One of the basic facts about emotion: Feelings motivate.
Fear motivates protection.
Anger motivates attack.
Joy motivates connection.
Disgust motivates rejection.
Trust motivates stepping forward.
Sorrow motivates withdrawing.
Surprise motivates stopping to assess.
Anticipation motivates looking forward.
There are myriad combinations of these expressed in thousands of words for feelings.
One of the basic facts about business life: Meetings are… suboptimal.
We have a lot of (probably WAY too many) fairly useless meetings. They don’t GO anywhere, people leave having heard, but not feeling heard. The leave with ideas but not meaning.
Put the two facts together:
In your next meeting, how do you want people to feel?
If you consider that every meeting is an opportunity give a gift of emotion — emotion that will create some value for the person, the team, the organization — what gift will you give?
Joshua Freedman
Joshua is one of the world’s preeminent experts on developing emotional intelligence to improve performance. With warmth and authenticity, he translates leading-edge science into practical, applicable terms that improve the quality of workplace relationships to unlock enduring success. Joshua leads the world’s largest network of emotional intelligence practitioners and researchers.See 252 more posts by Joshua Freedman
“Surprise motivates stopping to asses.” …should that be assess or is it a Freudian slip
Oh dear… I’ll go edit it now!
Josh, I kinda liked it the first way
I am going to a meeting in 40 minutes. I will be leading the meeting. So, I want to create connection, stepping forward, and looking forward (to the next meeting haha).
So, I will work on bring joy and trust at the beginning of the meeting, expressing how great this piece of work is going to be, it will benefit our colleagues, and I will listen to all their thoughts as they are the experts in the subject. My intention for this piece of work is to take the opportunity to develop a tool that our colleagues will be happy using, and definitely not another pproblematic tool that they just have to use. So far it has been going great, with Jayne and Leanne’ great understanding and bringing in people to give input.
At the end of the meeting, I will tell them how great they have done and give my appreciation, and tell them that with this as the basis, we will finish with a good outcome at the next meeting!
How does that sound Mr. Freedman?
Hi Sonia, sounds great! I agree that your own authentic appreciation at the end is likely to create a feeling of gratitude and optimism at the end, which are likely to motivate that “stepping forward” action you’re looking for.
Let us know!
- J
Haha, well, what do you know? The meeting was a blast. It had the exact energy I described in my spontaneous response to you earlier. Our meeting room was double booked and I had to find another one 5 floors down in the last minutes, this provided an opportunity for people to start talking to each other before we sat down. I shared my intention with them – not wanting this piece of work to be another pain in the ass, but a real help to people. We had 1/3 IT, 1/3 social workers, 1/3 advisors, meeting for the first time and my task was to get them to co-design a client assessment form. I bet you could just imagine the questions flying across the room – some wanting the details, some questioning the logic, others just cared about the big picture and just wanted to keep moving … The thing was, the energy was very positive from beginning to end. We stopped at a good place, and they all agreed to come back to finish the work (I sent out a follow-up meeting invite, they all accepted it).
Something is definitely interesting here about what happened this morning:)
Thanks Joshua, any tips on how to make my boss love me?
May be it helps to run a word puzzle for 1/2 a min at the start of a meeting to draw some joy and fun. Emotional Contagion” is the key.
Would like to hear more about the word puzzle. I’ll be conducting teacher training workshops in Mexico in a couple of weeks so I’m liking the ideas shared here. Thank you.
The bigger objective is that I want my people to be enthused to get into implementation of the agenda items. Or at least take the responsibility of the action and work toward solution.
Hi Bhawana, because every person may be different… and every agenda item may be different… perhaps start with one. Tomorrow, consider one agenda item in one meeting: what feelings will help create that responsibility, ownership, follow-through you want?
EQ is a God sent solution to most of the present day problems concerning relationships not only at work place but at home and social front as well. EQ ensures a realization, which when encountered, tends to change the basic outlook of a person towards life in a very positive manner. Actual teaching of EQ lies in being truthful not only to others but more to ourselves. As such, EQ is important in our every action at work place, home and on social front. For this, the subject needs to be learnt first as a subject and then applied to normal life. The results are truly awesome.
One thought which keeps coming to my mind after every interaction is that listening is so important. It is important as it creates trust, joy and lets the other know that “I value what you have to say”. To listen not only with your head but with your heart is to empathise. To listen is also to put off your arrogance and put on your desire to learn, to feel curious.
If you want others to listen to you, one must learn to speak less, speak with specificity, succinctly and generously.
What a great meeting would it be if all spoke less and listened more.
Ebe, I often do an exercise about great managers – and EVERY time “listening” comes up as one of the hallmarks. There’s something rare and precious in this very simple human action.
Very Nice Article, Meetings are really an opportunities to create appropriate feelings, but with a gift of emotion and when it is recieved properly by members, certainly make a big difference. Thanks for sharing; I PIN ed IT:)
Thanks for the comment Arati – and for Pinning! I think if we consider emotions as a gift – and also as a financially valuable resource – we might treat this experience more carefully.
The feeling I’d wish to convey, help people really feel would be “safe” as in safe to speak openly and be actively listened to, asked follow up questions that proved I was hearing them and cared about their feelings, providing feedback and attempting to create understanding. The hope would be this would inspire honesty and reasonableness while gaining useful, maybe critical insight.
Hi Michael – see Gates’ comments below yours! I suspect that there is massive emotional “ripple effect” through the questions, but maybe even more from the way we respond to people’s answers (and non-answers). The non-verbal and verbal response sends a big message.
It is always the simple solutions that make such a big difference. This little question is so powerful in helping clarify intentions prior to joining a meeting. I will try to ask myself this question before every meeting that I attend.
Interestingly enough, I just walked out of meeting that left me feeling motivated, engaged and ready to tackle the biggest project. When I reflected on the meeting in an effort to identify what it was about it that worked so well, I realized that everyone was given the opportunity to speak, to express their opinions and, most importantly, to be heard. We all left feeling a stronger team connection than we had before going in. At the end of the day, we all need to feel valued.
Thank you for the insights.
Thanks Gates – intriguing that the comment right before yours, from Michael, says this is much the kind of feeling he wanted to create by listening. It’s a little surprising how rare this is — we tend to think “communication” is about telling… (or sending a memo…)
Joshua, thank you for pointing out Gates’ comment. His response was so visual too for me, in how great he felt after his meeting. As he said, we all want to feel valued, and we feel that often by having our input appreciated and valued, at least on some level. When we feel involved in the process, it creates much more buy-in.
Your article, very thought-provoking.
Hi Michael,
Thank you for your comments about my posting.
You may be surprised to hear this but, in this instance, Gates is actually a female name
Hi Gates,
My apology for making such an assumption.
I like the name.