How to Lead in a Room Full of Experts
26 comments
·September 24, 2025ahmedfromtunis
Aurornis
This is a lesson I learned the hard way. When I was a first time manager I had the naive idea that I was going to build consensus for everything and get everyone to come to an agreement naturally.
It worked at first with a good team. Then later I inherited a fragment of another team with some older know-it-all engineers who thought everything modern was garbage and we should be doing everything like they did 25 years ago. I wasted too much time letting them stonewall everything while thinking we’d eventually reach a consensus.
Then at some point you realize you have to put your foot down and pick a direction after they’ve had a chance to state their position.
wahnfrieden
You could learn from consent based decision making, a hallmark of sociocratic worker coops that is underrated and can be applied elsewhere.
Hierarchy and coercion isn't necessary for avoiding decision paralysis in organizations. It appears to be the practical route but has all sorts of harmful and counterproductive consequences.
cowthulhu
I don’t think that is a practical framework for situations where people aren’t already very closely aligned. What happens when a few people are very vocal (and firm) in opposition to basically every change? Having dissenting views is valuable, but not when they have veto power. Additionally, I think that framework is vulnerable to what I refer to as “death by yes but” - when everyone is just piling on amendments and precursor conditions, oftentimes conflicting, that result in a decision taking months (maybe even years) to make or scuttle.
I’m basing these comments out of experience - one example is a workgroup/committee operating under a similar model that was completely unable to do anything due to decision paralysis. The committee grew significantly more effective when we reformed the decision making process to have a small group of owners to handle pitching and (potentially) implementing the decision, then had approval be a simple yes/no majority vote.
gmfawcett
I've often taken inspiration from RFC 2418, "IETF Working Group Guidelines and Procedures" [1], a rare RFC that defines a human protocol ("rough consensus") rather than a technical one.
homeonthemtn
It's not autocratic, it's not a form of government at all.
Each role is a module to take in inputs, process them, and produce outputs. it is effectively a program.
Define your roles, and expectations of each role, then run the program and edit as needed.
AnimalMuppet
Interesting. For that to work, though, it has to be true consent, not "it's the boss's idea and I don't dare to object out loud".
But I guess, if that's the environment you're in, then you're stuck with autocratic leadership (no matter what label it claims for itself), and your only choice is to leave or not.
dmos62
Steve Jobs was also known to lock teams in a room until they arrived at a common vision. It's a difficult task, to align everyone, but in my limited experience not doing it resulted in extremely inefficient execution. What's more, people feel belittled and rejected if you disregard their viewpoints. Sometimes you need to get things done regardless of what people feel or think, but you can't sustain that for a long time.
SoftTalker
This is what we do with juries, so there's something to be said for it.
mathattack
Very good point. There’s a big difference between “everyone gets heard” and “everyone gets a veto.”
Breaking ties is part of the leader’s job.
Of course if every issue requires the leader to break the tie, then perhaps there’s either a management issue, and incentive issue, or people don’t understand the strategy.
SoftTalker
I thought the new way was to just say "You're absolutely right" to any objection and then rephrase your original proposal without really changing it.
bilsbie
“Expert” doesn’t mean much anymore. They’re more likely than not to be under the control of their employers, their funders, or even their political ideology.
jamiecurle
I love the phrase "It's because that's why". For anyone interested in this kind of subject I've benefited a lot from Vanessa Van Edwards books which essentially boil down to signalling warmth and competence in the right ways for a given context. Of course, it's a giant field and no one person has all the answers, but for me it's yielded some wins.
bluGill
Probably better to say "because it is a bikeshed not worth debate". Often there isn't a right answer but a decision is needed.
potato3732842
I like to use something along the lines of "anyone in this room is capable of handling the minutia satisfactorily, there is no need to waste time on the details".
null
wavemode
> I often get "eye rolls" when I say this to developers: You are not going to convince anyone with facts.
True in technical leadership and true in life. Engineers are especially prone to this sort of frustration, where you're technically right but socially aren't speaking the right language for your audience.
everdrive
This is a difficult lesson to swallow, but must be understood. I do still retain some frustration that there does not seem to be more effort to correct for this problem locally. For instance, in general you must speak to your audience and make emotional appeals. But me, your boss, should understand how to look past that and work with the facts, at least to the degree possible.
I don't see much of that.
tux3
There are places that have this norm, but it's exceedingly rare, and it's not some perfect utopia. We're all susceptible to emotional appeals to different degrees, and emotions aren't some inconvenience that you should try to eliminate in favor of pure cold calculations, they also have a place and a reason to be.
People care about different things, so trying to focus just on facts can end up with people talking past each other, because they have different goals, value systems, or other fuzzy human feelings that can't be graphed in an Excel spreadsheet and compared numerically.
I'm not saying that emotional appeals and sophistry are fine, but I find that often when people accept an emotional appeal over a cold purely factual argument, it's because the factual argument is missing the point. A more important part of the discussion is understanding what other people actually care about to make sure we're not all talking past each other, or spending hours arguing details that won't matter in the end.
Herring
You need to get a better audience. I recently met a good developer who still thinks Covid was a hoax. Doing my best to avoid him.
You think you can just politely work around him -- that's how you get vaccine skeptics dismantling the CDC.
floydnoel
Why? Are they insufferable otherwise? Or is it more that you find it unbearable to tolerate a different opinion? I'm so curious, about both of you. What part does he think was a hoax?
Herring
In my experience that's usually just the tip of the iceberg. You've heard the expression "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way"? It's like a link broke in a chain, and usually it's many links correlated. Maybe they just distrust expertise, well I have a phd and I assure you it'll come up later. Maybe he's an immigrant from Russia and he just distrusts everything to do with the news, well that's not really fixable except maybe with many years of therapy. And yes it will come up later too. I'm not a professional, I didn't want to ask the specifics or get into the weeds, I just have a developed nose for these things. My brother is into conspiracy theories.
hn_throw_250915
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readthenotes1
I recommend _Becoming a Technical Leader_ by Weinberg for a deeper take.
The software examples are dated, but the wetware observations and advice stands.
https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Technical-Leader-Gerald-Wein...
null
"I'm the lead, and we are going to do it this way": avoid it for as long as you can, but do NOT hesitate to use it when it's the appropriate answer.
Take the time to listen to everyone and to form an educated decision. Explain your conclusion once, twice and even thrice. But sometimes teams can get caught in an endless futile discussion over details that don't matter for the stated goals.
In that case, it's *your duty* as the leader to play the dictator and impose order. "If you want to make everyone happy, don't be a leader. Sell ice-cream", Steve Jobs reportedly once said.
If it happens though, don't forget to re-establish trust with your team members and make sure they understand the circumstances that led you to act in that way.