For a while now, conferences and exhibitions have had a familiar, and therefore comfortable, format. To some extent you know that you can expect ….
Despite the predictability of the format, your experience of the event will be unique. You might hear the same speakers, see the same products and meet the same people as everyone else who attends, but your experience of it will be different. Some of you will leave the event inspired and energised; others will leave it disappointed and despondent. It might surprise you to read that your experience has got nothing to do with the event itself! So, what if we were to offer you a cast iron guarantee that your next conference experience will be inspiring, exciting, bold and brilliant? Would you be interested? The secret to this guarantee originates in your thinking and how it makes you feel, because it’s the thought, and the subsequent feeling, that is the catalyst for how you behave. Thought fuels your response to what your senses detect about the world around you. We have three suggestions for how you can have the best possible experience at your next conference.
If you’re asked to get yourself into a state of curiosity, what do you do? How do you adjust your physiology? What do you think? How do you feel? Curiosity is the opposite of apathy. As you head to your next event, or even to your next meeting, where do you sit on the scale between curiosity and apathy? Too close to the apathy-end and it’s probably best that you head back out the door. Closer to the curiosity-end and you’re likely to have a much better experience. Become more aware of the thoughts you have and how they fuel your actions. Choose curiosity as the perfect state of ‘being’ even before you cross the threshold into an event.
Where do you put your attention? And do you give it fully and completely? You might have your attention trained on something ‘new and shiny’ to fix your latest challenge. What if, instead of there being something new and shiny out there, the answer you’re looking for was more likely to come from you? There’s a misunderstanding that the answers to all our problems lie outside ourselves. We seek input from external sources in the hope that our problems can be ‘fixed.’ We listen intently to the experiences and tactics used by others and note them all down in lists of things to do, so we can deploy the ones that seem to be most reasonable and relevant to our situation. We constantly look for new and shiny and we often fail to find it. The alternative is that we give our undivided attention and listen for insight, rather than for intellectual understanding. We tune in to what’s being said in the keynotes and the seminars, in the same way we listen to music, and rather than converting the words into a step-by-step list of how-to’s, we let our own creative thoughts bubble to the surface, to discover better and more meaningful solutions to our unique challenges. So much more effective than trying to force the square peg of someone else’s best practice into the round hole of your particular issue.
Do you routinely seek out people to collaborate with who are not like you? Do you actively look for ways to have your habitual thought patterns challenged, to the extent that your perception of how the world works is rocked ever so slightly? Delta Airlines have a brilliant initiative that puts business travellers in a seat next to an expert. They facilitate up close one to one conversations at 35,000 feet. http://www.deltainnovationclass.com/about/ And worlds are rocked. There’s no doubt that the next conference you attend will be brimming with a diverse selection of people, with oodles of expertise and their very own brand of unique, all there for you to tap into. Who will you choose to sit next to? Who will you single out for an invitation to chat over coffee? Who do you have a burning question for? Whose brain do you want to pick? How will you choose on the day, in the moment? What will your criteria be for deciding who to talk to? And what level of challenge will you open yourself up to? If you’re willing to crank up your curiosity, to ask some questions, give your undivided attention and collaborate with people you’ve only just met, then the possibilities are limitless. So, this conference season, use the wisdom of the crowd to find solutions to your professional challenges. Not by looking to the crowd for their input, but by allowing the crowd to stimulate your thinking. Use that to fuel your unique insights and ideas. By the way, you’re a unique and interesting expert in something too, so you might just find yourself being the inspiration for someone else.
About the Authors: Kate Hargreaves and Bev Holden are the co-founders of The Clear Thinking Partnership Ltd, a people development business that was established in February 2007. We’re on a mission to help people, teams and organisations collaborate better than ever before. At the heart of our business is the core belief that the way we think dramatically influences our success and if we can ‘get the head right’ everything else will follow.