something that's on anyone's calendar. It's a sidebar call, a quick drink, a coffee, something along the sort of unofficial lines where these things happen.

Sean Carr:                           

How do you get access to that?

Toni Irving:                         

I think of it sort of like a kitchen cabinet, right? We know that there's the official cabinet and people have these roles, but people have people that they call on. And I think that it means larger meetings that we're part of. There's going to be a few people who want to build consensus, test their ideas against others, sort of unofficially, right?

Sort of off the record, and so what I would say is that, if you're part of a larger group or committee or meeting, and it's coming up soon and you haven't had a sidebar with anyone, then you want to make sure that that happens. That's really what goes on to build consensus in order to ensure that the outcome is the one that you vote for. You don't want to walk into a meeting and then issues are flying about, and that you haven't really had a chance to debrief or unpack them at length with people so that they can understand what your intentions are.

Sean Carr:                           

But that doesn't always happen automatically. It sounds like what you're suggesting is taking an active role. It's not something that's going to happen if you're passive, is that right?

Toni Irving:                         

Correct. Everyone isn't positioned that way where people just naturally reach out to them, right? So if you feel like you're not in the core and you're not getting the sidebar calls, then it's incumbent upon you to make that move yourself. You need to take action and figure out how to get in it. It doesn't mean that you'll immediately be part of that crew, but if you take the call, or make the call rather, to connect with someone who's on the team in advance of the meeting and share your thoughts, you build comradery, and then there's a high likelihood that the next time that they will call on you and bring you in. It's like that you demonstrate your sort of team spirit, that you can be counted on, that you're someone who's really started connecting around the ideas. When I worked for the governor, even just the process of getting in this position to be deputy chief of staff to the governor of the fifth largest state in the country was a sort of off the books process.                                           

There was a private event taking place and I was invited by someone else to this private event. I wasn't on the official invite list. Someone else invited me along, and being in that small, powerful elite room, I was able to meet the governor, and I was able to have a one-on-one conversation with him. Now, I didn't have any goal connected to him. It was just an opportunity to have a thoughtful conversation and exchange ideas. As a result of being in that room, the governor reached out to me later, asked to have an additional conversation which eventually led to him inviting me to join his administration. There wasn't a job description that I applied for. There wasn't anything posted, but then I was part of a discussion that led to one of the best jobs of my career.

Sean Carr:                           

Now we're speaking at a crucial moment in thinking about diversity, equity inclusion in organizations and in society at large. I think all of us are now recognizing to one degree or another, how power is not shared equally in organizations and in society. How do those differences in power relationships inform or influence what it means to get in the room where the decisions are being made?

Toni Irving:                         

Power dynamics are significant and sometimes they can be overwhelming for people. But I think that the expectations are low in terms of people really taking a big, bold move forward. You have to recognize your own resources, recognize the value that you offer in a variety of ways, and I would say that it's not just material things, that it's about offering advice. It's about offering to listen. It's about strategizing with someone. There's a book from eons ago called Dig Your Well Before You're Thirsty, and I don't think you actually need to read it. It's the title alone tells you everything you need to know, right? It's like what kinds of offerings, what kinds of investments in people and conditions and organizations can you make when you need nothing? Because that's when you really build strong relationships that aren't dependent upon any sort of quid pro quo and people can feel relaxed and connect.

Then later on, when you do need something, you have sincere, authentic friendships and relationships there to tap into. I can even think of a small example that, when I was in the governor's office, the governor would be a few minutes behind, and a lot of people spent those few minutes waiting for the governor on their phone, checking their email sending.

But I always chatted up the security, state troopers that were the governor's detail, because I was just interested in them as people and what was going on, how they spent their weekends. And then I can tell you that on weekends, when we had to do things with the governor and we drove our own cars and we would show up and there's nowhere to park in the center of town and five or six staffers are scrambling, the detail always took my keys and said, "We'll park your car. We'll take care of your car. You go in." And so that was just something that I couldn't have anticipated would happen, but that meant that I was always in the room first, that I always caught the beginning and was sort of [inaudible 00:07:46] thing while everybody else was walking six blocks from where they parked their car.

Sean Carr:                           

Getting into the room is not the same for everybody. Some people have distinct advantages when it comes to their relationships in the workplace and others have disadvantages. What do you say to that?

