The Three Conversations That Reveal Your Real Standing at Work

You attend meetings. You participate in discussions. You contribute to decisions. You assume this means you're valued and secure.

Then restructuring happens and you discover your participation mattered less than you thought.

Why this matters now:

Not all workplace conversations carry equal weight. Some conversations include you because you're executing work. Other conversations include you because leadership considers your input valuable for decisions. The difference determines what happens when organizations eliminate positions.

You need to know which conversations you're actually in and whether they signal organizational necessity or operational courtesy.

The three conversation types that matter:

Three types of conversations reveal genuine organizational standing: problem-solving conversations where leadership seeks input before decisions are made, resource allocation discussions where budgets or priorities get set, and strategic planning conversations about direction rather than execution.

If you're regularly included in these conversations, you're positioned as someone whose judgment matters to organizational outcomes. If you're excluded from these conversations regardless of your role or expertise, you're positioned as an executor who implements decisions made elsewhere.

How to identify which conversations you're in:

Review your calendar from the past 30 days. Look at every meeting you attended. For each meeting, ask three questions.

First question: were decisions made during this meeting, or was this meeting about communicating decisions already made? If decisions happened in the room, that's a decision conversation. If you're hearing about decisions made elsewhere, that's a communication meeting.

Second question: did anyone in the meeting ask for your assessment of options before choosing a direction? Not your agreement with a direction already chosen. Your assessment of what should be chosen. If yes, you're in a consultation conversation. If no, you're in an information conversation.

Third question: did the meeting address how to implement something decided elsewhere, or did it address whether to do something at all? Implementation conversations matter for execution. Strategic conversations matter for positioning.

What genuine inclusion looks like:

You know you're genuinely included in valuable conversations when:

Someone directly asks what you think should happen before announcing what will happen. Questions like "what's your read on this situation" or "what would you recommend" or "what are we missing" signal that your judgment is being consulted.

Your input changes outcomes. You suggest an approach and leadership adjusts the plan. You raise a concern and the decision gets reconsidered. You provide information and it affects the direction chosen.

You're included in conversations before they reach your manager. If you're hearing about strategic decisions through your manager after they're finalized, you're not in the actual decision conversation regardless of what your org chart suggests.

The execution-only pattern:

Most professionals operate primarily in execution-only conversations. These meetings cover how to implement what's been decided, who will handle which tasks, what timeline applies, and whether progress is on track.

Execution conversations are necessary. They're also insufficient for positioning yourself as organizationally critical. Organizations can replace people who execute decisions more easily than they can replace people whose judgment influences which decisions get made.

If 80% or more of your meetings focus on execution, you're positioned as implementer rather than strategic contributor. That's not inherently bad, but it means your organizational standing depends on the ongoing need for your specific execution capability rather than your broader value to decision-making.

The courtesy consultation trap:

Some organizations include people in conversations as a courtesy without actually valuing their input. Your manager asks for your opinion, then proceeds with the original plan regardless of what you said. You're invited to planning meetings but your suggestions never influence outcomes.

This feels like inclusion. It's actually performance. Leadership is demonstrating consultative process without actually consulting.

You can test whether consultation is genuine by tracking whether your input ever changes outcomes. If you've been "consulted" 15 times and your input has never visibly affected a decision, you're being managed, not consulted.

What to do if you're excluded:

If you're not included in problem-solving, resource allocation, or strategic conversations relevant to your area of expertise, you have two options.

First option: find ways to demonstrate that your judgment improves organizational outcomes. This means identifying problems before they escalate, proposing solutions that leadership adopts, or providing analysis that changes how leadership sees situations. You're creating evidence that your input should be valued in future decisions.

Second option: recognize that your current position doesn't include strategic influence and decide whether to build that influence, accept the limitation, or find a different position where your input matters more.

The visibility timing problem:

Strategic conversations often happen without formal meetings. They happen in hallways, brief check-ins, informal discussions, or in meetings where only certain people are invited. If you're not in those conversations, you often don't know they occurred until decisions reach you for implementation.

This creates a visibility problem. You cannot position yourself in conversations you don't know are happening. The solution is not to demand inclusion in every discussion. The solution is to become someone leadership proactively includes because excluding you would mean missing valuable input.

Common mistakes:

The first mistake is assuming meeting attendance equals influence. You can attend many meetings without your presence affecting any outcomes.

The second mistake is confusing being informed with being consulted. Leadership might tell you about decisions before announcing them widely, but that's not the same as your input shaping those decisions.

The third mistake is believing that doing excellent execution work will automatically lead to strategic inclusion. Execution competence is necessary but not sufficient. You need to demonstrate judgment that improves decisions, not just implementation quality.

Next step:

Review your calendar from the past 30 days today. Categorize every meeting as decision-making, consultation, or information-sharing. Count how many meetings where decisions were actually made included your input before the decision was chosen. Tomorrow you'll complete Week 4 Resilience Experiments examining which experiments revealed unexpected information. But first you need to know whether you're included in conversations that signal genuine organizational value.