The client was a senior female executive at a major global company. She was hardworking, bright, and well-liked, but she had one big frustration: People often ignored her ideas at meetings. After watching the woman interact with colleagues, executive consultant Constance Dierickx offered several suggestions. One of the most important: “I told her to stop sitting against the wall and sit around the table instead.” Within six months, co-workers were commenting that she had more “executive presence and spoke with greater conviction,” says Dierickx. The moral of the story: Where you sit influences where you stand. If you take away their Brooks Brothers suits, Manolo Blahnik shoes, and BlackBerrys, managers are little more than naked apes--social mammals with primal methods of expressing group power hierarchies. Over the past few years, psychologists and consultants have begun to decode the secret meaning of office behavior and to understand one of the business world’s deepest mysteries: Why do people tend to sit in the same place at routine meetings? Read full article below.
