How to screw up a business meeting - article by Finn Majlergaard

A business meeting – How to successfully screw it up

by Finn Majlergaard | 17. Apr, 2025 | Blog, Article, cultural diversity

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It happens all the time - we screw up a business meeting. We have an important business meeting coming up (first meeting with mother-in-law included) and we need it go well. We are well-prepared. We know all the numbers forward and backwards, we have our sales pitches ready, we are prepared for all sorts of questions. What can possibly go wrong?

If you have a little smile on your face now you have probably been in that situation or you know somebody who has. Gugin facilitated a cultural intelligence workshop for a sales organisation last week and one of the pre-workshop questions was "How often have you screwed up a business meeting because of your own lack etiquette and cultural intelligence?". We formulated the question a little differently.

As you can see from the answers in the chart to the left it is very few people who haven't tried saying something, doing something or misinterpreting something that lead to an unsuccessful ending of the business meeting. In this article we will turn it around and outline what you have to do to successfully screw up a business meeting. It does of course serve a purpose doing it this way. When you reverse it it stimulates your creative thinking, which is not bad at all.

The sales organisation that provided the answers is a culturally diversified organisation with an average experience level of 3 years. They sell advanced technological equipment in a highly competitive market. The average lead time is 3 months primarily because of the complexity, investment size and customisation options.

Why do we screw up a business meeting?

Given the amount of time and money we spend preparing these meetings and the level of importance many of these meetings have we should do whatever it takes to make them successful. And that is exactly what we are doing - we think.

The problem is we can only prepare for things that are conscious to us or things we can imagine. But how do we tackle all the things we can't see, feel,hear, measure or imagine? Some people will claim that there is nothing beyond what they can imagine. These people will refuse any idea or proposal that lies beyond their imagination.

When a person with these characteristics prepare for a business meeting he or she will usually assume that the other people participating in this meeting will be just like him or her. So the preparation is usually concerned about facts, stratetic and tactical issues, decision parameters and things like that.

Johari Window

The famous quote by Socrates; "Wise is the man who knows he knows nothing" is a quote we should all have on top of our mind all the time because it in a very subtle way reminds us about our own limited intellectual capacity. Another important technique to help yourself to expand your imagination and awareness is the Johari Window. You can see it here on the right. It is a technique to illustrate what is visible to yourself and what is visible to others. In Gugin we use that a lot when facilitating our cultural intelligence workshops, but you can use it in many other contexts.

We are all different so what you might want to keep hidden others might want to talk about openly. Some want to talk about their salary, others find that a private matter. Some want to talk about their sexual, political or religious preferences, while these subjects are private to others. So there are plenty of opportunities to insult other people if you are not aware of these differences.

Some people are more culturally blind than other, but we can all improve. And elevating our social and cultural competences benefits everybody.

  1. You become more successful in business.
  2. You team will work much better together.
  3. You can respond much quicker and more open-minded to changes in the world around you.

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How to screw up a business meeting - beginners guide

  • Assume everybody else are just like you. And if it turns out NOT to be the case you will willingly educate other people so that they understand your views, opinions and values are the right ones
  • Time is money, so if you do all the talking yourself the meeting will be over quickly. You are after all well-prepared so there isn't that many things to discuss
  • Some years ago someone told you how important it is with an ice-breaker, so you always open a meeting with a couple of jokes and Dilbert cartoons. Unfortunately the other people in the room don't have any sense of humour because they never laugh when you are done. Never mind. Just go on - someday, somewhere there will eventually be a person laughing at your jokes. Never lose faith!
  • Someone also told you about cultural differences so you have bought a quick guide to the country where your business partners are coming from. It is filled up with cultural stereotypes in bullet lists. just what you need.

 

Now that you know how to screw up a business meeting you also know what to do. We are at your service - anywhere in the world

 

Want to screw up less meetings?

Start changing behaviour

What separates a good leader from one who truly moves people? Research — and decades of cultural intelligence practice — point to one word: charisma. And unlike talent, charisma can be learned.

In 1979, Warner Records refused to send Prince on tour. Not because of his music — they knew he was exceptional — but because he lacked charisma. He couldn't yet move an audience. Fast forward one year, and Prince had transformed himself into one of the most commanding performers in the history of popular music. He didn't wait for charisma to arrive. He worked at it, systematically, studying and adopting the techniques of the performers he admired.

That story is not just about rock and roll. It is a precise metaphor for leadership. At Gugin, we have spent over two decades helping leaders across cultures and industries make exactly this kind of transformation — not by telling them to "be more confident," but by equipping them with concrete, learnable strategies rooted in emotional intelligence, cultural intelligence, and communication science.

 

Why Most Charisma Advice Fails

The most common advice leaders receive about charisma is frustratingly vague: project confidence, be warm, be present. These qualities do matter. But they are nearly impossible to "just do" on command, especially under pressure, across cultures, or in unfamiliar organisational contexts.

Research by Professor John Antonakis and his colleagues at the University of Lausanne Business School has shown that charisma is not a personality trait reserved for the few — it is a set of communicative behaviours that can be identified, taught, and practised. In their studies, randomly selected middle managers who underwent structured charisma training were subsequently rated by peers and subordinates as more charismatic, more competent, and more trustworthy. The training worked.

At Gugin, we have built on this science and gone further — weaving it together with emotional intelligence (EQ) and cultural intelligence (CQ) to create a leadership development approach that is both evidence-based and globally applicable.

