How to have more Effective Meetings?

​It’s the tiny things that sap our energy and reduce our bandwidth to create genius-level work.

We have a meeting and then immediately, we rush to the next meeting, without realizing there is Communication Residue which sticks to us.

Imagine our brain has 100 units capacity. We have a meeting and then we move to the next. Communication Residue of the previous meeting will occupy 5 units of our brain’s capacity, leaving us with only 95 units capacity. 

Over time, communication residue occupies more and more of our mind space, leaving very little mind space for creative thinking, pattern recognition, identifying the simple things that would resolve complex problems, seeing the one thing we need to see in the plethora of information all around us, identifying the one powerful, effective, precise action that we need to take today to move the needle.

That is why stillness in the mind, a pre-requisite for super performance, is so difficult to achieve because our minds are cluttered with all the communication residue of a lifetime.

There is a powerful way to clear our mind space to ensure we have effective meetings and effective conversations that create outcomes in alignment with our intentions - Reflection. 

Reflection clears the space in our Conscious Mind. Yet, we have the Sub-conscious and the Unconscious Mind. Clearing of the space in those deeper minds is also required if we truly want to realize our highest potential and make a massive difference by living our Purpose through our work and have it all.

Though, our first step would be to clear the space in our Conscious Mind which would not only give us the pathway to our deeper minds to begin the work there and but also give us an immediate benefit of having more effective meetings and conversations. 

In the last 5 minutes of the meeting, taking the time for group integration and completion through each one in the meeting sharing their reflection on the following questions - one question at a time around the room - ensuring you as the leader of the meeting speak in the end:
1. How are you feeling at the end of the meeting?
2. What did you learn from today's meeting that made a difference to you?
3. What actions will you take as an outcome of today's meeting and by what date / time? 
Having someone (your Chief of Staff, if you have one) put this together in a Who-What-When format will ensure tracking of actions to closure. 

Listening to everyone's closure reflection will give you a clear idea where each one of your team members is at.

After the meeting is over and before rushing to the next, taking 10 minutes to do Meeting Reflection will ensure not only that the communication residue is dissolved, it would also help in integration of the most important information with our existing knowledge to strengthen our ability to identify the 20% that would give us 80% impact. Meeting Reflection is a tool to become a 80 / 20 Thinker. Questions to reflect on as part of Meeting Reflection:
1. What was my intention and was it fulfilled?
2. What did I learn?
3. What actions do I need to take?

You may say it's impossible to take out 10 minutes after every meeting because I am just too busy. High Performers think 20% of the time and act 80% of the time. Super Performers think 80% of the time and act 20% of the time, which is why they have an abundance of time and energy (spiritual, mental, emotional, physical) to have it all. 

To increase the effectiveness of your meetings and conversations even further, practise Space Clearing and Meeting Creation before every meeting. Space Clearing is an opportunity to check-in on our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual energy because our energy does the communication, not our words. Then, raise our consciousness one step at a time to be at Gear 5 Consciousness Energy before entering the meeting. It's possible to step up to Gear 5 for short periods of time, at least intellectually, before we reach the highest level of consciousness as steady state. Just being aware of which energy level we are at and making an effort to at least step-up to Gear 1 itself will make the meeting more effective instead of running it from Gear 0 energy of a Fighter or a Super Hero Martyr or a Helpless Victim.

After Space Clearing, doing Meeting Creation before starting the meeting will ensure the meeting gives you the outcome you called the meeting for. Meeting Creation is about
1. Clearly articulating to yourself what your intention is from the meeting
2. Giving your power of belief to the intention
3. Creating a structure of success to fulfil on that intention through the meeting

If it's a very important meeting, then it is best that the intention of the meeting is set out before you sleep the night before so that your Inner Wisdom supports you to arrive at a powerful structure of success while you are sleeping.

Coming into RYD sessions is like going to a Gym, that is why we call ourselves - RYD Gym.

You try new behaviours in the Gym, week on week, so that over a period of time, new mental, emotional, spiritual behaviours become muscle memory. 

If you practise setting intentions before your RYD sessions and session reflections immediately afterwards, slowly the habit to intentionally create a meeting and complete fully after each meeting through Reflection would get into your muscle memory.

Ultimately, whether you achieve your Annual Goals or not is a function of how effectively you run your meetings.

Keep learning, implementing and learning ongoingly to joyously lead yourself and your businesses from good to great, realize your dreams and have it all with ease and grace; experiencing beauty, balance and harmony within and all around; while having lots of fun and adventure along the way.

Loving you,
j.