One Meeting Minute Thought for Your Week
Like every leader you want to build your career skills – those things you need to do well in every role you take at each stage of your professional journey.
I’ve asked dozens of leaders what career skills they suggest leaders develop based on their experience.
Their list aligns with what I’ve observed in my 30+ year career.
I’ve also learned another lesson over the years and wished I would have realized it sooner.
To build your career skills and continually improve, you have to “put in the reps”.
And meetings are a perfect place to practice these 6 career skills.
6 critical career skills you can build in meetings
Here’s the list of the top career skills you can never be too good at.
- Time Management
- Strategic Thinking
- Communication
- Prioritization
- Listening
- Empathy
1. Use meetings to build this career skill: Time Management
Every leader must manage their time well to be successful.
You have a limited amount of time and you want to make the most of it.
Every meeting has a fixed time as well.
And, if you’re leading the meeting, you want to be an expert at managing that precious resource.
You do that through the creation of a detailed meeting agenda.
With each meeting agenda you create, you’ll improve your time management capability.
To build this career skill in your meetings, ask yourself this question:
Does the meeting agenda make the best use of our time together?
2. Use meetings to build this career skill: Strategic Thinking
When you lead meetings in your business, you’re in a position of power.
You’re gathering people together to do work that makes an impact on your business.
You get to choose the Purpose of the meeting.
You’re deciding where the company’s most valuable asset, employee’s time, is invested.
So, challenge yourself to think strategically as you prepare for your meetings.
To build this career skill in your meetings, ask yourself this question:
How can this meeting have the biggest impact for our business?
3. Use meetings to build this career skill: Communication
Even if you’re just starting your professional journey, you know communication is a critical career skill.
Every leader I know, even the most experienced in the highest level of companies, would like to be a more effective communicator.
Your meetings give you countless opportunities to hone this essential career skill.
Whether you’re explaining the Purpose of the meeting in the invitation, standing in front presenting slides, or engaging in the discussion you’re communicating.
You and your coworkers are exchanging information – transmitting and receiving.
And, as I’m sure you’ve experienced, many people in meetings need to improve their communication skills. Some more than others!
Regardless of how confident you are now with your ability to communicate, you can continually improve this career skill by participating in meetings.
Because meetings involve people they’re dynamic. The human element introduces challenges that force you to adjust to communicate effectively.
To build this career skill in your meetings, ask yourself this question:
How I can communicate my message clearly and concisely?
4. Use meetings to build this career skill: Prioritization
You must make choices as a business leader because you can’t do everything.
Focusing the efforts of your team on the most important tasks is an important career skill.
In other words, you must be good at prioritization.
Designing and leading a team during a meeting is no different.
Use the meeting agenda to ensure you and your participants accomplish what’s most important during your meeting.
Identify and start with the critical topics.
Put less important items toward the end in case you run out of time.
When you do this for every meeting you lead, you’ll be putting in the reps to build your prioritization career skill.
To build this career skill in your meetings, ask yourself this question:
What are the most important topics to cover during this meeting?
5. Use meetings to build this career skill: Listening
I could have included this with Communication, but I wanted to highlight listening as a separate career skill.
Because too many leaders only think about transmitting information when they hear the word Communication.
Being able to listen well is an uncommon ability.
People take classes on presenting but rarely work to improve as a listener.
So you can distinguish yourself as a leader by honing your ability to listen.
And every meeting provides you with the opportunity to practice.
You’re not going to be a presenter in every meeting you attend.
In some meetings you may not even speak.
But you should always be listening.
To build this career skill in your meetings, ask yourself this question:
What can I learn from those attending this meeting?
6. Use meetings to build this career skill: Empathy
Being able to put aside my personal perspective and see a situation as another person sees it is an undervalued career skill.
When you can empathize with the team members you’re leading, you’ll know how to help them thrive and flourish and do their work with excellence.
Knowing how a customer feels as they interact with your product will give you a competitive edge.
But it isn’t easy to empathize.
Like all the career skills we’ve listed, empathy takes practice.
And, just like the other skills, you can improve your ability to empathize in meetings.
If your meetings are led well, every participant will be sharing their input and perspective.
And, those perspectives won’t be the same as yours.
You’ll have the opportunity to put yourself in the other person’s position and think about why they believe what they believe.
What causes them to perceive reality as they do? And, why doesn’t their view match yours?
What experiences have shaped their mindset?
By staying curious, you’ll better understand your coworkers and your customers.
Use your meetings to practice and improve your ability to empathize.
To build this career skill in your meetings, ask yourself this question:
How do others see this topic differently than I do?
More Resources to Help You Build Your Career and Your Business
One of my favorite experts on listening is Oscar Trimboli.
This excerpt from his website emphasizes the importance of listening as a career skill:
“Communication isn’t just about what you say, it is 50% speaking and 50% listening. Most programs about effective communication focus on speaking with influence and leading change by setting a compelling vision, yet over 93% of change initiatives fail. There is a missing ingredient – leaders who listen.
Only 2% of leaders have ever received any training on how to listen.
However, leaders typically spend 64% to 83% of their day listening. The more senior your role, the more critical listening is to your career progress.”
Oscar Trimboli (OscarTrimboli.com)
👉 Learn more from Oscar Trimboli on his website (click here)
I first learned about Oscar and his work on Dave Stachowiak’s Coaching for Leaders podcast.
Both of these episodes are worth listening to:
👉 Coaching for Leaders Episode 408: Get Better at Deep Listening, with Oscar Trimboli (click here to listen)
👉 Coaching for Leaders Episode 500: Four Habits That Derail Listening, with Oscar Trimboli (click here to listen)
And, finally, this blog post reinforces Oscar’s position that the highest level leaders need to be the best listeners.
👉 M4 024: How To Impact A Meeting Like A CEO (click here to read)
And Now a Word from Our Sponsors
If you need your meeting audio transcribed, click here to follow my affiliate link for Descript and give this powerful AI tool a try.
That’s All for this Issue
If you want to build your career, focus on these 6 fundamental career skills:
- Time Management
- Strategic Thinking
- Communication
- Prioritization
- Listening
- Empathy
You can practice at least one of these in every meeting you’re in.
So, keep putting in the reps and getting better.
The hard work you’re doing is worth it!
Let’s lead with kindness and confidence!
Greg
Here are 3 ways I can help you when you’re ready:
- Get more free resources you can use today (Click here to Start)
- Improve on your own with digital courses (Click here to Improve)
- Accelerate your progress with coaching (Click here to Accelerate)
New To This Newsletter?
Subscribe here so you don’t miss what I share in the next issue.
Want To Help Others?
If this issue helped you, it will probably help someone else. Please share it with your connections to fuel the global movement to Stop Bad Meetings!