Great Expectations
I’m a bad “meeter”. What I mean by that is that I don’t feel like I do meetings well. Which is weird because I have a lot of meetings and I’m always sitting down with people that I don’t know. But that doesn’t make me good at it. So, the other day I was thinking about the meetings that I have coming up and how I should prepare for them. I also started thinking about the expectation I have going into these meetings.
See, here’s the thing. I don’t really prepare for meetings probably the way I should and typically I only have one goal going into them. I want whoever I am meeting with to be either A.) Happy they are working with me, and thrilled about what’s to come, or B.) Encouraged by what took place in the meeting. I feel like going into meetings with that as the goal both puts me at ease with what I’m there to accomplish and also hopefully leave with the person I talked to feeling happy about our interaction.
Now, obviously, this doesn’t happen every time, but I think with this being the goal, it takes away the expectation of leaving having “sealed the deal” or anything like that. I think if I can go into a meeting looking to encourage or reenforce a positive feeling, then I’ve achieved what it is that I came there to do. And hopefully helped both that person and myself out in the process.
I know this is sort of a weird topic, but I have just been to too many meetings where if you don’t leave with a “sealed the deal” handshake, the other folks are dissatisfied and want to keep ‘selling’. And I get that to some degree. Why meet if you’re not going to accomplish anything? But here’s the thing. Just as it is with an online interaction I think it’s that way in real life too. If I’m bombarding you with ads and “buy this” text on my website, you’re not going to stick around long. Same with actual, sit down, get coffee meetings. No one wants to be blasted with sales pitch after sales pitch. They want coffee, genuine interaction, respect and (in my opinion) time to think on it.
This may not be the best approach to business meetings, but it makes me leave feeling a lot better.
Thoughts?
It reminds me exactly of social media. Not about selling the idea in 30 minutes but working to move for 3 or 4 more meetings. I would rather be in a relationship type meeting then a sales ad. Good thoughts.
I wonder though, if you do not go in to salesmen mode right away do you lose the interest of clients because they are not use to these type of relational meetings?
Brody,
I get the undercurrent to what you’re writing in this post. It seems that meetings serve different purposes, which requires there to be different kinds of meetings. So we can’t see “meetings” through one lens. Or make them little factories for us.
I like you’re approach. It’s human and respectful. A good question to ask the other person at the beginning of any meeting (informal or formal) is, “What do you expect us to accomplish by the end of our meeting today?” This question allows us to manage expectations, so to speak.
Great point. I’m going to try that.
I am hereby declaring you the anti-business person. I always find you doing something different than the norm and in all cases I have seen so far, the different is better.
I too concur with Jennings’ approach because I prefer to be straightforword and know the individual’s expectation–I like to be myself too and know I can’t always meet people’s expectations. Thanks for sharing Brody!