Three Ways Walking and Talking Will Recharge Your Business Mentoring Relationship
Your head probably doesn’t drop to the table when your business mentor yammers on about how prolific their career has been, and what you absolutely should be doing to improve yours, but the temptation to nod off is running strong.
Too many times, a mentor “hogs” the conversation or perhaps they zone out and don’t listen very well while you are talking. (Maybe because they aren’t skilled at asking questions?)
Perhaps your mentee rambles endlessly on because they don’t really have a clue as to what they want or need out of a mentoring relationship.
Meanwhile, all this not-so-inspiring business mentoring stuff happens at the conference table under the florescent lights once a month. (It’s just one more office meeting.)
How frustrating is that?? You are wondering why you aren’t back at your cubicle getting some real work done.
Here’s the good news! It doesn’t have to be this way and you can make a few proactive steps to change the rhythm of your business mentoring relationship so it doesn’t end up being a head banger. (One that leaves with you a lump on your forehead and no career trajectory change at all!)
Here’s an easy-to-do idea and one that offers three fantastic benefits that will wake up and recharge your sleepy mentoring relationship. It can be summed up in three words:
WALK AND TALK!
That’s it. Go for a walk for your mentoring meeting.
Why? Because walking while talking has significant and immediate benefits.
Here’s what you’ll get:
FRESH AIR
Research shows that “sitting is the new smoking.”[1] As long as your bottom is glued to the seat of knowledge, your other body parts are probably ailing or aching for more. So, take a walk outside with your mentor/mentee, breathe in deeply and you’ll put yourself immediately in a better headspace of talking about your growth.
Did you know that spending about 30 minutes in the sun could provide you with nearly a day’s supply of vitamin D through skin absorption?[2]
Inhaling fresh air helps clear your lungs, you take deeper, longer breaths of air, and that speeds up the amount of oxygen that’s sent to your body’s cells.
More oxygen in your body = More energy and clarity of mind.
So, go walk and talk. A mentoring meeting held regularly under the florescent lights of the sterile office environment often breeds just that, sterile conversations.
Change that—Move out!
FRESH IDEAS
Steve Jobs, Sir Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg and Barack Obama have been the most famous recent advocates of what is also known as the ‘walk and talk.’
Walking during your mentoring meeting can recharge your creative thinking.
“The electrical signals in the brain are roughly working at three times the capacity that they would be if they were sat behind a PC monitor,” says Phil Jones, managing director of Manchester-based office technology supplier Brother UK.
In fact, a study carried out in 2014 by Stanford University in California found a person’s creative output increased on average by 60 per cent when walking.[3]
Sixty percent? I bet you’d take that.
FRESH OUTLOOK
Are you bored by the same old four walls? I remember doing “brainstorming” sessions when I worked in the tech industry. We’d often sit in the same conference room with a white board and, unfortunately, stare across the table at one another with a bit of lethargy in our eyes.
Okay, let the creative ideas pour forth. Hmmm.
Maybe one more cup of coffee needed to kick start the creative juices?
We needed to bail from those same old four walls and take in some new scenery. I recently read a poet’s ideas on this, Mary Stanley, and the sentiments ring true.
Four walls
Confines of our mind
Like a box
With little peep holes.
Safety of what we know
Our comfort zone
In a box
With little peep holes.
No growth
No [stimulus]
In a box
With little peep holes.[4]
I had to smile, because it reminded me of so many mentoring and other business meetings where we practically hide inside our four walls, our comfort zone.
Do yourself and your mentor/mentee a favor. Leave the office and go for a walk. Hopefully outside, but if that’s not workable, around the hallways of your building.
Your legs, heart and mind will love you for it…and so will your mentor or mentee!
[1] Ravn, K. (2013, May 25) “Don’t Just Sit There. Really.” Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 6, 2017, http://articles.latimes.com/2013/may/25/health/la-he-dont-sit-20130525
[2] “Environmental Health Perspectives” journal, April 2008; Retrieved March 6, 2017 http://www.livestrong.com/article/436651-the-effects-of-sunlight-fresh-air-on-the-body/
[3] “Walk and Talk – Why Walking Meetings Make Business Sense.” Retrieved March 6, 2017 http://www.director.co.uk/walking-meetings-make-business-sense-18387-2/
[4] Standworth, Mary, Little Peep Holes, January 17, 2013. Retrieved March 6, 2017, http://hellopoetry.com/words/607810/four-walls/poems/?page=10