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You are listening, aren’t you? (deep listening for beginners)

Now mirror your speech!

Meetings are all about communication and therefore listening. Without communication, the meeting would cease to exist.

 

The word ‘communication’ has a Latin origin of which the root is mun- (not uni-).


Creating clarity within a group

The discussion heated up. I simply asked all participants, a management team, to take a stance by physically putting on a scale a coloured dot. For this growing organisation I was curious to know what the management wanted: more systemisation of processes on the one hand or more self-organisation and responsibilities on a lower level.


Optimise your meetings

Ideas are just ideas. On itself, the value of an idea is nil. If you have a great idea but you don’t execute it, then nothing happens. The world just goes on as it went. And you’ve not made the change you wanted (did you really want to change the world or were you just struck by a nice thought?).


The power of simplicity (or ‘Whatever you think, think the opposite’)

Simple things are powerful. The title ‘Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite’ is one of those powerful simple things. To refresh the memory: it’s the title of a great little book by Paul Arden.


Why leaders should get themselves loved

‘Yes, but the whole meeting should be designed in such a way that we get them where we want’. That were tough words and it framed the meeting unequivocally. My client knew what she wanted. And she was not willing to let others interfere with her plans.


If only meetings could be more like sex…

I’ve already blogged about how ideas propagate. Richard Dawkins stated they do this the same way as our genes. Ideas travel from mind to mind, are being used, recombine, fall apart, get lost and father new ideas.


Meetings: the golden window of opprtunity for change

When an organisation asks me to lead a change, the way meetings are run is rarely a topic of discussion. Points of attention are typically the organisational chart, job descriptions of the new positions (especially at higher level) and typology of the new culture.


What Tetris learns you about planning innovation

‘SME’s are reluctant to invest in innovation. The rewards, read profits, are not clear enough for the immediate focus that most SME’s operate in.’ I was discussing with an expert on innovation and instinctively knew he was right.


‘Get your ass in line’

The admonishment by US House Speaker John Boehner to his fellow Republican became legendary the moment it was uttered. ‘Get your ass in line’ is a rare beauty of the helplessness of the House Speaker during a closed meeting where he tried to rally support from his fellow party members for a debt bill last Wednesday (27 July 2011).


The 2 rules for an engaged meeting

There are two rules for an engaged meeting:

  1. How well you plan, the meeting will always go wrong,
  2. If the meeting does not go wrong, you had a sub-optimal meeting.

 

When I started working as an office clerk some 12 years ago nobody had told me these rules.


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