Watch your next exec meeting.

The CEO kicks things off. Or the “star” VP. Or the board member everyone tiptoes around.

They frame the problem. They float a solution. They signal what sounds smart and what sounds naïve.

Everyone else reacts to that, not to the actual reality of the business.

On the surface, you see a thoughtful group of adults aligning on a plan. Underneath, something harsher is happening.

The order of voices in that room just decided which truths are allowed to exist.

If you are a Chief People Officer or HR leader, this is your blind spot and your biggest lever. You keep trying to fix “candor” with values, trainings, and feedback models. Meanwhile, your meetings are rigged at the most basic level.

The wrong people speak first.

The First Voice Is Not A Detail, It Is Power

Most leaders treat speaking order like a small facilitation choice. Let the most senior person open. Let the extrovert warm up the room. Let the sponsor set context.

That is not facilitation. That is power allocation.

Social psychology has been screaming this at us for decades. In Solomon Asch’s classic line judgment experiments, people literally agreed that one line was shorter than another when it obviously was not, just because others said so first. Once the early answers were out there, participants bent their perception to match the group. When even one person broke from the script, conformity collapsed. You can read a simple summary of that work here.

Now translate that to your staff meeting. The first voice does not just add information. It defines what is “reasonable.” It sets the boundaries for what feels safe to say.

James Detert and Amy Edmondson call this world of unwritten rules “implicit voice theories.” Their research shows that people stay silent when they believe speaking up will backfire, even when leaders swear they want honesty. They found that employees carry internal scripts like “do not challenge your boss in public” and “do not be the first to voice bad news” that dictate whether they talk or stay silent. You can see their work yourself in the Academy of Management Journal.

So when the CEO or the untouchable star speaks first, everyone else is not just reacting to content. They are reacting to risk. The question in their head is not “What is true.” It is “How much can I say without paying for it later.”

That is how you end up with meetings that look calm and end in fake agreement, then blow up later in backchannels.

And it gets worse from here.

When Leaders Speak First, You Blind Your Own Company

You already know what fake alignment looks like. Everyone nods in the room. Two weeks later, decisions reopen, deadlines slip, and side conversations pulse with “Did you say what you really thought.”

Your organization is not suffering from a “collaboration issue.” It is suffering from a rigged conversation.

Here is what actually happens when power always talks first.

1. The best information never makes it to the table

The people closest to the work often see the real risk. A staff engineer who knows the system is brittle. A front line sales leader who knows the big logo you are chasing is already halfway out the door. A regional HR leader who sees burnout before your engagement survey does.

They are the ones who should be framing reality. Instead, they are sitting three chairs down, watching someone with less data and more status tell a cleaner story.

Once that story is out, speaking up feels like calling the boss wrong in public. Detert and Edmondson’s research shows that is exactly the move most people will never make, even when they care deeply about the outcome.

2. Conflict moves out of the room and turns into politics

In your other forums, you have already seen how over-politeness kills open disagreement and pushes it into side channels. Workplace data across clients shows the pattern again and again. In the room, language is soft, careful, full of “seems fine” and “good direction.” After the meeting, Slack blows up with sharp questions, doubts, and frustration.

When leaders speak first, you supercharge that split. No one wants to be the person who fights the boss in public, so they wait. They lobby later. They sandbag quietly. They “forget” to prioritize the thing they never believed in.

On the surface, your culture looks calm. Underneath, conflict has gone feral.

3. Decision reopen rates explode

You see this in your own language data and in your calendar. Decisions that were “locked” on Monday somehow drift back onto the agenda next Thursday. Threads fill up with “quick revisit” and “one small tweak.”

That is not indecision. That is people trying to do in private what they did not feel safe doing in public.

When you treat this as a personality issue, you miss the real signal. The forum is broken. Speaking order is part of that break.

So if speaking first is power, and the wrong people hold that power, what do you actually do about it.

Flip The Script On Who Speaks First

This is where most CPOs flinch. They are happy to run another workshop on feedback. They are less happy to tell the CEO to stop talking first.

