Leave your meeting rooms! Hold a walking meeting! This is energizing, stimulates creativity, allows to engage in a different way with your colleagues and …. it is very enjoyable.
Have you ever left your meeting room and to go for a walking meeting instead? If not, you should do so. You will be surprised how that can change the quality of your meeting.
When to use walking meetings?
Walking meetings works particularly well for one-to-one interactions. I use walking meetings to catch up with my team members or for individual meetings I have with leaders in our organization. I have also used it successfully for interviews – even at senior level. Of course it is important to ensure that the other person feels like going for a walk. You should check this first.
What to check first before you go for a walking meeting?
Cloth and shoes should be adapted to the weather and street conditions. I speak from experience, because one day I went for a walking meeting with one of my team member and I noticed only after 20 minutes that she had shoes with high heels on, which were obviously not optimal for a long walk. We shortened the walk a bit.
How is walking influencing the quality of our meetings?
Being your body motion has several great benefits. It contributes to your fitness and has a positive effect on the quality of your exchanges and on meeting dynamics. When you walk, your blood circulates more and brings thereby more oxygen to your brain. This stimulates creativity. You will also see that the discussion will be more engaged than when you sit in a meeting room. The change of setting itself can have a beneficial impact as it may help breaking certain meeting routines. To make it short, walking meetings will help you to think out of the box (the meeting room box).
Walking meetings favor true conversations
The fact that you will not have a PowerPoint presentation or heavy documents to look at will allow refocusing on the other person and on the nature of the interaction. This is the condition to establish a true conversation with the other person, where the exchange goes beyond communicating facts and figures, but where each party engages more deeply into the dialogue.
It’s enjoyable and healthy!
And last but not least – if you still need to be convinced – a good walk (even 30 minutes) is not only a very healthy activity to have during our work days, but it is also very enjoyable. Try it and share your experience!
More information in my book:
Sven Sommerlatte : Successful Career Strategy – An HR Practitioner’s Guide to Reach Your Dream Job (Springer, June 2023). ISBN: 978-3-662-66790-3
