“If you only had 5 minutes with a stakeholder, what question would you ask?”

I was asked this question while virtually coaching one of several technical development teams for a high-tech organization. “We often bring them our idea or prototype,” the team members explained, “and we often walk away with a list of 100 more questions that the stakeholder wants answered. How can we find out what is important to them?”

When you are trying to get someone to buy your idea or support your initiative, how do you begin?

If you follow prevailing theory, you start with a pitch about how your product, idea, or initiative is just perfect. You detail the merits and describe the wizardry, all the while believing such phrasing will sway your subject to embrace the wisdom of your initiative.

But they don’t get it!! You feel surprised by their lack of instant enthusiasm, knocking the wind out of your pitch and leaving you wondering what could possibly be wrong. 

This article shares the underlying reasons why virtual meetings—even those with video—have to be run differently that one would in a face-to-face meeting, and learn 5 powerful techniques for running a better virtual meeting!

Are you getting the engagement of everyone in your meeting? To what extent does the knowledge and ideas in your meeting room go un-tapped? As decades of research demonstrate, attendees’ knowledge, insights and ideas are only minimally accessed during meetings. Read this engaging article to learn 6 powerful techniques for tapping into the knowledge present in your meetings!

In a pivotal scene from the 2011 movie Moneyball, actor Brad Pitt, playing the role of Billy Beane, general manager of the failing Oakland Athletics baseball team, asks a room full of scouts grappling with the loss of key players and a limited budget, “What’s the problem that we are trying to solve?”