How to Not Torpedo a Business Meeting

Editor's note: Welcome to our new weekly column on business etiquette. If you have a pressing biz etiquette question for Miss Conduct, please send her an email.

Your project is in jeopardy; delays have chewed away your lead time. The client is nervous. Your collaborators don't trust each other. It's 4 p.m. on Friday before a long weekend.

Everybody just wants to go home, but it's your job to run the critical, last-minute meeting that keeps them at work, overtime. Lucky you.

The good news is, if the meeting goes well, everyone heads home hopeful -- and they might have some bright ideas over the long weekend.

If not, they have a full three days to mull over any slights or unskillful words until their resentment festers and crusts over like that half-eaten yogurt someone left in the breakroom fridge last quarter and everyone's been afraid to touch since.

So you ask Miss Conduct, "How can I be sure that I don't torpedo this make-or-break meeting?"

Luckily, meeting torpedoes, like their submarine counterparts, do not explode by themselves. It's an involved process: First, the ordnance that torpedo-room denizens call "fish" are loaded into the inner tubes, the outer tubes are flooded with water to smooth the fishes' way into the sea, then the outer doors are opened (so that the explosive missiles don't blow them off and sink the sub). Last, the torpedoes fire out into the ocean, ready to detonate on impact.

It's kind of like how your boss gets worked up on a bad day, or so Miss Conduct has read, because her boss is perfect in every way. (That's Miss Conduct's story, and she's sticking to it.)

So Miss Conduct suggests that if you don't want to torpedo this meeting, whatever you do, make sure you load only the best fish.

Set the Scene

The characters at this meeting are the ordnance on your submarine -- your firepower -- and if you lock 'n' load just the most explosive ones, you're blowing your project to smithereens. Therefore, if you have a choice, be sure to bring only the smart, nonegocentric people on your team -- and then save a seat for yourself of course (even if you're as egocentric as Miss Conduct can be).