FULL TRANSCRIPT

00:00 – Show Opening

Are you a professional who wants to become a more effective leader? Then get ready for daily tips from the coach, with the experience and inspiration to help you succeed in any leadership situation. You’re listening to the Meeting Leadership Podcast, with Gordon Sheppard.

00:27 – Start Here – Podcast content starts here!

Gordon Sheppard Speaking

Welcome to another episode of the Meeting Leadership Podcast, where we help professionals just like you, build your leadership skills and learn how to run outstanding meetings. Now do me a favor, put your hand in the air if you’ve ever done a walking meeting. Now when I ask people at conferences to do this very thing, I can tell you there’s not too many hands that go up, but the hands that do are from the people who have experienced this and it’s their enthusiasm along with some really practical tips that I want to pass along to you today in this episode called five ways to do profitable walking meetings. Now, when I say walking meeting, that is literally what I mean. I mean, get up, get out of the office, get away from that board room and start to get moving. And I think you’re going to see a really unique approach to allow you to be more creative and more productive when you get together.

01:18 – Walking Meeting Tip #1 – Give yourself permission

And let me jump right in with the first suggestion. That is to give yourself permission. So many people I run into don’t even feel that they have the ability to bring this up. They just don’t think internally that it would be a good idea that they might kind of rock the boat. And I’m not suggesting that you do, if that’s too crazy for the place where you work. But if you think it’s even going to be a remote possibility that a walking meeting will help you get more done, then it is really worth inside giving yourself permission, which leads us into tip number two.

01:49 – Walking Meeting Tip #2 – Learn how to ask

Learn how to ask. Now think about it. If you and your colleague have never actually gone out for a walking meeting, it’s going to be a bit shocking. So quite honestly, you should be at home and practice in the mirror and say, “Hey, you know, instead of going to our regular meeting room today, can we actually go for a walk instead?” And once you’ve actually practiced and you’ve actually thought about some of the objections that your colleague might come up with and you actually have the answers to overcome those objections, then it’s more likely that you’re going to be able to actually do a walking meeting, which leads us into tip number three.

02:20 – Walking Meeting Tip #3 – Choose a great location

Choose a great location. Now when you’re doing a walking meeting, you want to go somewhere where you’re not going to be interrupted. So if you’re in a busy downtown setting, for example, you know that if you just step outside the office, you’re actually going to be walking kind of block by block and getting stopped by those traffic lights. Well, that in fact, it interrupts the flow of the dialogue that you’re having during the walking meeting. So if you really want your walking meeting to be successful, make the extra effort to get to a park or get somewhere where you know you’re not going to be interrupted, and that will really help the overall flow of ideas.

02:53 – Walking Meeting Tip #4 – Wear comfortable shoes

And here’s tip number four. Wear comfortable shoes. Just think it, when it comes to walking meetings, you want to come up with great ideas. You want to have a really good meeting with you and your colleague, you don’t want to spend time thinking about your feet and the sacrifice to fashion.

03:10 – Walking Meeting Tip #5 – Tell your boss about your success

And finally, tip number five, tell your boss. Now after you’ve gone out with your colleague, you’ve had a great meeting, you’ve come up with all kinds of great ideas and you’ve solved all kinds of problems, go back to your boss and tell them about how this walking meeting was such a huge success. And who knows? Maybe your boss will try it too, or maybe someone else will be inspired to do it with their colleague. And maybe you can start to talk about the fact that people like Albert Einstein used to take walks to come up with great ideas too.

03:39 – Walking Meeting Tips – Recap

Let me take a moment to recap the five ways to do profitable walking meetings. Number one, give yourself permission. Number two, learn how to ask. Number three, choose a great location. Number four, wear comfortable shoes. Number five, tell your boss how productive it was so you can all do it again. And I can’t wait to hear from the people who listened to this episode, took a chance, put on their runners, took a walking meeting, got way more productive and way more done, and changed the culture in the place that they work.

04:13 – Meeting Leadership Academy – https://meetingleadershipinc.com/academy

And now I’d like to let you know that this episode of the Meeting Leadership Podcast is brought to you by the Meeting Leadership Academy. If you want, great options for live training, for online training to grow your leadership skills and learn how to run outstanding meetings, then visit meetingleadershipinc.com/academy to learn more. And as always, thanks for listening, and we’ll see you tomorrow on the Meeting Leadership Podcast.

04:38 – Podcast Outro

Thanks for listening to the Meeting Leadership Podcast. Be sure to subscribe for more strategies to help you become an outstanding leader. And don’t forget to rate and review so we can bring you fresh content every day. We’ll see you tomorrow, right here, on the Meeting Leadership Podcast.