Your Stakeholders Can Smell Fear

You know how people say dogs can smell fear?

I’m not entirely convinced that’s true.

But after spending the last decade working with customer service reps, directors, attorneys, compliance leaders, and vice presidents…

I’m convinced stakeholders can.

The meeting that taught me this

Early in my career, I thought my job was to have the answer. Every answer. Immediately.

So when a VP announced a major shift in her business unit and turned to me expecting a plan, I froze. I nodded along, took frantic notes, and left the meeting with three pages of scribbles and zero clarity. She could tell. The follow up email was polite. The trust was not there.

A few months later, a customer service rep sent me a handful of screenshots to help me fill in the gaps of a process nobody had documented in years. Same panic. Same instinct to act like I already knew exactly how the whole thing worked, instead of just… asking.

Here’s what I didn’t understand yet: the title on their email signature was never the variable that mattered. The VP and the customer service rep were asking me for the exact same thing. Direction. Confidence. Someone who could take what they knew and turn it into something usable.

I just hadn’t figured that out yet.

It’s not about the org chart

Walk into a kickoff meeting acting like every answer has to come from you, and the entire conversation gets tense. People start hedging. They stop offering the messy, half formed context that actually helps you do your job, because they can sense you’re barely holding it together.

Walk in calm, curious, and confident, and something interesting happens.

Everyone else settles in too.

This is true whether you’re sitting across from a director who’s been at the company twenty years, or on a call with a customer service rep who just wants someone to actually listen to what she’s dealing with on the ground. The size of their title has nothing to do with the size of the trust you need to build. I used to think I needed a different “mode” for executives versus everyone else. I didn’t. I needed the same mode for everyone: teammate.

The mindset shift

One of the biggest shifts in my career happened when I realized senior stakeholders weren’t expecting me to know everything.

They were expecting me to lead the conversation.

Leadership in a stakeholder meeting doesn’t mean having all the answers. It means asking the right questions, organizing messy ideas, keeping everyone focused, and giving people confidence that you’ll turn today’s conversation into tomorrow’s clarity.

The most successful stakeholder meetings don’t happen because the loudest person is in the room. They happen because someone quietly takes the wheel.

Why this actually works

Here’s the part that took me the longest to believe: they’re not coming to you to test you. They’re coming to you because you bring something they don’t: the ability to document it, structure it, and turn it into direction. A VP explaining a business pivot needs someone to make that pivot make sense on paper. A customer service rep sending screenshots needs someone to turn “here’s what I do every day” into an actual process. Different rooms. Same ask.

If you walk in bracing for judgment, they feel that. And when they sense fear, they lose confidence that you can actually carry the project, not because you’re incapable, but because you don’t seem to think you are.

Treat them like a teammate, not an evaluator, and the whole dynamic changes. Not because the stakes get lower. Because the collaboration gets real.

Calm is not the same as unprepared

Now let me be clear about something, because I don’t want this to get twisted into “just fake it and hope for the best.”

Walking in cool, calm, and collected does not mean walking in blind.

If you have information going into the meeting, use it. If you don’t, do your research. What is the actual objective here. Go in with a rough plan, and prepare to pivot the second you get feedback that changes things. Have a rough timeline in your head. Prepare to adjust it. Prepare a few questions in advance, because “so what would you like to see happen” is not a strategy, it’s a stall.

And if you were sent materials to review beforehand, for the love of all that is holy, review them. Mark up your questions. Come in with notes.

This is what actually builds the confidence I’m talking about. It is not a performance of calm. It is the result of it. When you’ve done the prep, the calm is real, because you know you did your homework. You understand the problem. You care about getting it right. You are in this for the long haul, not just checking a meeting off your to do list.

Stakeholders can tell the difference between someone who is calm because they are prepared, and someone who is calm because they are winging it and hoping nobody notices. Do not make them find out which one you are.

The takeaway

Your job isn’t to be the smartest person in the meeting. It’s to make everyone leave feeling like the project has a direction.

So the next time you’re about to walk into a meeting with a vice president, a director, a subject matter expert, or a customer service rep who just wants to be heard, remember this:

Your stakeholders can smell fear.

Not because they’re intimidating. Because they’re looking to you for direction.

They’ve invited you into the room because you bring something they don’t. Your job isn’t to have every answer before the meeting starts. It’s to ask the questions that uncover them, organize the conversation, and turn a room full of ideas into something people can actually use.

Walk in curious. Stay calm. Lead with confidence.

More often than not, they’ll follow your lead.