In the second series of the Meeting Strategist podcast, I will explore a topic that most leaders dread talking about: power in meetings and conversations.

In the coming episodes, I will talk with leaders from the investment and business world as well as communication experts, coaches and other extraordinary professionals about their experiences with power. The central question: how can leaders use their power more productively, starting with their everyday interactions and meetings?

Recently, workshop facilitator Myriam Hadnes invited me onto her podcast ‘Workshops Work’. We talked about how I became interested in power, how power differences impede our conversations and what leaders can do to close the gap. I’m pleased to share this conversation to kick off my new series about power.

All credit goes to Myriam for initiating the interview, asking great questions and allowing me to share the recording on this show. If you want to learn more about Myriam’s podcast and her work, please go to the full show notes with relevant links at www.meetingstrategist.org/marcel-van-de-hoef

Here are some of the episode’s highlights with timestamps:

• 5:09 – How I met power theorist Mauk Mulder and what I learned from him

• 15:12 – It’s not just hierarchy: introducing different power relationships

• 27:43 – Using Dale Carnegie’s human relations principles to handle power more effectively

• 32:37 – Putting a wall in between: reflecting on my ‘leadership style’ as an editor-in-chief about 15 years ago

• 42:04 – How to balance brainstorming and decision-making, so meetings finish on time and people still feel heard

About this podcast

Welcome to Meeting Strategist. On this podcast, Marcel van de Hoef interviews professionals and thinkers from the worlds of investment, business and arts about their approach to business conversations. You'll hear inspiring stories about impactful meetings, while also learning about the strategies, tactics and mindsets these guests rely on to make meetings more constructive.

Marcel is an Amsterdam-based communication advisor and trainer and the curator of the Meeting Strategist blog. His mission is to help senior professionals think more strategically about meetings, ask better questions, improve their listening skills and have more meaningful conversations in business and life. Learn more and stay up to date at meetingstrategist.org

For the final episode of my pilot season, I return to the fascinating world of investing. My guest is Ted Seides. During his more than 25 years in finance, Ted has built unique expertise in the area of manager selection - picking investment funds that he believes can beat the market.

He’s the author of “So You Want to Start a Hedge Fund”, and host of the Capital Allocators podcast, on which he interviews investors and others about the investment challenge and how to approach it.

This episode provides inspiration for professionals who regularly find themselves assessing people and teams. You’ll learn why meetings are crucial in manager selection, how Ted prepares for these interviews and how his experience as a podcast host helps him as an investor. We also discuss Ted’s famous bet with Warren Buffett and what the Oracle of Omaha can teach us about communication.

Here are some of the episode’s highlights with timestamps:

• 9:35 – How Ted got in touch with Warren Buffet
• 17:00 – Communication lessons from the Oracle of Omaha

• 26:33 – What you can’t get from a piece of paper: the crucial importance of face-to-face meetings

• 30:34 – What to look and listen for when assessing an investment team’s culture

• 34:20 – Why ‘we gotcha’ doesn’t work when you find out unfavorable information about someone

• 47:18 – How Ted prepares for a podcast interview

As said, this is the last episode of my pilot season. Please subscribe to my newsletter on www.meetingstrategist.org to get notified as soon as this series continues. You can find the full show notes with relevant links at www.meetingstrategist.org/ted-seides

About this podcast

Welcome to Meeting Strategist. On this podcast, Marcel van de Hoef interviews professionals and thinkers from the worlds of investment, business and arts about their approach to business conversations. You'll hear inspiring stories about impactful meetings, while also learning about the strategies, tactics and mindsets these guests rely on to make meetings more constructive.

Marcel is an Amsterdam-based communication advisor and trainer and the curator of the Meeting Strategist blog. His mission is to help senior professionals think more strategically about meetings, ask better questions, improve their listening skills and have more meaningful conversations in business and life. Learn more and stay up to date at meetingstrategist.org

My guest on this episode is criminal defense attorney David Rudolf. I’ve been wanting to interview David ever since I watched ‘The Staircase’ on Netflix. In this documentary series, David represents Michael Peterson, an American novelist whose wife was found dead at the bottom of a staircase in their North Carolina mansion. 

