Connect before you disconnect

Take a moment to build your professional relationships

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is to take a moment to connect before you
end a meeting or any other professional conversation. You work

(00:24):
with people, and these little moments of connection can make
an entire work day feel more meaningful. We are all busy,
and if you are listening to this podcast, my guess
is that you get a lot done in a day.
You move judiciously from one thing to the next, and

(00:45):
that is great. But even as you are doing that,
it is possible to create meaningful moments during any task
that involves other people. Doing so is often more productive
in the long haul than being all business. Perhaps you
already start most meetings with the little chit chat saying

(01:06):
hello before getting down to business. Today's tip is about
continuing with that spirit and putting a tiny bit of connection.
At the end of any meeting or conversation. After you
have summed up key takeaways and restated any action items,
you can take a moment to do something to honor

(01:28):
the relationship that is connect before you disconnect. For instance,
if you are leading a team meeting, celebrate something that
happened with the team. Maybe it's a whole team win,
or maybe it's something cool that one person did. You
can take about sixty seconds to let that person bask

(01:49):
in your praise before everyone goes out to get more coffee.
Other times, the final connection can be entirely personal. Maybe
a client's daughter just started kindergarten. After you have worked
through the planned content of your call and as you
are wrapping up, you might say, well, I have another
call in just a few minutes, but before I go,

(02:10):
tell me how is Sierra doing in school. At the
end of a weekly team meeting, as everyone is gathering
their things to leave, you might ask what people are
looking forward to for the upcoming long weekend. Before you
get up to leave your boss's office after a one
on one, you might congratulate her on her favorite team's
recent win and ask her what she thought of the game.

(02:32):
Everybody has stuff to do, and I am not recommending
that meetings expand to include lots of personal conversation. This
idea to connect before you disconnect only works in scenarios
where meetings generally do start and end on time and
don't get sidetracked to discussions of things like office fridge policies,

(02:55):
you need to have the discipline to get through your
material in enough time time that you leave space for
people to get to their next meeting and to have
a two minute conversation about something. You could even phrase
it as a lightning round question. We have two minutes
before I am shipping everyone out of here to their
next thing. I want to know what everyone's doing this weekend. Go.

(03:19):
But here's the thing. People want to work with people
who care about them. When you remember that the client
just got a new dog or her kid just started
at a new school, she feels more positively about working
with you in the future. Same for team members. When
you care what they are looking forward to, they want
to work with you again, and that saves you so

(03:43):
much time and effort. When you are staffing up projects,
people are asking to work with you instead of trying
to avoid you. How cool is that? And you'll enjoy
work more if you have more interesting conversations, which tend
to come from taking an interest in people's lives. So

(04:04):
don't be too quick to say goodbye in your work
calls and meetings. Take just a moment to connect Before
you disconnect, work may start to feel better and you
may become more effective at your job too. In the meantime,
this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making

(04:27):
the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast

(04:51):
is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia,
please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.