Why we should all be having meetings with ourselves

We have all had a lot of fun laughing at President Trump this week when he said he had a meeting with the ‘President of the Virgin Islands’, which is in fact himself. We all know that he wasn’t referring to having had a meeting with himself — he just got it wrong.

However, I can say that I actually do have a weekly meeting with myself and I strongly encourage all of my team to do the same. The ‘weekly meeting with self’ (WMWS) that we refer to is an hour a week that I allocate to reviewing where I am at and planning for the week ahead.  

You may think that most of us do this and what’s the big deal. But how formal is this meeting with self and is it attending to the relevant matters?

Initially when I shared this with my team most agreed they were already doing this, but what they were referring to was basically updating their task list for the week ahead. This is just getting organised.

A weekly meeting with self is much more strategic and is focused on ensuring that amongst all of the little rocks we need to get done, we make sure that we get those not urgent but important tasks done also, as Stephen Covey has taught us. Basically it is about the items that ultimately make the difference in our success but that we tend to put off until we are not so busy … which is never by the way!

As an example, these are some of the items I have had on WMWS list at different times in my career:

1. Which non-active client am I going to visit?
2. Which current client am I going to call for feedback on our performance?
3. Which prospect or past client am I going to connect with?
4. What networking activity am I going to do?
5. What internal training will I provide to my staff?
6. Which employee will I attend a client meeting with to provide feedback?
7. Which employee will I highlight as a star for doing something great?
8. What training/personal development/coaching am I going to do for me?
9. What amazing person am I going to catch up with this week?
10. Do I have an elephant in the room I need to deal with?

What actually makes the difference between you succeeding and not succeeding in your work and/or life? Are you actually making those things the priority? I constantly see many of us running around flat out doing stuff that ultimately doesn’t make the difference between winning and losing. This is where the WMWS becomes an incredibly important strategy success tool!

If you would like me to share with you my WMWS agenda drop me a line and I would be more than happy to share it with you.

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