What People Say in the Parking Lot

The most honest conversations at a keynote or training usually don't happen in the room. They happen afterward — in the hallway, walking to the parking lot, on the drive back to the office. The public conversation and what people are actually experiencing are often two different things. What a good session offers isn't a confession booth. It's language.

The conversation that waits until everyone leaves.

Some of the most important conversations I've had over the years didn't happen while I was standing at the front of the room. They happened afterward. In the hallway. Walking out toward a parking lot. At the edge of the conference room while I'm gathering my things, when somebody waits until everyone else has moved on.

There's usually a moment when I can tell someone has something else they want to say. And then it comes.

I know exactly what you're talking about, but I couldn't say it in there. Or: my boss was sitting three tables over. Or: this is exactly what's happening on our team. And sometimes something more personal: I've been thinking about leaving and I haven't told anybody.

There's a gap between the room and the truth.

Those conversations tell me something the applause, the audience participation, and the evaluation forms can't. There's often a gap between the conversation happening publicly and what people are actually experiencing.

I call that the parking lot. And it doesn't have to be a literal parking lot. It might be the hallway after a keynote. The reception after a conference session. The conversation between coworkers on the drive home. Or the person who waits while everyone else leaves because something I said gave them words for something they've been trying to understand.

A session doesn't fix anything. It gives you language.

That last part is the important one. I don't expect a keynote or a workshop to be the place where everybody suddenly announces what's really going on in their lives or workplaces. People get to decide what they share, when, and with whom.

But a good presentation can give people language. I've seen it happen again and again. Someone comes up after and says, when you talked about that, I realized that's what I've been doing. Or they hang back at the end of a workshop to say, I finally have a way to explain what's been bothering me.

That's genuinely meaningful to me. The session didn't necessarily solve anything. It gave them a way to see something they hadn't been able to name before. And once people have language for something, they can talk about it differently. Think about it differently. Sometimes even do something differently.

Applause only tells you about the ending.

That's also why I'm careful about how we measure whether a session worked. Of course I want people engaged while I'm presenting. I want them laughing in the right places. I want them thinking. And yes, I enjoy applause — I'm not going to pretend I've reached some enlightened state where it means nothing to me.

But applause only tells me what happened at the end. I'm much more curious about what gets said afterward.

APPLAUSE TELLS YOU ABOUT THE ENDING.
THE PARKING LOT TELLS YOU WHAT LANDED.

What are those two coworkers talking about on the way back to the office? What does someone tell their spouse that night? What idea comes back up in a team meeting three days later? What sentence did somebody write down because it put words around something they'd been feeling for six months?

Those things are harder to capture on an evaluation form. But they tell you far more about whether something actually landed.

Everyone in the room is carrying something.

All those after-session conversations taught me something else. People are carrying far more into our audiences than we can possibly know.

The person laughing in the third row may be going through a major change at home. The manager who looks completely composed may be questioning whether they even want to be a manager anymore. The employee who barely participates may have a great deal to say — and a very good reason for not saying it there.

When I'm standing in front of a room, I don't need to know everybody's story. But I do need to remember that they have one.

Why I won't tell you how to feel.

That changes how I approach a room. It's one reason I won't tell people how they should feel about change, or loss, or uncertainty, or whatever they're navigating. I have no idea what they walked in carrying. What I can do is offer ideas, language, or questions that help them make sense of their own experience.

So if you're sitting in an audience someday and something hits you — but you're not ready to raise your hand and share it with two hundred of your closest workplace acquaintances — that's perfectly fine. You might just ask yourself: what am I thinking now that I wasn't thinking before I walked into this room?

Maybe you talk about it with someone you trust. Maybe you write it down. Maybe you just let it sit for a while.

Because the room matters. But after all these years, I've learned not to assume the room is where the most important conversations happen. Very often, it's the one that starts after everyone gets up from their chairs.