The highlight of your week

I write weekly about the strategies, habits, and tactics around cultivating the connections that matter to you.

Given the time of day I’m sending this message, there’s a very good chance that, glancing at your calendar, you see several 30, 45, or 60-minute bands in the coming hours.

Let’s fast forward to one of them. Put aside the main agenda - which, unfortunately, nowadays is not much more than “can I grab some time with you?” What’s the playbook for the opening few seconds?

When they say the usual “heyhowzitgoin” - are you going to respond with:

A) “Fine, just really busy”
B) “Happy Tuesday! Lot to be grateful for today.”
C) “Pretty awful. I just spent the last five minutes scrolling through social media looking at old high school boyfriends’ post about their perfect mothers day and I just ate one too many tacos”

Sorry about that. In an attempt to give our kids the illusion of free choice, we usually throw in a couple of awful alternatives alongside our desired outcome.

How would you want to come across to your colleagues, clients, and contacts? As the low-energy person who has to slog through the next 29 minutes so they can get on with their miserable existence, the hyper-transactional person who just wants to tick off items on the agenda…

Or the person that loves life, and is eager to work with you?

This applies to your team meetings as well. In our weekly leadership meetings, which almost always involve addressing what’s broken, we intentionally start off by pointing out some things that are going well.

Some people would inevitably want to rush it, as you might if you have a packed list of topics to cover in the next few minutes.

People want to work - with people they know, like, and trust. And until we just let our AI agents do all the dirty work of talking, conversations are the keystone to that.

You have the choice about how you want to start a conversation, and how you want to come across.

My invitation to you? Start your next meeting today with a quick “So what’s been the highlight of your week so far?”

Happy Tuesday :-)

If you found this valuable, have you snagged my course on cultivating your network?

I’ve spent the past 12 years helping people like you grow their businesses and careers by cultivating the relationships that matter. I took everything I’ve learned and practiced, and put it in a professionally produced online course.

You can grab it for free right now. ➡