8. Making Your Own Space

Getting the seat you want, as I advocated in Blog #7, might require you to get there early.  Certainly if you’re one of the last to arrive, your choice is restricted to places rejected by those already present.  But arriving early also opens up another possible route to greater influence by creating more space around you.  And, as I described in Blog #3, space is power. 

Compare these two pictures:

In the one on the left I am a bit hemmed in by the empty chairs on either side of me and this effect will be amplified when people are sitting in them.

But simply by moving the adjacent chairs away from mine, I create more space for myself in the picture on the right, and subtly elevate my status.

What’s more, many meeting tables are comprised of smaller tables and the default seating arrangement is often to have two chairs within one of these smaller tables.  But even when there’s no one sitting there, as in the picture on the right, simply by sharing the space with an empty chair you project less status than if you have the table to yourself.

So choose a place where you have this smaller table to yourself and position yourself in the centre of it.  Or perhaps remove the chair from the larger meeting table entirely.  How often do you go to meetings where there are more chairs than people who will attend?  If you look around the room you may well see other redundant chairs placed against the walls.  No one will notice if you are the first in the room. And even if someone else is there before you, any curiosity at your moving the furniture is unlikely to be more than momentary.