The Performance of Listening: When All-Hands Meetings Become Theater
My thumb is hovering over the ‘submit’ button on the Q&A app, the blue light of the smartphone illuminating the frantic sweat on my palms. We are 38 minutes into the quarterly All-Hands, and the air conditioning in the auditorium is humming at a frequency that feels like it’s vibrating my very teeth. Up on stage, the CEO-let’s call him Marcus, because they are always named something that sounds like a Roman general-is pacing in $528 sneakers. He’s talking about ‘the journey’ and ‘the roadmap,’ but mostly he’s talking around the elephant in the room.
I’ve just typed the question that everyone is thinking but no one wants to attach their LinkedIn profile to: ‘If the company’s health is our top priority, why were 118 of our colleagues let go via a templated email at 3:08 AM on a Tuesday?’
Observation Point 1
I hit enter. The question appears at the top of the feed for exactly 8 seconds. And then, the magic happens. A question about whether the new office in Chicago will have a more sustainable brand of sparkling water suddenly gains 48 upvotes in the span of a heartbeat. My question, the one about the human cost of the latest fiscal pivot, begins its slow, agonizing descent into the digital abyss. It’s being pushed down not by the collective will of my peers, but by a coordinated effort of 88 middle managers who have been instructed to ‘curate’ the conversation. This isn’t a dialogue. It’s a staged play where the audience is forced to buy their own tickets.
Carlos A.-M., a crowd behavior researcher who has spent the last 18 years studying how corporate environments mimic the psychological conditioning of closed systems, calls this ‘The Illusion of Agency.’ He argues that by providing a platform for questions, leadership creates a temporary release valve for frustration. It doesn’t matter if the questions are answered; the mere act of typing them into a box satisfies a primal need to be heard, even if the box is actually a shredder.
The Psychology of Silence
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The most effective way to silence a crowd is to give them a microphone that isn’t plugged in.
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I remember making a massive mistake in a 58-page report 18 months ago. I’d miscalculated the churn rate by a factor of eight. I felt sick. Instead, my boss told me to ‘reframe the narrative.’ We didn’t fix the math; we just changed the way we talked about the loss. That was my first real lesson in the corporate arts: the reality of the situation is secondary to the performance of the situation.
The CEO’s Posture vs. The Actual Inquiry
(Standing Desks)
(Disguised Inquiry)
The Chemistry of Gaslighting
There is a specific kind of erosion that happens to the human spirit when you are repeatedly lied to under the guise of transparency. It’s different from a flat-out lie told in private. A public lie, performed in front of 1288 employees, requires a level of collective gaslighting that changes the chemistry of the office. You start to doubt your own eyes. But the man on the screen is telling you that the ‘organizational streamlining’ has actually made the team ‘leaner and more agile.’
Systemic Deterioration
When platforms prioritize the appearance of fairness over actual equity, the user base inevitably fractures. In the world of digital engagement and systems that demand high levels of user responsibility, such as the link to mawartoto, the value of genuine, non-performative support becomes the only real differentiator.
They don’t see the private groups where the real questions are being discussed. They don’t see the 78% of staff who have already updated their resumes during the CEO’s opening remarks.
Carlos A.-M. notes that this behavior actually increases the likelihood of a ‘systemic break.’ When people feel their reality is being denied, they don’t just get angry; they become detached. And a detached workforce is far more dangerous to a company than an angry one. A detached worker just waits for the 4:08 PM bell so they can go home and forget that the 68 floors of the office building even exist.
The Script vs. The Truth
The Unanswered Question
I’ve often wondered what would happen if a CEO actually answered the layoff question. What if he stood there and said, ‘We messed up the projections, I over-hired because I was greedy for growth, and 118 people paid for my mistake with their livelihoods. I am sorry, and I am cutting my own bonus by 48 percent to help with their severance’?
The truth would be such a radical departure that reaction would be suspended. We’ve been conditioned for the performance.
But that will never happen. Instead, we get the standing desks. We get the ‘reframing.’ We get the $528 sneakers and the consulting advice that ‘radical transparency’ is a buzzword to be used in the first 8 minutes but never actually implemented.
[Truth is a liability in a system built on optics.]
As the meeting wraps up, Marcus gives us one final smile. My question is gone. It doesn’t exist in the archives. It wasn’t recorded in the ‘Key Takeaways’ email that will be sent out in 48 minutes.
The Real Audience
I walk back to my desk, passing the 18 empty cubicles that used to belong to the marketing team. There is a strange, hollow feeling in my chest-a mixture of exhaustion and a burgeoning, quiet defiance. I realize that the corporate town hall isn’t for us. It’s for them. It’s a ritual they perform to convince themselves that they are still leaders, that they still have a following, and that the ship isn’t taking on water.
Performance
The Script is predictable.
Ego
The audience is one.
The Exit
Stop believing the show.
You might be reading this while sitting in one of these meetings right now. Maybe you have your own ‘submit’ button under your thumb. The question is how much longer you are willing to play your part in the ensemble. When the script is this predictable, the only way to change the ending is to walk off the stage entirely.
I think about Carlos A.-M. and his theory of ‘The Silent Exit.’ It’s the moment you realize that the most ‘tough’ thing about their questions is the skin you have to grow to survive them. Marcus is likely high above the city, patting himself on the back for a ‘transparent’ session. He successfully navigated 58 minutes of potential conflict without saying a single meaningful thing. That isn’t leadership.