What game are you playing?

At the end of every EOS Meeting, whether that’s a day with your EOS Implementer or a weekly Level 10 Meeting, we ask the team to rate how we have done as a team in this meeting, where 1 is terrible and 10 is awesome.

If anyone scores less than an 8 then they are asked to explain why and what could be done to improve the meeting.

I am privileged to run a lot of EOS Session Days with clients and also sit in on a lot of Level 10 meetings with clients.

If a Session Day scores low then I will take responsibility for what I could do to improve it and I also ask the participants why they didn’t insist in getting what they needed out of it. We use this a way to self-correct and improve in the next session.

It’s similar in Level 10 Meetings.

I find it fascinating to see the same people giving the same low scores every meeting and so when I see this, I will call them out on it.

You see, with EOS, we have a set of Healthy Rules for each meeting too. One of these rules, is “Participate – it’s a privilege to be here” and another is “Be Open and Honest.”

So what do these mean when it comes to meetings?

The first rule – ‘Participate’ speaks to the fact that in meetings you are taking time out of your busy day or life to be in this meeting, so it’s your responsibility to make sure that that time is used wisely.

If you leave that meeting feeling like it was a waste of time and you didn’t get out of it what you wanted, then what role did you have to play in that? Did you fully participate? Did you call out what you found to be ineffective?

As an old tennis player, I like to use a tennis analogy.

In this analogy, you are the tennis player, the person facilitating the meeting is the umpire and you may or may not have a tennis coach in the meeting too (this is your EOS Implementer).

• When you are in those meetings, are you playing your best game?
• Are you choosing to be on the centre court in Wimbledon?
• Or it you’re not up to that, are you at least playing at regional level competition?

Or is it more likely that you are playing at the local tennis court, just to pass time?

Worse still, are you actually just a spectator in the grandstand?

Or maybe you haven’t even made it into the tennis centre and you’re still out in the carpark.

Some people like to blame the umpire for the incorrect decision or the coach for not getting the results, but the reality is that if you’re not on the centre court, playing your ‘A Game’, then the only person who can change the outcome is you.

Not the umpire and not the coach.

So, if you see something that you’re not happy with, use the 2^nd rule – Be Open and Honest – call it out!

It’s your personal responsibility to make sure that you get everything you want and need out of these meetings.

They should always be a 10 and if they’re not, then you need to ask what you can do to get them to a 10.