But if you do not tackle speaking order, you are decorating a house with a cracked foundation.

Here are concrete moves that change the physics of your meetings without turning them into facilitation circus acts.

1. Make leader last the default in real decision forums

Pick your top ten rooms where the stakes are highest. Roadmap fights. Budget and headcount reviews. Promotion and calibration committees. Post mortems after big failures.

In those forums, install one rule.

The most senior person speaks last.

They open the meeting by stating the purpose and constraints. Then they shut up. Their job is to listen, pull out tensions, and summarize at the end. Not to pitch their view in the first five minutes.

This is not “being nice.” It is using positional power in a way that gets you more information instead of less.

2. Start with the people closest to the blast radius

Design speaking order around risk, not rank.

If you are debating a product launch, let the engineering lead who owns the failure scenario speak first. If you are deciding on a restructuring, let the HRBP and front line managers who will carry the emotional load frame what is at stake. If you are reviewing a missed quarter, let the people who were on the calls with customers set the context before Finance explains the numbers.

The insight from Asch is simple. A single genuine perspective that lands early can break conformity. Do that on purpose.

3. Use Workplace data to expose who really frames the room

You do not have to guess who dominates your forums. Your tools are already showing you.

Workplace can surface patterns like voice share by role, who usually opens key conversations, and how language shifts after certain people speak. Do action words drop. Do hedges spike. Do others start using more “I think” and “maybe” once one specific executive has weighed in.

Put that data in front of the leadership team. Not as a shame exercise. As a mirror.

“In this quarterly review, one person spoke for 60 percent of the time, went first on every topic, and every serious challenge moved to private channels afterwards. That is not a strong culture. That is a risk.”

Once people see their own speech patterns in hard numbers, it is a lot harder to pretend the problem is just “shy teams.”

4. Protect the first dissent like it is gold

Most rooms have at least one person who is brave enough to go against the grain. They name the hard risk. They say “I do not buy this timeline” while everyone else is nodding along.

What happens in the next 60 seconds decides the future of candor in your company.

If the leader swats them down, moves on, or wraps it in “let us keep this positive,” everyone learns the real rule. Detert and Edmondson saw this pattern clearly. People update their implicit voice theories based on how the first dissenter gets treated.

So coach your executives to do something different.

When someone offers the first real dissent, stop. Thank them. Ask three follow up questions. “What are you seeing that we are not.” “What would have to change for this to feel responsible to you.” “Who else shares this concern.”

You are not just managing that moment. You are training the entire room that risk information is a contribution, not a career gamble.

5. Make speaking-order design a leadership standard

If you leave this as a facilitation tip, nothing will change. Senior people will nod, then drop back into old habits the moment the pressure hits.

Turn speaking-order design into a leadership expectation.

Write it into your operating principles. “Leaders design meetings so that power speaks last and insight speaks first.”

Evaluate executives on it. In performance reviews, ask their teams specific questions. “In your VP’s meetings, who usually speaks first.” “How often do frontline owners frame the problem before leadership does.” “When you disagree, does it feel safer to raise it in the room or in private afterwards.”

Promotion into your top jobs should require more than hitting numbers. It should require a track record of designing rooms where reality can get in.

The Question Every CPO Should Put In Front Of Their CEO

This is where your job stops being about running programs and starts being about how power really works in your company.

You do not need another offsite about values. You need one hard conversation at the top.

Walk into your next one on one with the CEO with a simple picture of how meetings actually run. Who speaks first. Who never does. Where dissent appears. Where it disappears.

Then ask one question they cannot dodge.

“If we muted every meeting for the next quarter and only watched who speaks first, who goes last, and where the real objections show up, would we still believe this company is hearing the truth it needs to win.”

If the honest answer is no, the problem is not your people.

The problem is a leadership system that keeps giving the first word to power instead of reality.

Fix that, and you will not have to beg for candor. You will have a company where the safest move is to tell the truth as early and as clearly as you can.

And that is the only kind of company that has a real shot at the next decade.