You know that moment in a meeting when you see someone’s eyes glaze over?
That’s your signal the conversation has lost the room.
Especially when you’re in a cross-functional all team call with dev, marketing, and support
Conversations can easily swing too technical, or too filled with jargon. It’s everyone’s job to pause and ask: is this being understood by everyone?
But it’s especially my job as their leader.
Because people already can’t stand meetings. And it’s double no fun to sit through a meeting you don’t understand.
Most people will assume it’s ’just them’ that doesn’t get it, so raising a hand to say “what does this even mean, I’m lost!” is really, really embarrassing.
As a leader, that’s your job: taking the thoughts of one person, recognizing that it might be inside baseball, and translating their message into something the whole team can track.
Here are some interjections I use in real time:
“Can we pause a second? I feel like this needs a short explanation.”
“For anyone that doesn’t know, LAMP stack means… “
“Wait, I’m lost. Can you explain this at a higher level?”
And sometimes you need to cut the convo short: “Feels like this is getting too deep, let’s schedule a meeting with just the dev team to keep hashing this out.”
Cross-team meetings aren’t just a spot to “wait your turn” until your department speaks.
If that’s all they are, we wouldn’t need them.
They’re meant to align. To give context. To build understanding across roles.
And if your conversations aren’t accessible, you’re not doing that.
This is something I’m still working on myself, but when I get it right, the whole team feels more connected.
