As you grow in your digital marketing career, you will find yourself attending and increased number of meetings. All types of meetings… Leadership meetings, staff meetings, 1:1s, team meetings, project meetings, and more. Over the years, I have picked up quite a few meeting strategy tips. Meetings truly are the medium of the manager, and a great opportunity to influence others, deliver results, and inspire. Today, I wanted to share one meeting tip in particular: Pay super close attention to your own facial expressions as you speak and especially as you listen to others.
Meetings are a high leverage activity. You have a lot of professionals in one room and it’s an opportunity to inspire and gain leverage. I’m a huge fan of active listening. When someone else is speaking, I do my best to smile, stay engaged, take notes, and ask questions. Whenever I’m speaking, I always look for those active listeners in the room – they are the ones to focus on the most. My career tip of the day: Focus on active listening.
By contrast, certain people will make “negative faces” during meetings. They can truly take energy away from the speaker. As a speaker, you start wondering, do they not like my presentation? Do they have a different opinion? Those making negative faces in meetings can really derail creativity and collaboration. A lot of the time, I think those making negative faces are completely unaware what they are doing! My other big tip: Check yourself to see if you make negative faces during meetings, maybe you are subconsciously. It’s all about making a conscious effort to listen actively and inspire those presenting in the meeting. This simple tip has a ton of leverage and can truly help in your digital marketing career.
Image of Happy and Sad Faces © iStockPhoto – PashaIgnatov
I always attend two meetings every week (a different kind of meeting). During the meeting I always look at the attendees’ reaction regarding the speaker and his topic. I’ve seen, not really negative faces, but uninterested faces or mentally absent kind of face. LOL I mean, those kind of faces show that they are not listening attentively. It would affect the speaker’s mood and guts. It’s not easy to speak in front of many people. It took him a lot of courage to do so. So at least we pay him respect by listening and giving positive facial expressions.
I always remind myself to listen attentively and take of note of the important details given by the speaker. By doing so, I’m showing the speaker a due respect and somehow help him boost his confidence. And on my part, I will greatly benefit from the discussion.
Thanks for this beautiful reminder. 🙂
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As we grow many things will happen need to take part in more meetings for business purposes and with some personal purposes too.But it will help you to grow your business and relationship with others enjoyed reading your post