Make a different start and have a better meeting just by sharing your appreciation.

In my meetings a check in has been the first point of order for a while now.
All attendees take a moment to state that they are free of impediments to give their full attention to the meeting.
Or: they share that there actually is an impediment. Sometimes the notification is sufficient and other times there is a short discussion about this specific impediment.

And even though I always thought this part of the meeting was valuable, I always had the feeling that there was something more that could be done.
Recently I bought a box of Management 3.0 Kudo Cards just because I thought it was good fun to have an easy enabler for everybody in my company to share their appreciation for one another.
And then I got this super simple idea that I would like to share with you.

When you chair the meeting, make it a point to share your appreciation to each participant present.
Before the meeting just write a Kudo Card for all participants. Have the cards on the table with the compliment face down and the name of the intended compliment-receiver on the back of the card.

As you open the meeting, invite everyone to take their own card. I like to leave it optional to the recipient of the compliment to share their compliment, since a compliment can be rather personal.

After sharing the compliment, I still do the check in. But now it feels “complete”. We ask all participants if there are impediments to a full commitment to the meeting we are about to have, after we shared our appreciation for each other.

I have done this a few times now and my experience is that not only did we have a better meeting that day, we had a better day together in general!