Toni Irving:                         

That's a serious difficulty that we're dealing with right now. It's natural that people turn to the people that they're most comfortable with, that they're connected to, et cetera. But then that makes it that much harder for women, for people of color, or people of different sexual orientation, and I would say that so many of us, for instance, might be the member of the economic club. So we see each other all the time and we're comfortable each other and we have dinners together, and so when it's time to talk about something in the meeting before the meeting, it's just easy because we were already in the parking lot coming from dinner together so that we can have this long conversation.

If you are on a work trip and you invite people to have dinner the night before the morning's meetings, and you just base it upon the people that you're connected to most closely, and you're talking about the deal, how it should get done, background information that everyone doesn't have, and yet there are other people who could benefit from that, that weren't in the room. So how can you think about your responsibility to all of your employees, African-American, women, again, a diverse set of people who aren't just sort of naturally part of your process.

Sean Carr:                           

Let's talk about that further. What about those who are already in the room where the decisions are made and the discussions that are happening, what do you advise them to do to make their organizations perform better?

Toni Irving:                         

The people who are already in the room have to think about the number one issue, which is accountability. We can say all sorts of things. We can I dream a world. We can say what our values are. We can put an ad in the New York Times, but if there isn't any accountability, nothing will change. And that senior leadership has to indicate the importance and value of it. There are just thoughtful ways to ensure that the outcomes we want in terms of parity, in terms of equity, in terms of inclusivity, take place, if these very brilliant, thoughtful people and executive leadership put their minds together and figure out how to tie the outcomes to individual actions that also play out in performance reviews.

Sean Carr:                           

Sounds like you develop a sense of how the game is played. How do you help someone figure out how to play the game?

Toni Irving:                         

I just can't emphasize enough just the importance of developing a diverse array of relationships. I mean, from every level. That it's not just senior people, that you have to have extremely strong peer relationships, and that you have to even have very strong relationships with people who don't seem like they would drive your success. You can't sort of anticipate in advance who that's going to be. And so, one, I just say, you have to be kind to everyone. You have to pay attention to everyone. You have to humanize everyone. You have to listen to everyone.

Sean Carr:                           

I remember when I was early in my career as a journalist and a very senior person said to me, get yourself a rabbi, by which he meant, get yourself a mentor, someone who can both coach you, but also introduce you, connect you, look out for you. How important is that in the range of things that you've been talking about?

Toni Irving:                         

It's invaluable. You have to have these things, but what I would say is that I don't believe in these mentorship programs for working adults. You can't assign someone a mentor arbitrarily. There have to be natural connections. You should just organically look for people who have interests similar to you. I would say that even more important or, on another level, is also just think about a sponsor. And that's someone who isn't going to necessarily be there on a day-to-day, or weekly basis when you're trying to decide whether to join this or join that, or do this, or do that, or say this, or say that in a meeting, but someone who is aware of your capacity, your abilities, your integrity, the way you work, and can really advocate for you in the rooms that you're not in.

I mean, you want to get into as many rooms as possible, but there's, of course, always going to be rooms that you're not in. I would say to people who are very senior and have the potential to be a sponsor, that if you aren't sponsoring someone, you should be, and you should be looking out for ways to do that.

Sean Carr:                           

Well, Toni, all of this conversation is happening at a moment where there are a lot of rooms that I'm not in. In fact, I'm not in most rooms, I'm in my room.

Toni Irving:                         

Well, I'm in my kitchen.

Sean Carr:                           

But there are virtual rooms that we're all trying to get into and we need other people to do it. Thank you so much for chatting with me today. This has been really insightful.

Toni Irving:                         

Well, I'm so glad to get to talk to you. This is one of my favorite topics. I feel like there's just so much more that we can all do to come together and that the impacts won't just be for a corporate environment. It's a time that the nation itself needs to see more people get beyond the spaces they're most comfortable in, and connect with, and learn from other people.

Sean Carr:                           

I'm Sean Carr, and that's it for today's episode of Ideas to Action. Toni Irving is the Frank M. Sands Sr. Professor Practice at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. She writes, teaches, consults, and convenes around leadership, non-profit management, and organizational behavior, social impact, and corporate responsibility. Join us next time for more research, analysis and commentary from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. You can subscribe to Ideas to Action on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Podbean. To read more expert insights on this topic and more, visit ideas.darden.virginia.edu.