" Meetings are power struggles between those who want something and those who don’t want to give it to them. If you’re walking into a meeting and you need something, your first job is to identify this person. This person is the reason the meeting is happening, and if you don’t know who they are, you’re missing essential subtext. It’s actually pretty easy. Just wait for someone to say something controversial and see who everyone looks at. "

― Michael Lopp , Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager