In case you missed this interesting article about applying Emotional Intelligence in Meetings.
Meetings require a bit of a ramp-up before jumping in. Though small talk is often seen as a time-waster, research has found that it is important for building rapport and trust. This, seemingly irrelevant, element of a meeting actually increases the chances that it will lead to a positive outcome.
Not just any kind of small talk will do, though. Emotionally intelligent people are careful to stay away from the common topics. Instead of starting with, ‘How about those [insert local sports team here]!’ emotionally intelligent people are more strategic and creative in their pre-meeting chitchat. What they do is prime the attendee to enter into a positive mental state. They use the pliability of these feel-good states to their advantage. Here are a couple of examples:
- An internal meeting can begin with a conversation around a recent success story in the practice, one in which the person you’re meeting with had a direct hand.
- An external meeting can start by addressing a person’s recent successes and accomplishments.
In both cases, the key lies in the attendee’s willingness to disclose and share the positive experience – get him or her to talk.
Priming people with feel-good emotions at the beginning of a meeting gets them (and their brains) into a favourable state called ‘broaden and build’. The brain state leads people to broaden their perceptual experience and see other things, though unrelated, through a glow of positivity.
The result? When the actual meeting begins, the ‘halo effect’ of the initial small talk makes bad things good, and good things great. High emotional intelligence people apply this knowledge and steer the meeting topics accordingly.