Blair Singer teaches a simple exercise called "What I Feel Like Saying" to make team meetings more focused. People speak uninterrupted for a set time, then others just say thank you. It clears out the distracting thoughts that usually clog meetings.
Hi, this is Blair Singer, author of Little Voice Mastery and founding contributor to Radical Wealth. I'm here to talk to you about a very common problem and the solution to that problem. It's a little voice technique that's designed to get everybody on your team present. Remember we talked about presence before? It doesn't really help if you're having a team meeting and everybody's there, but half of them are checked out thinking about other things. So this was taught to me by one of my teachers, a fellow by the name of Marshall Thurber, many years ago, about how to get a whole group present. And it's very simply called what I feel like saying. Keyword, feel. So the way that it works is if you have five people sitting around a table, you start by saying, what I feel like saying is. And then you have 30 seconds, one minute. Whatever you state, stipulate to say how you feel. Now, here are the rules. Nobody else can interrupt. Nobody else can interject. Nobody else can argue with you. There's no comebacks later. But you say how you feel. And then when you're done, you stop and you say, and that's what I feel like saying. And then you turn to the person next to you and you say, john, what do you feel like saying? And then John starts all over by saying, what I feel like saying is. And then he goes for 30 seconds or a minute or whatever, we stipulate and we go all the way around the circle until we come back to the end. Now, by the way, one other thing. When the person finishes and says, that's what I feel like saying, everybody says, thank you. Not thank you, you dirtbag, or thank you for ratting on me or whatever the case might be. Just say thank you and be present. And you allow people to say how they feel. Now, when I first implemented this in my trucking business many years ago, people thought, are you crazy? You're sitting down with warehouse people. And some of them wouldn't even talk, wouldn't even say anything. That only lasted for a couple of weeks once they realized that it was safe. Then those same people, you couldn't shut up because they wanted to say how they felt. But it brought the team together. When it came time to get down to business, everybody was present. All their considerations were thrown out because you can say things. What I feel like saying is, I'm really tired. I don't feel like being here today. I got all this other stuff going on. I feel like this is a waste of time. But I'm here, and. And that's what I feel like saying. That's fine. Thank you. What do you feel like saying? I feel like saying I'm really excited about today. I've had a bunch of great things happening at home and blah blah blah blah. Whatever it is doesn't make any difference. It doesn't have to be business related. It just because what it does, it empties the excess thinking, the excess garbage or considerations that are sitting in your brain that your little voice is chewing on gets rid of those, puts them out on the table, gets rid of it. So. So now we can get down to business and be a team. Our sales partners globally do this on every call. I do this in every meeting. We start with. I do this with every conference call. We do a quick what I feel like saying get everybody present. Otherwise you are wasting your time and you are wasting their time. Try it. I think it will work for you. Be awesome.
