One + - July 2010 - (Page 52)

Jon Bradshaw Reboot Your Brain director of a major pharmaceutical company who admitted that when it came to sending staff to attend a forthcoming congress, they chose to send the most junior team members, on the basis that their attendance would represent the “least waste of money.” We need to change this and improve the performance of what surely has to be seen as the most I STARTED HAVING ENGINE important part of any meeting—the human physical and mental endeavPROBLEMS AT 20,000 FEET. Not ors has led me on a variety of advenparticipant. a plane, mind you. Me. My engine As humans, we traditionally take tures as I study my performance and was failing as I gulped thin air and responsibility for our performances learn from my successes and, even struggle to extract the exact amount in certain situations. How many of more importantly, my failures. I’ve of oxygen required for me to stay us, for example, have prepared for swum with great white sharks, skyalive. hours for exams, public speeches and dived from 14,000 feet, completed I’d been on the mountain for job interviews? Yet, at one time or an epic three-month (3,400-mile) weeks, each day’s climb taking me bike ride and climbed on Everest and another, most of us have also chosen into ever thinner air to a point where, Mount Kilimanjaro. While some of to blame lack of performance on on that day in late May 2007, only nonspecific unmeasurables, such as these challenges have been easier to 50 percent of normal levels were our frame of mind or bad mood, “not complete than others, one common available. As the wind threatened to being in the zone” or, most amustheme runs through them all: To blow me over, I staggered over the maximize performance, I spend days, ingly, waking on the wrong side of snow and ice panicking, fighting the the bed. weeks, even months preparing my bizarre, desperate desire to rip open What if, instead of blaming anybody and mind. Now, I’m occupied my chest and let more air in. I was thing-other-than-ourselves, we take with creating a tool that facilitates determined to set eyes on the ultiresponsibility for our meeting perforhuman performance, not for any mate goal of the scientific expedition, extreme physical endeavor—but mance, too, and if necessary, improve when, as the clouds slowly cleared, simply for attending meetings. And I it? With the ROI of meetings still the there it was, reaching up majestically: need your help. buzzwords of every industry congress a bright white steeple, plumes of If you search “What is wrong with I attend, a performance improvement snow swept by howling gales. Against meetings?” in Google, you’ll get hun- tool with online and onsite elements the backdrop of a perfect and cold dreds of blogs, discussion rooms and that help meeting participants prepare blue sky, it simply stood there—the practically, physically and mentally, articles, all critical of what we know summit of the world’s highest moun- is one of the most effective business and then perform onsite, too, is much tain, Mount Everest. needed. tools around (when used properly). My background and interest in Later this year, with the help of a Only last week, I interviewed the HR Improving Your Meeting Performance BIO 52 one+ 07.10 As a meetings performance consultant JONATHAN BRADSHAW (www.jonathan bradshaw.com) offers a range of services to enhance delegate performance at meetings. He is founder of Meetings Mindset, an award-winning columnist, an international speaker and director of business development for the IMEX Group. http://www.jonathanbradshaw.com http://www.jonathanbradshaw.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of One + - July 2010

One+ - July 2010
In It Together
Contents
The Energy of Many
Impressions
Overheard
Agenda
Top Spots
Focus On
SoundOff
Hot Buzz
Art of Travel
Your Community
Making a Difference
Connections
Irrelevant
Refresh Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself
Who Owns Social, Anyway?/Embrace the Changing Pace
Penalty for Posting Event Videos Online
Improving Your Meeting Performance
Want to Kill Your Chances at Getting a Job?
A Natural Fit
Wearing the Green Crown
Off the Beaten Path
Cracking the Code
Clear Your Mindspace
There Is No Try
Grassroots Giving
Recognizing Market Transformation
Meet Where?

One + - July 2010