Mike: This is The Knowing Kenning podcast. I’m Mike Merrill, and today we’re joined by Laurie Burkland Waller, an experienced executive coach and leadership development expert who helps senior leaders show up with impact when it matters most. She has developed a practical framework called the Five Ps of Meeting Mastery; a preparation checklist that’s helped hundreds of leaders transform stressful high-stakes meetings into meaningful results.

Welcome, Laurie.

Laurie: Thanks, Mike. It’s always so much fun to team up with you and I’m excited to share some perspectives with the Knowing Kenning listeners.

Mike: Before we dive into the five Ps, maybe you can tell us why you thought it was important to spell out this framework.

Laurie: Through years of coaching executives and senior leaders, I noticed a pattern. Leaders who consistently deliver in high-stakes meetings don’t rely on charisma or improvisation. They depend on preparation. So, I created what I call the five Ps of meeting mastery. A clear, repeatable checklist that helps effective leaders prepare for any important meeting across five dimensions: purpose, process, people, pivot, and presence. When leaders apply all five, they not only communicate better, but they also project credibility, think more strategically in the moment, and ultimately build stronger personal brands.

Mike: Great. So, let’s start with the first of those, purpose.

Laurie: Purpose is the anchor. Before any meeting, ask yourself what is the objective of the meeting? What are the questions we need answered before the meeting ends? And what are the success factors for this gathering? A 2017 study published in Harvard Business Review called “Stop the Meeting Madness” found that meetings with clearly defined objectives are almost 30% more likely to achieve their intended outcomes.

Yet many leaders skip this step and wing it. Defining purpose forces alignment. You and your stakeholders know exactly what good looks like, which dramatically improves decision quality and ensures forward momentum.

Mike: Yeah, it’s funny. You would think that you would always think of that, but we’ve all been to plenty of meetings that feel purposeless. We’re not sure why we’re there to begin with. So once the purpose is clear, what comes next?

Laurie: So, the next is process, which is the roadmap for the conversation. That means shaping an agenda that serves the purpose. This includes planning what content to share, deciding what’s in and out of scope, and assigning clear meeting roles. A Fortune 2023 article called “The Art of the Effective Meeting” pointed out that leaders waste roughly 31 hours a month in unstructured meetings.

I can relate to being a member of some of those, and a clear process avoids that trap. Some people think that process might make a meeting rigid. Others see that it can create freedom inside structure. When everyone knows the flow, you can focus on insights rather than logistics.

Mike: Once we know why we’re there, once you have a process in place to lead us to some results, what’s next?

Laurie: Yeah, people is what’s next. And that’s where the effectiveness really begins. it’s the component where meetings can really become transformational. Most presenters think about outbound communication, the synthesis, storyline, and visuals, but truly effective communication depends on how the message is understood by the receiver. A message can drastically change as it passes through the receiver’s personal filters and experiences. Each attendee arrives to your meeting with these unique priorities, pressures, fears, and values. And if you don’t take those into account, your message can really land miles away from where you intended.

I really liked seeing a Harvard Business Review article, in 2022, called “The Science of Communicating with Impact,” and it pointed out that understanding your audience’s context can double perceived message clarity and increase recall by up to 40%. So, I advise clients before any big meeting to map your audience.

An audience analysis answers several questions. Who is in the room and why? What are their agendas success metrics? Maybe even hidden worries. What conflicts or turf sensitivities might exist. Might you need a meeting before the meeting to align either internally or externally? And, by the way, that audience analysis doesn’t take hours. Even if it’s a simple audience scan, it can really transform how you frame your content.

Mike: Yeah. You know, I’ve discovered in my experience, especially with meetings with people who don’t meet frequently about a topic that could be contentious, having a few pre-meetings with those individuals can help, you know, iron things out. And they can find out, you know, what other agendas might be in the room.

With purpose, process, and people in place, your fourth is pivot. Well, tell me about that.

Laurie: This is new to my framework. Through experience I recently added this. Pivot is the most underappreciated form of preparation. Every meeting has friction points. Pushback questions, objections, alternative views. And leaders often fear these challenges in a high-stakes meeting, but anticipating where you may need to pivot actually strengthens your authority and effectiveness.

So, typical examples my clients experience might sound like this: “Your recommendations sound expensive.” “That’s not how we’ve done it before.” “I’m not convinced the data supports this conclusion” Or maybe even, “we don’t have the bandwidth to implement that.” So, a high-performing leader predicts those objections and plans their pivots.

It’s possible to stay composed and strategic instead of reactive. I found an article that supported this, a 2023 Forbes article called “Mastering Difficult Conversations,” and it reported that teams that rehearse responses to anticipated objections improve their meeting success rates by nearly 25%. It is that psychological safety and preparedness that reduces emotional reactivity.

Mike: So, how would you coach a leader to prepare this way?

Laurie: Four things. One, list the five most likely points of challenge. Two, draft, concise fact-based responses to them. Three, land purposeful pauses. We often find it’s all about delivering information, but often silence can be a power move in those challenging moments. And four, design pivot language, for example, get comfortable with meeting facilitation phrases like, “that’s an important point. Let’s explore that for a moment before returning to our core decision.”

