7 | Meetings

Just like you, I open my diary each day and I look through my plans for the days ahead.

And I’ve found that I often describe my week in terms of the meetings I have, the encounters I’m going to have with people, and the reasons to come together with others.

I like people. I like to spend time with them. so this really isn’t that extraordinary.

I decide how to best prepare. And I also consider if I can take anything out, if there’s anything that no longer makes sense to be in my diary. 

• I think about whether I’m going to add value to the meeting.
• I consider if it’s going to add value to me.
• I consider the timing; is now the best moment for this conversation.
• And I look at the clarity of the agenda. Is it full of great questions will support the thinking of everyone who takes part? 

That’s not to say I don’t entertain the notion of a frivolous meeting, now and again. Life’s too short to schedule all the fun out of it, right? 

But…

Just because something found its way into the electronic pages of my diary, it doesn’t mean I have to be there.

Now that doesn’t mean that I’m flaky. It doesn’t mean that I don’t keep my promises and that I back out of things at the last minute. What it does mean is that I am always focused on what I am putting my attention on and if my attention is being used in the best possible way.

I think I learned this back in 2019 when I started to use Nancy Kline’s Transforming Meetings approach in my work, and I applied it to myself first.

Since then, I’ve done meetings differently.

I started to take more responsibility. I thought more about who I was being and what I was taking into each meeting. I became super-purposeful about these interactions. 

And you know what? It’s disruptive, in a really good way. And there’s freedom in it too.