Hello Kind and Curious Leader,
You have five minutes before the meeting.
Maybe it's a board prep. A town hall. A one-on-one you've been postponing for three weeks because you already know how it has to go. An investor pitch. A dinner where something needs to be said and you're the one who has to say it.
What do you do with those five minutes?
If you're like most of the leaders I've worked with over the last three decades, including the version of me running a $5 billion business at thirty-seven, you rehearse. You scroll. You review slides you already know. You brace.
I want to offer a different use of that window. Read the room before you enter it.
I've been building a system around this idea for the better part of two years. It's the spine of a book I'm writing for Wiley, out Spring 2027. The whole book is about the rooms we walk into and what changes when we stop performing in them and start leading them. More on that in the months ahead.
For now, I want to give you the smallest piece of it. Something you can use this week.
Three questions. Five minutes. That's the whole tool.
I'll say what I said on LinkedIn this morning. These questions are not comfortable. That's the point. A room read that makes you feel good about what you were already going to do isn't a read. It's a mirror.
Question one forces you to see the room from the floor, not the head of the table. Question two separates performance from leadership, which most of us conflate for the first fifteen years of our careers. Question three is the cost of silence. I've written about that elsewhere, and I'll write more. For now, sit with it.
Print the Room Read. Screenshot it. Tape it to your monitor. Put it in your notes app.
Use it before your next hard room and tell me what changed.
I'd love to hear which of the three questions hit hardest. Reply to this email. I read them!
In Community and Conversation, always.
Jim
