A Simple 1-Minute Technique To Transform Your Meeting Mindset
A mindfulness approach to make your meetings better
Four years ago, I was in a tough spot. I had just been promoted to manage a team struggling through an organizational restructure, and I had yet to earn anyone’s trust in my new role.
Meetings were rough. Every time I walked into the room, I could feel the low energy on the team, and it immediately sank my own energy. Yet I knew our meetings together were crucial for building back team cohesion and enthusiasm for our work.
As a new manager facing a big task, I had no idea how to turn things around.
One day, out of anxiety and exhaustion from trying to make things work, I took one minute before our team meeting to check in on my own mindset and energy level.
I took a breath, thought of what I was grateful for about my new team, and set my own intention for the meeting.
I went into that meeting feeling grounded in myself, grateful for my team, and clear on my intention for that meeting. And guess what? The meeting was a little less bad!
This technique didn’t change things instantly. But it did help me to bring a better mindset and energy level to each and every team meeting. And little by little, over the course of many meetings, that added up to a much better team experience.
You’ve probably heard this quote before:
“You are responsible for the energy you bring into any space.”
-Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor
If you are in a leadership role in your work environment, it’s very difficult for people to overcome the level of energy you bring into your team’s shared spaces.
If you are looking to improve how your team interacts, start by looking at yourself and what you are contributing to that dynamic.
Here’s a quick rundown of each of these three steps I still use to prepare for all my work meetings.
Step 1: Close your eyes, take a breath, come back to yourself
If you’ve engaged in any amount of mindfulness or meditation, you will be familiar with this first step.
We spend a lot of our lives distracted and even dissociated from what’s happening in our bodies. That’s why it’s particularly powerful to allow ourselves a moment to come back to our bodies through our breath.
When we are grounded and centered in ourselves we are more likely to act from a place of calmness and clarity, and we are more likely to promote that feeling in those around us.
All it takes is one simple breath. Once you start, you may find that you want to take few breaths, or hold your hand to your heart. Do what feels natural to you.
Step 2: Think about what you are grateful for about your team
Most of us know how powerful gratitude can be. Taking time to think about the good qualities that your coworkers bring to your work together can transform your own experience of working them.
This step, more than anything else, probably turned around my mindset about my team and our meetings together.
This step can be difficult if you are going through a tough situation with your team or if you are dealing with challenging interpersonal dynamics. But even in those situations, I still recommend doing it because it’s the easiest way to find positive opportunities to build on.
I encourage you to find one thing that your colleagues bring to your work environment that you appreciate. Whatever you think about in this moment has to have some truth for you.
As you think about what you are grateful for, remember to really feel that sense of gratitude in your body.
What I discovered is that once I named even one thing I was grateful for, I started to think of many other positive things about my coworkers. It can become a really positive spiral during challenging times to meditate on all the good things about the people who surround you.
In my meetings, this translated to me having a positive overall sense of people and what they contribute to our collective work even if we were having a challenging conversation in the moment. It also opened me up to listening better because I had that general sense of positivity that permeated the interaction.
Quick note: If you are in a truly toxic work environment, there may not be anything that you are genuinely grateful for. I don’t suggest trying force this technique onto that kind of situation. Instead, spend more time grounding yourself and envisioning an energetic boundary to protect yourself before your interactions in your environment.
Step 3: Set your own intention for the meeting
Hopefully your meetings have really clear agendas and objectives. That alone can set a great tone for a meeting. This step does a little something different.
This intention setting is really for your own purposes and is meant to help guide your thinking about the larger intention you hope this meeting can contribute to.
I often thought of words like: Clarity, Connection, Purpose.
Once I had that word in mind, I took one more breath and tried to envision everyone feeling that intention by the end of the meeting.
This allowed me to a larger vision for the meeting and how it was contributing to our team dynamic beyond the agenda. It allowed me to keep in mind the type of feeling I wanted to be generating among the group. And it helped me focus on a longer term goal of creating great team meetings and a positive work environment.
This technique truly takes just one minute to enact before your meetings. I use it before every meeting I go into.
I can’t promise that this is going to make every boring or difficult meeting better, but I can say that this contribute to you to have a better experience at work over the course of time.
This technique helps me to remember every single day that I am responsible for contributing to the type of team environment I want to be in and for creating the experiences I want to have in my career.
Disclaimer: My writing is meant to share my personal experience. It should not be construed as or replace professional health, finance, or legal advice.
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