As it relates to the pivot element, the goal isn’t to avoid pushback, it’s to anticipate and navigate through it. In fact, pivoting can sometimes lead to releasing the agenda entirely. Preparation and anticipation may help a leader distinguish when a stakeholder’s concerns merit a shift to the meeting’s purpose. For example, leaning in to offer deep listening might lead to a discovery of new information that helps chart a different path forward.

Mike: That reminder to be flexible in the course of the meeting is an important one. You want to prepare, but you want to prepare for a little bit of spontaneity. So, how about your final P, which I think is presence.

Laurie: Presence is your signature. It’s your personal brand, and for many leaders, this is a really important opportunity. It’s how you show up vocally, physically, and emotionally, and how you represent your expertise and style. Presence isn’t intended to be performative. It’s just intentional. So, it’s the leader’s chance to fine tune and advance the impression they want to make.

For example, I ask clients to choose three adjectives they would want attendees to use to describe their approach in the meeting. Maybe one client will choose calm, credible, and curious, while another might choose strategic, composed, and persuasive. This is an opportunity to bring out your best self, an authentic version of your strengths that you want to highlight in the role.

According to a 2024 Harvard Business Review article called “The New Rules of Executive Presence,” leaders who deliberately manage how they’re perceived, report 32% higher influence ratings from peers and superiors. So, presence, in other words, is measurable. Ultimately, presence is the visible proof of your preparation.

Mike: Yeah, that’s, again, very interesting to think about the ways we can be authentic, but we have different modes, right? Even within our authenticity, we’re able to prepare and be ready for different sorts of presentation styles.

Can you share with us an example of a client who brought all this together successfully?

Laurie: I expected you would ask Mike. Let’s talk about Morgan, an associate partner at a management consulting firm serving a major consumer packaged goods client. Morgan’s assignment was to deliver the final steering committee presentation summarizing three months of analysis and recommendations. In prior meetings, her senior partner had noted that while her content was strong, she sometimes lost the room, particularly when executives challenged her assumptions.

This time Morgan used the five Ps. She invested in preparation for this important meeting’s purpose. She clarified the objective: to gain endorsement for three strategic recommendations and get agreement on implementation priorities. Process: She built a precise agenda and rehearsed transitions with her internal team to achieve that purpose. People: She conducted that audience analysis I suggested. The CEO prized brand equity. The CFO focused on margins. Not surprisingly, the chief marketing officer wanted innovation but feared disruption. Knowing those filters, she was sure to frame each recommendation in their language, linking brand strength, profitability, and innovation cadence respectively.

Pivot: She anticipated likely challenges. She expected to hear pushback like too risky, unclear ROI, or execution complexity, and she prepared brief evidence-based pivots and practiced those calm pauses. Presence: Morgan thought about the impressions she wanted to make for this meeting. She chose authoritative, engaging, and clear. She practiced her opening lines, posture, and pacing to make those impressions.

Mike: That sounds like a lot of preparation that Morgan took on. How did things turn out?

Laurie: Well, during the meeting, one executive questioned the proposed pilot cost. Instead of tightening up, she paused, acknowledged the concern, reframed with data, and reconnected to overall ROI. Her calm, confident tone maintained control of the narrative and projected authority, one of her presence goals.

She really focused on how she opened, how she stood, and how she spoke. She began the meeting with a clear, confident framing of the business problem and her team’s key insights without hedging or overexplaining. Language was decisive, grounded in evidence, and signaling command without arrogance.

And when challenged, she didn’t rush to fill silence or defer to senior leaders. She paused, regrouped, and guided the discussion forward. It turns out that her authority, one of her goals, didn’t come from dominating the room, but it came from clarity, and that’s the kind that earns trust rather than demands it.

Mike: What were the results of all this?

Laurie: You know, Morgan’s preparation didn’t eliminate challenge, but rather it mirrored and validated the team’s approach to doing impactful work and providing high-touch client service.

I really like that she focused on the content of the presentation as well as the quality of its delivery. And of course, I wouldn’t have picked this example, Mike, if it wasn’t a success story for the team and for her. The ultimate compliment for Morgan was when the senior partner caught up with her after the meeting and mentioned that while the team’s analysis was strong, it was the orchestration of the room that really carried the day.

Mike: Oh, that’s a great story. So, let’s say I’m convinced I want to use the five Ps. What are some last thoughts you can give me on how to actually execute this successfully?

Laurie: When you bring all the five Ps together, something bigger happens. Your preparation becomes a multiplier for your leadership. Clear purpose and process keep you grounded in what matters most. But we know those are baseline requirements for an important meeting. A genuine understanding of people and thoughtful anticipation of pivots builds trust because people don’t just remember what you said. They remember how you made them feel when things were challenging. And intentional presence, choosing how you want to show up before you ever walk in, turns ordinary meetings into moments of credibility, connection, and results. That’s how leaders earn influence that lasts, one meeting at a time.

Mike: So, Laurie, this has been great. I’m definitely going to employ the five Ps for my next meeting. If people are interested in reaching out to you, where can they find you?

Laurie: I would be happy to discuss this topic with anyone who has an interest. I can be found on kenningassociates.com.

Mike: We’ll put a link to that in the show notes. So, Laurie, thank you. This has been great. Thank you for being here today.

Laurie: Thank you so much, Mike.