"I improved the relationship with my people through Feeting."

As a manager I want to be sure that my people feel that I am there to support them, but during the COVID period I felt more and more distant from them. The situation has completely changed since I stumbled upon Feeting and we're walking our talks together.

1:1 Binge-Feeting

I'm managing 18 people and every other week I have a 30-minute 1:1 catch-up with them. This means 9 hours every two weeks, so every Friday afternoon I'm "binge-feeting" for 4.5 hours with 9 colleagues. It's really easy, because I can keep walking and one after the other is jumping in and out of the audio-room. Sometimes there's a short overlap that we're with three in the Feeting, but that's usually a cool thing to set the stage. Walking for 4.5 hours means that I do roughly around 13.500 steps every Friday afternoon. Not a bad way to kick-off the weekend right?

Focussed conversations

My colleagues really like to join in the Feeting and experience a way more focussed conversation than we would have meeting through MS Teams or Zoom. There's no distraction of things happening in the background or notifications coming in. It's simply us two in a meaningful conversation. We're quite easy on the format. Usually we start with some easy chitchat to set the stage. I believe people bring their whole-self to work, so both professional as personal, and therefore I'm always curious about how the other person is doing besides work. Walking and progressing together really does something in the brain that opens up people easier. They share way more private things with me, which makes our relationship closer and our trustlevel higher. On my side I feel the same and also share what's keeping me busy outside work. Slowly but surely the conversation turns more towards work. Of course I'm curious about what they achieved the last week and what they want to nail the coming week. I'll try to understand as good as possible the challenges with that and offer my support wherever I can. I often get the feedback that genuine listening (which is way easier with Feeting) is already very helpful for them.

Automatic and hands free note taking

What's really cool about Feeting is that I don't have to think about taking notes at all. When I toggle the 'Gather Feeting ️Notes' switch it's taken care of that automatically and I have an overview with a summary, the hot topics, questions, follow-ups and actions directly after the Feeting. Besides that it also gives me insights in the speaking times and the mood of the conversation (sentiment). These insights help me a lot to see the bigger challenges in the organization. I noticed for instance after a few weeks that I had a couple of conversations with different people about our 'hybrid work' agreement that had a more negative sentiment. I decided to send a survey around and put in on the agenda for our next Leadership Feeting. The inputs we got from the survey and the improvement we made afterwards delivered way more positive sentiment on this topic during the next Feetings.

Clear your mind

Getting away from the meeting rooms or from video meetings behind your computer gives me a lot of benefits. Of course I get some good exercise (which also pays out in my clothing size haha), but besides that the fresh air, the wind, the smell of flowers really clears my mind during the conversation with my colleagues. The conversations are easier, more productive and way more creative. I can highly recommend every leader/manager in any company to walk the talk, lead by example and start Feeting.