The Nine Charismatic Behaviours — And What They Really Require

The Antonakis research identifies nine concrete charismatic leadership tactics: using metaphors and stories, showing moral conviction, expressing shared feelings, setting high expectations, using contrast and rhetorical questions, using lists, and animating communication with body language. These are the building blocks. But building blocks need a foundation — and that foundation is emotional and cultural intelligence.

Take metaphors, for example. A metaphor is only powerful if it resonates with the audience. In Gugin's cross-cultural leadership programmes, leaders quickly discover that a metaphor drawn from American sports culture may fall flat in a team from Northern Europe, and that a story invoking individual heroism may alienate a collectivist audience in East Asia. The charismatic tactic is the same; the cultural calibration is everything.

The same applies to moral conviction. Appealing to shared values is one of the most potent charismatic tools a leader has. But whose values? Which moral frameworks? A leader operating across multiple cultural contexts must understand that concepts like fairness, loyalty, duty, and hierarchy carry profoundly different weight in different cultures. High cultural intelligence — the ability to read, respect, and adapt to cultural difference — is what allows a leader to express genuine moral conviction that actually connects rather than alienates.

Emotional Intelligence: The Inner Architecture of Charisma

Charisma without emotional grounding is performance. It can work in the short term, but it rarely sustains trust. The leaders Gugin works with are taught to understand that emotional intelligence is not a soft supplement to charismatic leadership — it is its inner architecture.

Consider the tactic of expressing shared feelings. Antonakis identifies this as key: when a leader says "I feel the same uncertainty you do, and here is how I am holding it," they build identification and trust. But this requires real self-awareness. Leaders must be able to name and regulate their own emotional states before they can credibly reflect the emotions of others. In Gugin's programmes, we invest significant time in developing exactly this capacity — helping leaders identify their emotional triggers, understand how their inner states broadcast outward, and build the emotional vocabulary needed to communicate with authenticity.

Empathy — a core dimension of emotional intelligence — also directly underpins several charismatic behaviours. Setting high expectations while simultaneously communicating belief in others (another of the Antonakis tactics) requires a leader who genuinely sees the potential in the people around them. That kind of seeing is empathic. It cannot be faked over time. When Prince produced the band The Time for Warner Brothers, he did not simply demand excellence — he made each member believe they were capable of more than they thought. That is emotionally intelligent leadership in action.

Cultural Intelligence: Charisma That Travels

One of the most important — and most overlooked — dimensions of charismatic leadership in today's world is its cultural portability. A leader who is magnetic in one cultural context may be perceived as arrogant, shallow, or inappropriate in another. This is not a flaw in those audiences. It is a signal that charisma, like all communication, is culturally embedded.

Gugin's work in over 60 countries has shown us that the nine charismatic tactics are universal in their structure but must be culturally adapted in their expression. Rhetorical questions, for instance, invite participation and create anticipation — but their delivery must match the power-distance norms of the audience. In high-hierarchy cultures, a rhetorical question from a senior leader may silence a room rather than energise it. In low-hierarchy cultures, it may spark exactly the engagement intended. Cultural intelligence tells the leader which dynamic they are working in, and how to adjust.

Similarly, the use of storytelling — one of the most powerful charismatic tools — varies enormously across cultures in terms of what stories are appropriate, how direct or indirect they should be, and what kinds of protagonists resonate. Gugin teaches leaders to build a culturally diverse repertoire of stories and to develop the sensitivity to know which story belongs in which room.

How Gugin Trains Charismatic Leaders

Gugin's leadership development programmes integrate the science of charismatic communication with structured development in emotional and cultural intelligence. The process is iterative and experiential, not theoretical.

Leaders begin by gaining honest self-awareness: understanding how they are currently perceived, what emotional signals they project under pressure, and how their default communication style reads across cultures. This foundation phase often surfaces important blind spots — the technically brilliant executive who speaks too abstractly to inspire, the empathetic manager whose conflict-avoidance reads as a lack of conviction.

From there, leaders move into skill-building: practising charismatic communication tactics in safe, structured environments with real feedback. They learn to craft metaphors that carry cultural resonance, to tell personal stories that build connection without oversharing, to use contrast and rhetorical structure to sharpen their message. They receive coaching on non-verbal communication — the body language, vocal variety, and presence that Antonakis identifies as essential to bringing charisma alive.

Finally, leaders apply these skills in live contexts, with coaching support, and receive 360-degree feedback that tracks their progress. This mirrors the approach Antonakis found to be effective — group training combined with individual coaching — and embeds it within the broader cultural and emotional intelligence framework that makes the development durable and globally relevant.

Charisma as a Leadership Responsibility

There is a deeper point worth making. Charisma is not about making yourself more impressive. At its best, it is about making others feel seen, energised, and capable of more than they believed. It is about communicating in a way that bridges difference, builds shared purpose, and creates the conditions for people to do their best work.

In a world where leaders must navigate unprecedented complexity — technological disruption, geopolitical volatility, multi-generational and multicultural workforces — the ability to communicate with clarity, conviction, and emotional resonance is not optional. It is a strategic capability.

Prince didn't work on his charisma because he wanted to be famous. He worked on it because he knew, instinctively, that the music mattered — and that without the ability to connect, the music would never reach the people it was meant for.

The same is true of leadership. The work matters. Charisma is what carries it across.

 

About Gugin  |  Gugin is a global advisory firm specialising in cultural and emotional intelligence. We help organisations build the leadership capability to thrive in a complex, multicultural world. Learn more at www.gugin.com

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