If you’ve spent any time in a corporate office or a high-growth startup lately, you’ve probably heard the word "confer" thrown around as a fancy synonym for just talking. It’s not. Most people treat conferring like it’s just another meeting on a calendar already bloated with "syncs" and "stand-ups" that could have been an email. Honestly? That’s why your projects are stalling.
To confer is to exchange opinions, sure, but in a professional context, it’s about a specific type of deliberative consultation that leads to a decision. It’s the difference between chatting about the weather and a group of surgeons deciding on a high-risk procedure. One is noise. The other is conferral.
Real conferring is becoming a lost art in the era of Slack pings and 15-minute Zoom bursts. We've traded depth for speed, and we're paying for it in misaligned goals and "re-work" that costs companies billions annually.
The Evolution of How We Confer
The word itself has roots in the Latin conferre, meaning "to bring together." Historically, this wasn't just a casual huddle. It was a formal gathering of minds. Think of the legal "conference" or a diplomatic summit. In these spaces, to confer means to weigh evidence.
But look at the modern office.
We don’t really confer anymore; we broadcast. One person speaks, everyone else waits for their turn to talk, or worse, they’re just checking their phones under the table. Research from the Harvard Business Review has consistently shown that "groupthink" is the natural enemy of effective consultation. When we confer poorly, we just reinforce the loudest person's opinion instead of actually synthesizing new information.
True conferral requires a psychological safety that most teams lack. If you can't tell your boss their idea is a disaster during a conference, you aren't conferring. You’re just attending a performance.
Why Asynchronous Work is Killing the Conference
The rise of remote work changed everything.
It's great for deep work. It's terrible for the nuanced exchange of ideas. When you confer in person, you catch the micro-expressions. You see the hesitation in a colleague's eyes when a deadline is proposed. You can't see that in a Discord thread.
Asynchronous communication is basically a series of monologues. I post my thought. You read it three hours later. You respond. By the time we’ve "conferred," the context has shifted. This delay creates a "coordination tax." You end up spending more time managing the communication than doing the actual work.
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Microsoft’s Work Trend Index recently highlighted that digital debt—the inflow of data, emails, and chats—is outstripping our ability to process it. We feel like we're conferring because we're communicating constantly. But we're not. We're just shouting into the void.
The Science of Better Deliberation
Effective conferral isn't just a soft skill; there’s some hard science behind it.
The "Double Diamond" model in design thinking is a great example of structured conferral. You start by diverging—bringing in as many weird, wild ideas as possible. Then, and only then, do you converge. Most teams skip the divergence. They want the answer now.
Ways to Fix Your Team's Communication
The "Pre-read" Rule. Never walk into a room to confer without everyone having read the brief first. Amazon famously does this with their six-page memos. The first 20 minutes of the meeting are silent reading. It sounds weird. It works. It ensures everyone is conferring based on the same set of facts, not just who has the best memory of the last email.
Assign a Devil’s Advocate. Literally. Name someone whose job it is to poke holes in the consensus. If everyone agrees too quickly, you haven't conferred; you've just surrendered to the easiest path.
Stop the "Update" Meetings. If the goal of the meeting is just to give status updates, cancel it. Use a dashboard. Only confer when there is a decision to be made or a problem that requires collective brainpower.
The Rule of Three. When conferring on a solution, don't bring one idea. Bring three. This forces the group to compare and contrast rather than just saying "yes" or "no" to a single proposal.
Misconceptions About Giving Advice
A lot of people think that to confer is just to give advice. It's more of a two-way street.
In medical ethics, "consultation and conferral" are distinct parts of patient care. A specialist might give a consultation (an opinion), but the medical team confers to decide the treatment plan. It’s a subtle but massive difference. One is an input; the other is a process.
If you're a leader, you need to stop giving "advice" and start facilitating conferral. Your job isn't to have all the answers. It's to ensure the best answer emerges from the group. This requires a level of humility that is, frankly, pretty rare in C-suites.
The Legal and Academic Weight of Conferral
Outside of business, the act to confer carries a lot of weight.
In law, a "meet and confer" is often a mandatory step before certain motions can be filed in court. It’s a requirement that the opposing sides actually try to work things out before wasting a judge's time. It’s a safeguard against unnecessary conflict.
In academia, we talk about "conferring degrees." This isn't just a fancy way of saying "giving." It implies that a body of experts has deliberated and agreed that a student has met the required standards. It’s a communal stamp of approval.
When we strip this gravity away from our everyday business interactions, we lose the value of the outcome. If a decision is made without proper conferral, nobody feels a sense of ownership. When things go wrong, everyone points fingers. But when you truly confer, the team owns the result—win or lose.
Turning Talk into Action
So, how do you actually get better at this?
It starts with intentionality. Before you send that calendar invite, ask yourself: "Am I trying to inform, or am I trying to confer?"
If you're just informing, send a Loom video or an email. Don't steal people's time.
If you need to confer, set the stage. Define the desired outcome. Give people the space to disagree. And for the love of everything, put your phones away. You can't weigh someone else's opinion if you're looking at a notification from LinkedIn.
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Real conferral is messy. It’s uncomfortable. It involves ego bruises and difficult realizations. But it’s also the only way to build something that actually lasts.
Actionable Steps for Tomorrow
- Audit your calendar. Look at every meeting with "sync" or "check-in" in the title. If there's no specific decision being made, pivot it to an asynchronous update.
- Change your vocabulary. Start using the word "confer" when you want a deep-dive deliberation. It signals to your team that this isn't just a casual chat.
- Establish a "Safe-to-Fail" zone. During your next conferral session, explicitly state that no idea is too stupid. Then, actually mean it.
- Document the "Why." After you confer and reach a decision, record the reasoning, not just the result. This creates a "decision log" that prevents the same arguments from resurfacing six months later.
The goal isn't more talk. It's better talk. By moving away from superficial communication and back toward genuine conferral, you stop reacting to your business and start leading it. This isn't just about being polite or "inclusive." It's about getting the right answer in a world where being wrong is more expensive than ever.
Stop scheduling meetings to "touch base." Start conferring with purpose. Your bottom line—and your sanity—will thank you.