Originally published on LinkedIn on 21 May 2026.
It was a Monday morning.
David walked into the weekly matter review prepared, professional, and on time. He covered everything on the agenda. From the outside, it looked like any other meeting.
What he didn’t know was that he had brought something else into the room.
Friday had been hard. A difficult client conversation that hadn’t gone well. He hadn’t mentioned it to anyone. Why would he? By the end of the review, two associates had decided not to raise the issues they had come in planning to raise. One had a concern about a matter running close to budget. The other had a question about a piece of advice they weren’t certain about.
Neither said a word. David had no idea.
What the room picked up
People are wired to read other people, before we process words, tone and pace. We decide whether a room feels safe before we decide what to say.
Daniel Goleman’s research on emotional contagion found that a leader’s emotional state doesn’t just influence a room, it spreads through it. Without realising it, people mirror the mood of those above them, becoming more guarded, more cautious, and less likely to speak when the leader is carrying unspoken pressure.
In all the years I have worked in the legal sector, teams are professional. A difficult Monday does not send a capable fee earner into a spiral, but professionalism and emotional reading are not the same thing. A person can be entirely professional and still make a quiet, subconscious decision that today is not the right moment to raise a concern.
That decision is not weakness. It’s human and the cumulative cost of it, made across many meetings and many weeks, is where the damage lives.
The cost
David found out about the matter two weeks later in a routine review. By then the matter had overrun and the write-off conversation nobody wanted to have became unavoidable. The question about the advice surfaced eventually, two weeks too late and twice as expensive to resolve.
He never connected it to that Monday morning. Why would he? Nothing dramatic had happened. Nobody had said anything wrong.
How many matters in your firm right now are carrying a version of this silence?
What the room already knows
I worked with a partner who, under pressure, gave very short answers. One word where three would do. A nod where a sentence was needed. She thought she was being efficient. Her team thought she was disappointed in them. Two associates told me separately that they had stopped bringing her problems early because they couldn’t read whether she was engaged or dismissive.
Research by Tasha Eurich found that only 10 to 15% of leaders have an accurate picture of how they are experienced by the people around them. Most leaders judge themselves by what they intend. Their teams judge them by what they feel in the room.
On a difficult Monday morning those two things are rarely the same.
What changes it
The shift is smaller than most leaders expect.
It doesn’t require performing positivity or pretending everything is fine. Instead, pause before walking into a room and ask yourself what you are bringing in with you today.
Or ask the room before you start, “does anyone have anything they would like to raise before we get going?”
This question is highly effective because it tells the team the room is open.
The two associates who stayed quiet that Monday were not disengaged. They were reading the room accurately and responding to what they found there. A leader who knows what they are carrying into a meeting and takes one deliberate step to open it up will get a different response. The team hasn’t changed. The signal has.
Awareness of what you are bringing in is the first step. What you do with that awareness is what closes the gap.
Has there been a moment when you realised your mood had shaped a room in a way you hadn’t intended? What changed when you noticed it?
Andre Thomas is the founder of Thomas Telman and the creator of TrustLytics®, a risk management system designed to help law firm leaders surface and close leadership patterns affecting their firm’s performance and profitability. He works with professional service firms across the UK. You can find out more at thomastelman.com
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