As you know I’ve had a few meetings as of recent with members of our team whom I had never met before. One of the meetings was with our designer, we spent an entire day in the office - honestly, most of it we just goofed off.

There was not a single thing we discussed regarding business that we could not have just as easily done via the net, but as you remember, “business talk” was not the point of the meeting. The point was to meet face to face and get to know each other better…in that case, mission accomplished

The meeting with the designer turned out to be exactly what I had expected it to, an entrepreneurial session with tons of great ideas. He has actually created some very interesting technology that backs a very smart business that he gave us a live demo of. And as good of a sales person as he is, he may have just sold the office here on using it

In the end, it was a great meeting, tons of fun and we all got to know each other better.

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My next meeting I had to actually fly out. The manager of that office I have met before, however, I had never visited the office. This meeting went amazingly well. We only spent little time in the office itself, but still had adequate time to meet all the team members and get a chance to see what they were working on.

On a personal level, I got to do some great sight-seeing there and just overall had a blast (I did get a bit sick though - have been pushing pretty hard with all the travel).

Before I left, the manager of that office asked me to make an “inspirational speech” to the group - this 100% caught me off guard! It’s not that I’m not used to public speaking, but all of a sudden to be put on the spot and asked to “motivate the group so they never leave the company” - that’s quite a bit of pressure!

I did fight it a bit, but in the end, I realized that if you think about it - motivating and inspiring your team is pretty much one of the main roles of a CEO. So, I took it as a personal challenge and sprang in-front of everyone.

I think I did OK, definitely have some areas I need to work on. Our CTO was with us and he made some great suggestions afterwards of what to say the next time I need to do this…I’ll write a full review tomorrow of how to make inspirational “CEO” level speeches tomorrow…

For now, I have yet again proven to myself that “face to face” relationships are critical.

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Tags: meetings, team

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