Member-only story
Four Ways to Storm Out of a Meeting, Ranked
What we can all learn from Nancy Pelosi’s abrupt exit from a meeting with Donald Trump
It’s a tense meeting. The stakes are high. You enter the room determined, reasonable, calm. Next thing you know, you’re in a shouting match over who hates ISIS more. The meeting is off the rails. You need to get out. But how?
Modern U.S. politics is an ongoing lesson in meeting walkouts. President Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s most recent meeting about Trump’s withdrawal of troops from northern Syria, leaving U.S.-allied Kurdish forces exposed, ended with a volley of insults and a rather stilted walkout.
President Trump himself has a history of walking out of meetings, sometimes with an abrupt “bye-bye,” sometimes in ways clearly premeditated, with a podium set up in advance to discuss his walkout. At this point, one might suspect these cross-aisle meetings are being scheduled not for the purpose of productive discussion, but for the post-meeting exercise of telegraphing to the participants’ various constituencies how little they value the other’s time.
Google “how to leave a meeting” and all you get is pablum about polite, discreet exits that don’t disrupt the speaker or show disrespect to fellow attendees: Sit near the door…