When watching the documentary, I was deeply impressed with David’s professional performance. Not only because of his legal expertise, but also because of his communication skills and his ability to connect with people – both in and outside the courtroom.

Our conversation offers interesting ideas and lessons for professionals who regularly find themselves in high-stakes meetings. We discuss the questioning strategies David uses during cross examination and jury selection, why transparency is key in bad news conversations and how he's able to perform at his peak when the stakes couldn’t be higher.

You’ll also learn how David gets buy-in from his clients for the crucial decisions in a case, which I think is useful for anyone managing or implementing change in organizations.

Here are some of the episode’s highlights with timestamps:

• 12:02 – “You can’t expect people to be completely honest with you the first time they meet you”

• 19:17 – Putting on a protective cape: the role of preparation in building confidence

• 24:44 – The structure David used as a young attorney when interviewing jurors

• 35:42 – Wiping down the blow poke: the importance of listening in court

• 40:30 – Behind the scenes of a challenging meeting in a potential death penalty case

• 53:40 – Selecting jurors: a personal click is more important than the profile

• 1:02:15 – Good fact, bad fact: how to tackle tunnel vision

For more detailed information about this episode and relevant links to people and resources, visit the show notes on www.meetingstrategist.org/david-rudolf

About this podcast

Welcome to Meeting Strategist. On this podcast, Marcel van de Hoef interviews professionals and thinkers from the worlds of investment, business and arts about their approach to business conversations. You'll hear inspiring stories about impactful meetings, while also learning about the strategies, tactics and mindsets these guests rely on to make meetings more constructive.

Marcel is an Amsterdam-based communication advisor and trainer and the curator of the Meeting Strategist blog. His mission is to help senior professionals think more strategically about meetings, ask better questions, improve their listening skills and have more meaningful conversations in business and life. Learn more and stay up to date at meetingstrategist.org

Most people don't like to talk about power, because they consider it evil and associate it with abuse and the use of force. But power is a fact of life, especially in sales meetings. If you don’t understand it, you can lose a sale without ever knowing why.

Will Marshall is a self-employed management consultant and an executive and sales trainer at the International Institute for Humanization. In our conversation, he shares many anecdotes from his long career as a B2B sales rep and manager at corporations including Xerox. 

Along the way, Will provides tips and strategies to ask better questions, gather valuable information about prospects from receptionists and use and interpret power in meetings. We also spent a lot of time talking about the mindset sales people need to deal with rejection, sell with confidence and walk away from multi-million-pound deals.

Here are some of the episode’s highlights with timestamps:

• 4:25 – Authorizers and influencers: using decision making units (DMUs) to determine where the power lies in organizations

• 18:33 – How to stay calm while dealing with dominant hostile personalities

• 33:30 –Why negotiators need to get into the other person’s head

• 44:29 – Always look for the positive: Del Boy, the salesman with natural ability

• 53:48 – The power I used when I convinced Will to join the podcast

• 1:02:00 – What external consultants should do when a client keeps hijacking project meetings

For more detailed information about this episode and relevant links to people and resources, visit the show notes on www.meetingstrategist.org/will-marshall

About this podcast

Welcome to Meeting Strategist. On this podcast, Marcel van de Hoef interviews professionals and thinkers from the worlds of investment, business and arts about their approach to business conversations. You'll hear inspiring stories about impactful meetings, while also learning about the strategies, tactics and mindsets these guests rely on to make meetings more productive and meaningful.

