Over the years, I've had so much success in getting a meeting started and the doors to communications opened with what I call the "greatest hopes-greatest fears exercise." As it unfolds with white boards clean, we all start with contributing to making a list of everyone's greatest hopes for why we're together. The list is usually extensive, everyone participates, often includes a personal hope or need and creates comfort. Then, we shift and do the identical steps for people's "greatest fears..." These come usually, but a little more slowly. The process does one more thing tho.' Now you have a checklist against which you can see how you're doing and people are more willing and accountable to help move towards the desired goals as its their hopes and fears. What is one of your best ways to get a meeting off on the right track?

Little success story from today, I wanted to share. I had a meeting booked today with a few people from a team who were experiencing some challenges. Previously it would have just been a chat, and I would have taken notes.. and then probably designed another session to work out what they could do.. BUT I decided to change it up.. in that 'meeting' I changed it to a workshop, I explained I wanted them to identify their challenges and then we reframed them as 'How Might We' questions.. which then led to some great discussion and excellent ideas for possible solutions. This all happened in 30 minutes!! This is definitely the way to go from now on!