Falcon's Invoice Discounting: Your Path to Prosperity
Walking Meetings
1. Walking As Part of Work Meetings:
Don’t Call It A Break
Beth Kanter, Master Trainer, Blogger, Author, and Speaker
Guidestar Webinar
Feb. 12, 2015
2. People are sitting 9.3
hours a day, which is
more than we’re
sleeping, at 7.7 hours
It’s harmful to your
health ….
Sitting increases risk
of death up to 40%
3. Beth
399
I Know from Direct Experience
Healthy Range
>150
Triglycerides: Test Results
20. ”For me, walking has proved
to be a great way to promote
a healthy lifestyle, while
facilitating my
communications skills and
leadership efforts.“
Louis Sullivan, HHS Secretary
89-93
21. Mindset Change: Integrate Walking Into Your Work
• Stop thinking of solo walking as “exercise” it is
a great time to think about challenging work
task
• Recognize when you are not productive sitting
and take a five minute walk around your office,
stretch
• Hack a standing desk
• Incorporate 20-30 minute solo walks during the
day or talk call w/ your mobile phone
• Walking commute to work, if possible or park
far away or get off bus a stop early
23. Meeting Type Description
Informal Chats To decide to act on a problem you are facing
1:1 Regularly scheduled check-ins with your
boss or people who report to you
Networking Meeting with a professional colleague for
relationship building
Huddles To offer help or take action on tactical issues
such as scheduling or daily work
Staff Meetings Reporting, decision, planning, scheduling,
updates, brainstorming, etc
Work Session To develop a strategy, process improvement,
or implementation plan
Conference Calls Meetings by phone or online
Changing A Culture of Sitting: Pick One Meeting
Easy place to start: Suggest replacing weekly status updates with supervisors with a
walking meeting. Suggest meeting for a walk instead of coffee for networking meetings.
Switch conference call meetings to your mobile phone and walk or pace
27. Tips for Walking Meetings: Actual Meeting
• Use a park or outdoor setting whenever
possible.
• Try holding walking meetings in the afternoon,
when energy levels are lowest.
• Avoid noisy roads or crowded areas.
• Plan a route with some good stopping points.
Plan indoor meetings in the office space in the
event of bad weather.
• Set a goal for walking meetings each week.
Suggest replacing weekly status updates with
supervisors with a walking meeting and build
up to more frequent strolls.
• Track your steps with a wearable device.
• Plot out a few walking routes that work out to
the typical length of company meetings.
28. More about walking at work:
http://www.bethkanter.org/category/walking/
http://www.scoop.it/t/walking-for-work
Friend Me on Fitbit for Walking As Work
Challenges
https://www.fitbit.com/user/288NYK
Reflection
• How can you integrate walking into your work?
• What’s one small step you can take?
It isn’t exactly breaking news that walking is healthy and if we walk regularly, it helps us remain calm, alert, focused, and happy. Much more so than if we were inactive. Studies have also shown that walking and standing while we work can help us be more creative and productive. Recently, researchers at Stanford University tested creativity in people that were walking vs sitting. They discovered that the majority of people were more creative when they were walking. They found that creativity improved by an average of 60% when the person was walking. What nonprofit wouldn’t want their staff to be more creative?
However, there is one caveat to the whole walking vs sitting study. The researchers found that walking helped the creative process, but may not enhance focused thinking, it boosts working memory as another study out of Germany found. So this means walking team meetings might be more useful when the team needs to brainstorm versus coming up with a plan for implementation. However, I feel walking meetings are great for the health and mood boosting benefits, regardless.
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