Marcel is an Amsterdam-based communication advisor and trainer and the curator of the Meeting Strategist blog. His mission is to help senior professionals think more strategically about meetings, ask better questions, improve their listening skills and have more meaningful conversations in business and life. Learn more and stay up to date at meetingstrategist.org

Oscar Trimboli still finds it uncomfortable to speak about listening, but I’m glad he has found a way to combine these two competing activities.

Oscar is an executive coach and a listening expert based in Sydney, Australia. In this episode, he talks about the cost of poor listening for individuals and organizations and the importance for leaders to help people think and listen to what’s unsaid.

This episode runs more than 90 minutes and is my longest to date, but we could easily have gone on for many more hours. One of the reasons why I enjoyed this conversation so much is because Oscar was extremely generous in sharing real-life examples of great listening. This includes the fascinating story of lung cancer oncologist Dr. Bronwyn King who used her curiosity to convince pension funds to sell off $8 billion in tobacco shares.

Here are some of the episode’s highlights with timestamps:

• 4:54 – Serena Williams, LEGO, Brexit and broken relationships: the benefit of deep listening and the costs of poor listening

• 11:06 – Eagles and snakes: how listening to the unsaid can make a world of difference

• 28:05 – The impact of power dynamics on listening

• 39:00 – Speed is great but it comes at a cost: options not explored or options not explained

• 53:08 – The importance of focus and deep breathing: what Oscar learned when training as a coach

• 1:11:55 – Getting in the right state of mind to listen (tips to apply before going into your next meeting)

For more detailed information about this episode and relevant links to people and resources, visit the show notes on www.meetingstrategist.org/oscar-trimboli

About this podcast

Welcome to Meeting Strategist. On this podcast, Marcel van de Hoef interviews professionals and thinkers from the worlds of investment, business and arts about their approach to business conversations. You'll hear inspiring stories about impactful meetings, while also learning about the strategies, tactics and mindsets these guests rely on to make meetings more productive and meaningful.

Marcel is an Amsterdam-based communication advisor and trainer and the curator of the Meeting Strategist blog. His mission is to help senior professionals think more strategically about meetings, ask better questions, improve their listening skills and have more meaningful conversations in business and life. Learn more and stay up to date at meetingstrategist.org

My guest for this episode is Maarten Oldenhof. Maarten is the former CEO of Ajax, the iconic Amsterdam-based football club that dominated the game in the early 70s and mid 90s. In '95 they won the Champions League, the biggest prize in European club football. And in the years after, Ajax moved to a new stadium nearly triple the size of the original one and became the first and only Dutch club to go to the stock market. Maarten was CEO in this exciting time in club history.

Some six months ago, Maarten started inviting all his LinkedIn contacts for coffee. As I noticed, Maarten likes to keep these meetings very open. He doesn’t prepare for them and they serve no specific purpose.

In our conversation, we explore how these coffee meetings relate to his previous life as a CEO, his management style and the culture he tried to create as a leader. He also talks openly about the most challenging and important meetings throughout his career and what he would have done differently. This includes an emotionally charged meeting when his management team had colluded against him and the negotiation of a major player transfer at Ajax. Here are some of the episode’s highlights with timestamps:

• 2:17 – Maarten’s philosophy behind inviting all his 7,000+ LinkedIn contacts for coffee  
• 8:37 – How his first job made him realize that fact-based analysis isn't enough  
• 17:52 – Creating a winning culture in which people feel free to share their expertise  
• 20:42 – Why you need people in your management team who you can trust  
• 25:57 – How a personal touch helped Maarten land his dream job at Ajax   
• 32:48 – Canalizing emotions: how Ajax won support among club members for its plans to go to the stock market

For more detailed information about this episode and relevant links to people and resources, visit the show notes on www.meetingstrategist.org/maarten-oldenhof

About this podcast

Welcome to Meeting Strategist. On this podcast, Marcel van de Hoef interviews professionals and thinkers from the worlds of investment, business and arts about their approach to business conversations. You'll hear inspiring stories about impactful meetings, while also learning about the strategies, tactics and mindsets these guests rely on to make meetings more productive and meaningful.

