Don’t talk about business…in a business meeting
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Hi Reader, The Problem When you meet someone for the first time — a colleague, a future business partner, a boss — it’s tempting to dive right into the business. You want to go straight to the questions, the to-do list, and the action items. Don’t. That first meeting is precious time to get to know each other as people, and it’s harder to carve out time for that after the first meeting. The Big Small Thing Use 50% of your time in the first meeting to get to know each other. A bit back, I had a 30-minute intro meeting with a potential business partner. I had a list of 10-15 questions and couldn’t wait to bang them out. But then he suggested we start with a bit more about who we are as people. I figured he'd spend about 30 seconds letting me know where he lives and how his weekend was. He went first. Eighteen minutes later, he was still talking. This goes against all my Type-A programming. But I was enthralled. He covered his father’s strict parenting style, his son’s neurodiversity, and his failures. None of it was relevant to the business topics I’d hoped to cover. Didn’t matter. I was getting to know him — and like him — as a person. And that's what matters most for a good business relationship. Given the social psychological principle of reciprocity, I followed suit when it was my turn. I shared fears about my current project and vulnerable anecdotes from my past. By the time I was done, we’d blown through our 30-minute meeting. Neither one of us had a hard stop, so we extended…60 more minutes. We still didn’t get to all the business stuff, so we promptly scheduled a follow-up meeting to go deeper on those topics. And that’s the thing. You can always find more time to talk business, but you rarely schedule time to “get to know each other” in subsequent meetings. Use that precious time in the first meeting to do it. How This Helps You Chase What You Want It takes a tribe to chase what you want, and that tribe often includes teammates, leaders at your company, mentors, and business colleagues. If you cut to the chase in your first meeting — prioritizing to-dos, metrics, and action items over relationship-building — you’re putting your bigger chase at a disadvantage. Make time for people and the space for the rest will come. Let's do this, |
