As a little girl I was fascinated with the Jack-in-the-box toy! I would squeal with delight when the clown popped out (as if it was the first time I had seen it), maybe that’s where my short attention span started… hmm. The quick surprise and fast action always caused a response in me.
If you want to accelerate your meetings, be like the jack-in-the-box – stand up!
A standing meeting is a quick meeting!
While running large corporate teams in Australia we regularly held standing meetings. These meetings can be 5- 15 minutes in length and because you are standing, people are more likely to get to the point quicker and want to keep the conversation progressing.
If you want to handle the constant interruptions of people visiting your cube or office during the day, when they walk into your space…stand up! They won’t know if you are coming or going (which can be funny to watch their faces)!
One of the executives we worked with in the cable industry feels this one technique has saved him a huge amount of hours each week. As a very senior leader he was constantly sharing his wisdom with team members when they entered his office and now he applies this technique he shared recently, people get to the point quicker and many now don’t interrupt, they schedule time with him instead of random daily interruptions – how cool is that!
Standing up is good exercise, surprises your interrupters and is highly productive – try it and then share your results with us here on our blog.
