Considerations when planning
your next business meeting
While video remains a relevant and useful tool still today,
it’s worth thinking about the necessity of it before you schedule your next meeting this way.
By Meg McKeen, CIC
The reasons we gather in the insurance industry are limitless—to celebrate a milestone anniversary or retirement, to welcome a new colleague to the team, to build connection with a client, to deliver hard news to another.
And while we work from all sorts of different places these days—an office, our home, or somewhere else in the world—for many of us, we gather simply to remember that we are not alone and that our connections with others matter.
A meeting about a meeting
In the compelling The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters, author Priya Parker challenges us to think more specifically about the reason—the purpose—for the business-related gatherings that we host. With many of us at our capacity for yet another meeting, as Parker suggests, the reasons we gather are often rooted in tradition. And as I’ve shared in a past column, we do love our traditions in the insurance industry!
While traditions can be beautiful, it might also be time for thoughtfulness and intention as we consider why we perpetuate them.
Not another Zoom meeting
As an industry, we went all-in on video conferencing during the pandemic; it was a brilliant business tool that allowed for a modicum of connection in a time when connection could have adverse consequences. While video remains a relevant and useful tool still today, it’s worth thinking about the necessity of it before you schedule your next meeting this way.
This summer, tired of feeling tethered to my devices and at the risk of throwing my phone out the window, I knew something had to change. Wanting to significantly cut the time I spent in front of screens, I experimented (successfully!) with asynchronous communication for non-urgent communications. I opted to forgo Meet or Teams or Zoom for a recorded video message and an interactive Google doc instead, to be viewed and reviewed—and then responded to—by the recipient on their timeline.
In every instance, we accomplished what we needed to, working in a way that honored the collective need to disconnect—not from others, but from technology—that many of us are experiencing today. In doing so, without the need to be video-ready or online endlessly, we preserved our bandwidth for the interactions where being “on” was required.
When thinking about the ways you can connect with people you have an established relationship with, can you resist video? Sometimes a “good old fashioned” phone call will do, and even better when it can be paired with movement, if you’re able, like a walk around the block or sipping coffee while sitting in your favorite spot.
We’re all the same height on Zoom
It was wild to discover, after many months of working together virtually, that a client was a 6’5” former college basketball phenom; I had no sense of his height when we were both same-sized boxes on our computer screens.
As you move about the in-person world these days, it’s kind to consider your vantage point—and your meeting person’s—when you think about the ways you’ll gather. No matter your level of authority, consider where you’ll place yourself in relation to your meeting person. If you’re gathering in a traditional office space, slide your chair from behind your desk and sit next to your colleague or client, or better yet, move the meeting to an even more neutral space. Can you chat on a bench in an outdoor courtyard? Or at a table tucked away in your office lobby?
Thoughtfully changing the ways we gather can change the ways we communicate, and creating ease in your space can often invite ease in the message you’re sharing, too.
Place matters
Recently, working with a high-net-worth personal lines producer, I challenged their habit to meet at a prospect’s kitchen table, as they were taught to do by a seasoned agent, and instead gather out in their community. While more convenient for the prospect, in theory, our home is a deeply personal space and can provide myriad distractions for one who’s lost interest, is feeling overwhelmed, or is just ready to check out of a sales conversation.
For this reason, I’m coming back to the coffee shop again because it checks several boxes: Often these are small businesses in our communities that we want to support, there’s no interruptions from waitstaff like you might experience in a restaurant, and there’s the right kind of noise in the background—a hum that’s not too loud, but not too quiet, either. Distractions will always be present but will be very different in this neutralized space than if we move our office into our client’s kitchen.
This spring, I took the podcast I host on tour, holding live recordings in front of a small group of women in insurance in cities around the country. Surrounded by books in an indie bookstore in Atlanta and plants at a garden shop in Portland, we gathered to share stories and experiences, in an environment that inspired creativity and connection.
So very different from the traditional event halls and hotel conference rooms that we’re accustomed to meeting in in the insurance industry, the energy of the spaces we choose to gather matters. If, for example, curiosity and growth are the aim of your gathering, we must look for spaces that signal both.
Years ago, when I was an impressionable college kid, on a Thursday afternoon in the late spring our professor instructed us to pack up our materials and head out to the quad. We formed a circle as we took our seats on the grass and she shared the lesson for the day. It was novel and unexpected, and so very different from the classroom-style seating in the gray-on-gray lecture hall that we were accustomed to. Engaging our senses of smell, of sight, and of touch, allowed us to experience learning in a way that has stayed with me today.
I share these anecdotes because right now, you’re likely planning a gathering—or about to attend one—that will look and feel just like we’d expect in the insurance industry. Or it can be wildly different.
I hope you’ll pause to consider the purpose of your gathering, the energy of the place you’ll choose to meet, and the importance of the connections—to others and ourselves—that will be experienced in these spaces.
A final note: This piece was inspired by Dr. Gloria Burgess’ leadership seminar Sanctuary: Rekindling the Heart of Leadership,® which I was fortunate to participate in this summer.
The author
Once told “you’re someone I’d like to receive bad news from,” Meg McKeen, CIC, founded Adjunct Advisors LLC in 2018 with the simple belief that we can and must do more to support the individuals who choose a career in the insurance industry. Now in her 25th year, Meg’s experience working in underwriting, leadership, and sales within the industry informs her work as a consultant today, in which Meg now holds space, at the crossroads of personal and professional development, for insurance professionals as they navigate their shifting relationship with work and this current hard market. Meg’s work includes private and small group coaching, workshop facilitation, industry event speaking and planning engagements, and the podcast she hosts, Bound & Determinedsm. Learn more at www.adjunctadvisors.com.
