Four ingredients to make your next meeting and presentation a success.
Jobs pay the bills, no doubt. They also occupy a considerable amount of our waking hours and can give us purpose and meaning in our lives. But as we all know, jobs can be a source of considerable stress: tight deadlines, difficult and emotionally heavy conversations and long days with few breaks. To top off the list, there are meetings and presentations that need attending to. It is important to manage our workload well and avoid bleeding our finite energy in unproductive meetings and anxiety-inducing presentations.
No matter what your job, work can be stressful and keeping focus and a productive state of mind can be difficult at times. Mindfulness can help here. In a nutshell, mindfulness is paying attention to the present moment in an accepting and non-judgmental way. It is a way of training the mind to think better and make sounder decisions. Our minds wander most of the time: we think about the future, stressing, mulling, fretting over it and recalling the past, or daydreaming about the coming weekend. Mindfulness brings us back to the present moment and gives us the tools we need to be less stressed, calmer and more considerate with ourselves and others for more satisfactory collaboration and time spent with people at work.
In recent years, many companies including Google, Goldman Sachs and Nike have begun practicing mindfulness in their workspace, to build a better understanding and increase productivity. Companies like Intel know that mindfulness reduces stress, helps to stay present, and results in increased productivity and wellbeing at work because people better understand and empathies with their own and their colleague's motivations. It's no wonder mindfulness belongs in the modern workplace. Whether or not your company has already discovered the benefits of working mindfully, there are simple ways you can reduce the impact of workplace stress on your self image, attitude and capability.
Build your mindfulness resilience muscle and perform better in meetings and presentations.
Many of us attend far too many mindless meetings, where the intention of the meeting isn’t apparent and the meeting lacks focus, structure or desired outcome. To have a productive meeting, you must know your outcome. Besides the obvious, you’ll need to keep the room in the present moment and get participants to stay as aware and immersed as possible. In this article, I would like to walk you through four steps on how to go about facilitating mindful meetings that focus on purpose-driven and productive outcomes at the right emotional temperature.
What is the difference between a meeting and a mindful meeting? A mindful meeting is a dialogue where the meeting leader supports the group by being aware of the present moment and allowing time for information to be digested before responding to it by setting the tone and pace of the meeting.
A small moment of added thoughtfulness and reflection after someone presents their idea allows us to respond with more intent, more originality, and more understanding. We often have a million things on our minds, and directing the focus on one thing at a time, with true intent, is going to allow the meeting to be less time-consuming and more thorough and productive.
How do we get into the mindset of leading meetings effectively then? Here are 4 tips that will allow you to be more centred, capable and confident when leading meetings.
Self check-in before the meeting
Take a moment and notice how you are feeling. Verbalise your mood in a few words to yourself and describe your present state. Being aware of the emotional condition with which you show up to a meeting has a tremendous effect on the overall texture of the meeting. Taking a moment before the meeting to check in with yourself provides you with a chance to approach the meeting with the right mindset. This also allows you to be more mindful of potentially unwanted but present emotions you must be aware of to be able to bypass a potential trigger should it arise.
Ground yourself in the meeting
Many of us have demanding workloads. We race from meeting to meeting or job to job, and our minds often race ahead of us at times. Beginning a meeting with a moment of silence can be the break you need to get levelled before switching gears again. A simple grounding practice will give you time to settle comfortably into what is happening next. Here is how: As you take a seat, put your feet firm on the ground. Close your eyes for just a moment, and give yourself some time to quietly arrive in your body, and feel your feet resting solidly on the floor. Feel your legs on the chair you are sitting on. Scan through the rest of your body with one more breath until you arrive at your shoulder and head. Notice the temperature in the room and the noise in the background. Take another breath and begin your meeting refreshed.
Check-in with the group
Just as important as checking in with yourself is checking in with your team or group. It’s a great idea to take a few moments at the beginning of each meeting to go around the room, virtually or in person, and have each person share how they’re feeling today or how present they feel. You can suggest a scale from 1-10 to help participants rank where they sit presently (You might even do the same at the end of the meeting to see what has changed throughout for your team). This gives everyone a chance to reflect on how they’re doing and also allows everyone to be mindful of the presence of others and give more attention to the right approach in potentially difficult conversations.
Get the room temperature right
Take a moment to consider where everyone’s mindset is at and how their feeling is influencing the way they think and act. Being socially aware is absolutely critical to being a mindful meeting leader. It means you understand the emotional landscape of the people around you and you get the motivations that drive their thoughts, feelings and behaviour. This allows you to avoid misinterpretations and lets you steer clear of conflicts that may potentially arise otherwise. Doing so helps you to understand the temperature in the room and adjust your communication style to cater for their response ability and find the desired outcome without discord. This is where empathy plays a huge role - more on this in the next articles.
Learn more about how to apply mindfulness and empathy in your meetings and presentations.