Reading the Room: How to See Interests, Alliances, and Unspoken Agendas
You walk out of a meeting thinking:
“The argument made sense.” “Everyone said they were aligned.”
Two weeks later the project is stuck, decisions are being revisited, and someone tells you in private:
“Honestly, that conversation was never going to work. You could see it in the room.”
If your first reaction is: “I clearly couldn’t see it,” you’re not alone.
Many senior managers are excellent at analysing slides and business cases – and much less practiced at reading what is happening between the slides:
who is tense, who is protecting something, who is testing the waters, who has already decided but is not saying it out loud.
That gap quietly limits your influence. Because at senior level, decisions are rarely about pure logic. They are about interests, alliances, and risk – and those rarely show up in bullet points.
😶 When You Hear the Words but Miss the Game
There are some typical signs that you’re not fully reading the room:
You’re surprised when “agreed” decisions get revisited You leave meetings confident, only to discover later that key people were never really on board.
You underestimate resistance You think: “We had a good discussion, we addressed concerns,” and then execution meets much more friction than you expected.
You can’t explain why some ideas land and others die The content feels equally strong, but the reaction in the room is totally different – and you can’t quite say why.
Usually it’s not because you’re bad at people. It’s because you’re focused on content and missing two other layers that drive outcomes:
Process – how people talk, who talks when, who interrupts whom.
Interests – what each player is actually trying to protect or gain.
If you only listen to the words, you hear “alignment”. If you watch the other two layers, you often see something very different.
🧩 The Three Layers of Any Strategic Room
Start treating every important meeting as three parallel conversations:
Content – what is being said Numbers, plans, roadmaps, risks. This is where most senior managers spend 90% of their attention.
Process – how it is being said Who speaks first? Who everyone looks at when things get tense? Who gets interrupted and who never does? Who brings the group back when it drifts?
Interests – why it is being said What is at stake for each person if this goes well – or badly? Status, budget, workload, reputation, future options.
In the same sentence, different people can be hearing completely different things.
When Finance says: “We need more clarity on the risk profile,”
Sales may hear: “You’re trying to slow us down again.”
Finance is often trying to protect the company and their own accountability. Sales is often trying to protect relationships and revenue.
If you don’t see these underlying interests, you will argue content on the wrong level – and be confused why nothing moves.
🎯 Mapping Interests and Alliances in a Practical Way
You don’t need a giant political map on the wall. You need a simple, honest picture in your head: who cares about what, and why.
Pick one important forum – a steering committee, leadership team, or cross-functional meeting – and write this down:
What is each person officially responsible for?
What are they really worried about right now? (based on what they complain about, escalate, or repeat)
What would a win look like for them in the next 6–12 months?
Who do they quietly rely on behind the scenes?
You will start seeing patterns:
Two people who always support each other’s ideas – alliance.
Someone who rarely speaks, but when they do, decisions shift – hidden influence.
Someone who is loud in meetings but rarely mentioned in real decisions – more noise than power.
This is not about ranking people. It’s about understanding how the system actually works, so you stop pushing against invisible walls.
Once you see interests clearly, you can:
Position your proposals in language that matters to others, not only to you
Bring the right people into conversations early, instead of surprising them in public
Understand when “not now” really means “never”, and when it’s just about timing and risk
🕵️ Reading Unspoken Agendas Without Becoming Paranoid
Political awareness is not about seeing conspiracies everywhere. It’s about noticing signals you previously ignored.
Some simple things to watch in the room:
Who becomes visibly more tense when a topic appears? Jaw, shoulders, breathing, silence – all are data.
Whose ideas get “parked for later” again and again? That often shows whose interests are currently least protected.
Who rescues whom? When someone is challenged, who jumps in to support or reframe the conversation? Alliances show up here.
When the meeting ends, who stays behind? The five minutes after the meeting often tell you more than the 55 minutes during it.
You don’t need to comment on all of this out loud. But you do need to let it influence your strategy:
Whom you follow up with
How you frame trade-offs
When you push, and when you let something mature a bit longer
📅 Want to Look at One of Your Rooms with Fresh Eyes?
If you recognise yourself here – strong logical thinker, but often surprised by how decisions are really made – you’re not broken and you’re not “bad at politics”. You’re just under-using a skill that can be learned.
In a 30-minute Leadership Clarity Call, we can: Take one real meeting, forum, or stakeholder group that feels confusing Replay what happened – who said what, who stayed quiet, who blocked or supported Map the interests and alliances you might be missing, and identify 2–3 concrete moves to increase your impact there
You can choose a time that works for you here: https://calendly.com/groshenkoa/30-minute-leadership-clarity-call
From there, if it’s helpful, we can also look at deeper formats – from a focused 2026 Clarity & Strategy Sprint to a 3-month Clarity Reset for senior managers, or external Executive & Leadership / Team & Leadership coaching for your organisation – but the very first step is always the same: seeing the room clearly.
Leadership Test
Think of one recurring meeting where you often feel frustrated or powerless. If you watched it through the lens of interests and alliances, not just content, what is the first thing you would start paying attention to differently in that room?