Written by: Carl Dierschow
I had a session with a client recently where we started by talking about the Big Event he’d just come back from. He was excited to talk about the progress which had been made, even though it wasn’t the topic we had planned to work on.
After about seven minutes, we finally moved on to the Topic Of The Day.
He asked me at the end of the session about this, thinking that it was perhaps a bit of distraction. Even wasted time. The truth is that he had his mind wrapped around this event and really needed to share it with me.
Like a little girl who is proud to show her accomplishments to parents and friends.
The fact is that he would have been distracted for the entire hour if we hadn’t spent a few minutes talking about it. So in the end it made our coaching session MUCH more productive. And because we worked on a deep and difficult topic, it was important not to be distracted.
This is why many business conversations begin with small talk. It helps you to get clear and emotionally ready to work on the harder stuff.
Plus, it’s important that we recognize each other as living, emotional, intelligent beings. We’re not robots.
Are you recognizing the humanity of your employees and partners?