A few months ago I was having a pint with a mate of mine and he seemed a bit agitated. I asked him what was going on. “Let’s get another round, and I’ll tell you,” he said, rolling his eyes.
I’d scarcely got the drinks back to the table, and he was off. He launched into a tirade about a meeting at work the previous week and how unimpressed he was…
Would you take a seat on a plane with a pilot who’s never flown before? I doubt it. And I think you’d be pretty unhappy if your Premier League team did no pre-season training. Either of those would be unthinkable. At worst, life threatening; at least, risking a poor…
Most feedback on our communication is meaningless.
There are four areas of focus that can instantly elevate what you say from vague to valuable.
Learn how to help others achieve peak performance and unlock their full potential!
#IMPACT #Feedback #Leadership
Tired of attending pointless meetings when you could be doing something more productive? If that’s how you feel, wouldn’t you like to make sure that doesn’t happen to the people who attend meetings you arrange?
What if you planned your next meeting the way you plan a dinner party?
#dominiccolenso #impact #communication
Connecting with every person in a meeting is hard enough when everyone’s there in person. It got harder when everything had to go virtual, but we all learned how to do that.
It’s even more complex now, with some people back in the office and others dialling in remotely. Selling in hybrid meetings demands a new set of skills.
Watch this one-minute video to see if you are doing the one thing that will help you to connect with those who are dialling in.
#dominiccolenso #sales #hybridmeetings
We live in a very connected world. Or so we think… Smart phones and social media have made it easier than ever to grow our networks and broadcast our achievements and yet somehow, amidst all the noise, many people are struggling to make an impact. A quick review of my iPhone apps today revealed that I have 704 Facebook Friends, 1040 Twitter Followers and 1106 LinkedIn Connections. That’s a lot of people and I love the interaction that I have with them. However, as the world becomes more digital it is more important than ever that we can create meaningful human connection and don’t over rely on technology to do the job for us.
If you want to create more impact and have more influence at work try ditching your email and picking up the phone instead. Better yet, walk across the office and speak to colleagues face to face. “Compliance culture” has created the proliferation of massive email chains where people are more interested in covering their backs by documenting their interactions than they are in effectively and efficiently solving the problems at hand. What would happen if you got into the habit of pausing before you hit reply to the latest thing in your inbox? Would a more personal response get you a better outcome? How much time could you save if you cut out the email back-and-forth and discussed the issue instead?
In the moment digital can feel like the easiest and quickest option, yet often it simply delays an inevitable human interaction. To really solve meaningful problems we have to connect, to build trust and develop relationships. Verbal conversations whether on the phone or in person allow us to do this. You can’t fully read body language or decipher tone in an email or an instant message, no matter how many emojis you use!
Yet the solution can’t simply be more face-to-face time. In fact, the research suggests that the average employee spends 31 hours a month in meetings they consider a waste of time! Instead we need to think about the quality of our interactions. Do we have a clear intention for the meeting or call, a tangible objective that we can measure success against? Does everyone present need to be there? Is the agenda clearly defined? Two of the most successful strategies we’ve found for increasing productivity are making meetings shorter – 15 minutes or 45 minutes work well instead of the traditional 30 minutes or an hour – and conducting meetings and conference calls standing up . When people know that time is of the essence and they can’t slump in a comfy chair and zone out, it’s amazing how much more energised and driven people become.
In reality digital is here to stay. Whilst ditching our smartphones might seem appealing, they actually bring us major benefits when used in the right way. The most important thing then is for us to stay in control of our tools rather than allowing our tools to dictate our performance. Being a great communicator is all about self-awareness and being strategic. Instead of reacting immediately to a stimulus, pause and make your response a conscious one. However you choose to respond, the more you truly connect the more effective you’ll become.
Have you ever been to an “update meeting”? These crimes against humanity usually take place first thing in the morning and require employees to pack themselves into crowded meeting rooms to hear progress reports on a variety of projects, most of which they are not personally working on. The concept of sharing information is of course sound but in my experience the execution of most meetings is awful. In theory the idea of keeping everyone in an organisation or team on the same metaphorical page or getting people together to share ideas is a good one but the reality is often a painful experience from which attendees take no real value. Now, I’m not a fan of having meetings for meetings sake but when it becomes necessary to get people together in a room there are three simple steps I recommend you take to protect your only finite resource: TIME.
1. Keep It Snappy!
It is common practice to schedule either 30 minutes or 60 minutes for meetings. The problem is that these go into the diary in back to back blocks and no sooner have you finished one event, than you are magically supposed to be in another location to kick off the next session. Not only does this lead to time slippage and people coming in late but it also encourages you to carry the energy from one meeting into the next. The result: If meeting A went badly, you walk into meeting B feeling negative regardless of the change in subject matter. I had the good fortune to listen to Sir Clive Woodward speak at the end of last year and he offered an ingenious (or even blindingly obvious!) solution to this problem: Create a rule that meetings can only last 15 minutes or 45 minutes and insist that 15 minutes of “travel time” must be scheduled after each event. Not only does this avoid slippage and lateness but in my experience it also makes meetings more productive. There is something about the shorter appointment time that seems to galvanise thinking, cut out waffle and force people to come to decisions. 30 minutes is comfortable. 15 minutes make things urgent!
2. Get Emotional
Good meetings have a clear objective that all participants are aware of and have bought into. However to be truely effective I think you need to go a level deeper and consider how you want to make others feel. All too often when I speak to people about why a meeting is taking place the answer I hear is “to tell people about what’s going on with the project” or “to inform the team about the changes taking place”. If your intention for your next meeting is similar then cancel it immediately and send an email instead! I’m serious! Human beings need to be engaged emotionally. Simply passing on information won’t cut it. If you want to create buy in or get a client excited about your offer, you have to think about what you want them to feel. Maybe you’re trying to inspire, perhaps you want to motivate, you may even want to challenge. Your starting point when thinking about your material should always be the emotional response you want to elicit in the audience. Work in this way and I guarantee that people will have a much greater connection to what you say. It will literally bring your meetings to life.
3. Take Action
There’s nothing more frustrating than arriving at a “follow up meeting” to discover that the things you thought you’d agreed last time round have not been done. Often in a desperate attempt to get out of the room we allow meetings to end without clearly defined action points. This is quite simply a waste of time. Accountability is key. I recommend sending out a list of next actions to all participants within 24 hours of every meeting. This list can be really simple – what the action point is, the time frame agreed for completion and the name of the person owning the action. Not only does it serve as a reminder of what was agreed, the list can then be circulated before any follow up is arranged to ensure progress (The document also forms the basis for the agenda of the next meeting, killing two birds with one stone.). Science also suggests that writing the next steps down is much more likely to produce compliance than a verbal agreement meaning that meetings actually result in action, which surely is the whole point!
I’d love to hear how you make the most of your time and ensure meeting are productive and purposeful so please share any tips in the comments box below.
Keep shining!
Dominic
There are many things you can do to make your audience love you but in my opinion the simplest and most effective is to make brilliant eye contact.
In my latest video I give you my top three tips for connecting with your audience using your eyes. If you find eye contact a little uncomfortable or you’d just like more engagement with the people you’re talking to, then this video is for you.
I really appreciate the comments these posts have been getting recently. It’s been amazing to hear people generously sharing their experiences and their own ideas for how to be brilliant communicators. So, if you’d like to join the debate I’d love to hear from you in the box below.
Keep shining!
Dominic