Marcel is an Amsterdam-based communication advisor and trainer and the curator of the Meeting Strategist blog. His mission is to help senior professionals think more strategically about meetings, ask better questions, improve their listening skills and have more meaningful conversations in business and life. Learn more and stay up to date at meetingstrategist.org

My guest for this episode is Spencer Waldron. Spencer is the Regional Director Europe of Prezi, the cloud-based presentation platform. A marketing veteran with more than 20 years of experience, he’s also a frequent speaker at business conferences across Europe on topics like storytelling and leadership communication.

This episode is packed with the lessons that Spencer learned the hard way – by being on stage. How do you best prepare for talks, how do you handle your nerves when being in the spotlights and how do you create a story that people will actually listen to? To top it off, we also explore how you can use these lessons to make yourself heard in smaller settings like business meetings. Here are some of the episode’s highlights with timestamps:

• 4:36 – Tips for steadying your nerves in the final 15 minutes before you go on stage  
• 10:17 – Spencer’s recent technical meltdown in front of 500 people  
• 13:01 – The Think-Do-Feel matrix: the start of his preparation process  
• 26:27 – Getting ready for the big show  
• 38:00 – Aristotle, Winston Churchill and Boris Johnson: the power of rhetoric  
• 42:23 – Public speaking lessons that you can use in smaller settings like business meetings  
• 56:29 – Spencer’s book tip and the power of 3s

For more detailed information about this episode and relevant links to people, books and other resources, visit the show notes on www.meetingstrategist.org/spencer-waldron

About this podcast

Welcome to Meeting Strategist! On this podcast, Marcel van de Hoef interviews professionals and thinkers from the worlds of investment, business and arts about their approach to business conversations. You'll hear inspiring stories about impactful meetings, while also learning about the strategies, tactics and mindsets these guests rely on to make meetings more productive and meaningful.

Marcel is an Amsterdam-based communication advisor and trainer and the curator of the Meeting Strategist blog. His mission is to help senior professionals think more strategically about meetings, ask better questions, improve their listening skills and have more meaningful conversations in business and life. Learn more and stay up to date at meetingstrategist.org

In this first episode, Marcel van de Hoef interviews Joost de Graaf, a senior portfolio manager at Kempen Capital Management. Based in Amsterdam, Joost helps manage more than 3 billion euros at Kempen’s Global and European High Dividend funds.

Reflecting on the hundreds of meetings he has had with company executives over the past 20 years, Joost talks about the human edge in investing, the predictive power of information gathered from meetings, the importance of what’s not being said and how to build rapport with powerful people. 

Here are some of the episode’s highlights with timestamps:

• 8:27 - The human edge in collecting and judging information, as more money is managed by algorithms
• 14:16 - Why business model disruption and the financial crisis have made it more important for investors to meet with management
• 23:50 - The importance of intangible information in sizing up a management team
• 34:13 - The winning mindset in meetings
• 47:38 - How to build a relationship with powerful - and sometimes difficult - personalities like Elon Musk 
• 56:29 - Joost’s book tip and how meetings helped Marathon Asset Management identify problems at Anglo Irish Bank

For more detailed information about this episode and relevant links to people, books and other resources, visit the show notes on www.meetingstrategist.org/podcast

About this podcast

Welcome to the debut episode of Meeting Strategist! On this podcast, Marcel van de Hoef interviews professionals and thinkers from the worlds of investment, business and arts about their approach to business conversations. You'll hear inspiring stories about impactful meetings, while also learning about the strategies, tactics and mindsets these guests rely on to make meetings more productive and meaningful.

Marcel is an Amsterdam-based communication advisor and trainer and the curator of the Meeting Strategist blog. His mission is to help senior professionals think more strategically about meetings, ask better questions, improve their listening skills and have more meaningful conversations in business and life. Learn more and stay up to date at meetingstrategist.org