Most people will tell you that one-on-ones are important.
Few will tell you how to run them.
Each meeting is as unique as the two people involved. And those same two people may be different from day to day depending on what’s happening in their worlds.
If you can attune yourself to that unique environment, you will be more effective at communicating 🗣️, connecting 🙏, and building trust 🤝.
I learned a lot about how pickup signals about the feelings in the air from my martial arts practice. 🥷
Here’s something to think about incorporating into your own one-on-one meetings.
🌊Flow rolling is a common training technique in Jit-Jitsu. It is a lower intensity version of wrestling that allows for some thinking time between movements. You will often let your training partner work through a series of moves without resistance. Sometimes you even deliberately set them up to take advantage of a situation.
I can almost immediately feel a lot about my training partner through flow rolling, even if this is my first time working with them. The first thing I notice is physical, how proficiently does my training partner move? What skills do they have in their toolbox? But I can also feel the mental and emotional environment. Is my training partner confident or unsure? Are they relaxed and moving fluidly or tense and aggressive? I can also sense myself. Am I intimidated by a skilled or physical training partner or am I relaxed and confident? Based on everything happening, I can adjust how I play the game to optimize the training environment for both of us.
📡I try to bring this comfort with closeness and attunement to feelings into my professional life. A good one-on-one often starts off like a flow roll. You’re both getting warmed up. I think about how I can affect the environment so we both get what we need. Maybe that’s helping set someone up for success. Or maybe that’s reminding myself to be confident in what I bring to the table.
Having emotional awareness is critically important for business leadership. The more you practice getting to feel the feelings beneath the conversation, the more you will be able to attune yourself to others’ inner states. Intimacy and feelings can be scary. You don’t have to experience them through Jiu-Jitsu practice. But you should find ways to connect them into your leadership practices. If you do this, you’ll quickly find yourself able to connect to what’s really happening beneath the surface. Everything else has to begin here, where you can understand the reality of someone’s proficiency and more importantly their emotional state. 🎭