How to effect change (your first step)

Last week I shared an experiment with you. We looked at ways to read the room and tune your antennae – with a view to effective positive change in your meetings or interactions with others. I shared an experiment to help you do just that.

The article is here if you missed it.

Here are the kind of things you might notice now that you hadn’t really noticed before (or if you had – you’d not done anything about it).

People committing to things and then not doing them. As one person said ‘When I did the Reading the Room experiment it became obvious to me that commitment was lacklustre at best. I realised we need to understand why we’d got into this pattern and what we need to do with it. It’s almost become accepted that people won’t deliver on time’.

‘It made me realise how much people talk for the sake of it and don’t add anything new to the conversation. This is seriously adding to overwhelm and time wasting for everyone. It also made me realise how much I do that too’. Ooops! Work to be done

‘I’m embarrassed to realise that we all talk over the only woman in this project group. I’ve noticed her trying to get a word in on a few occasions and people just talk over her. She’s quietly spoken but that is no excuse – we’re missing her input.’

Great observations here and an opportunity to take stock and do things differently.

No need to finger point or blame. A simple ‘I’ve noticed some things in the meeting that I think we could improve – can we talk about this?’

That’s the best place to start. (You know by now that my Effortless Leader mantra is to take one step at a time).