Elevating Your Meetings with Emotionally Intelligent Notes: A Guide to More Productive and Inclusive Discussions

Years ago, as a very junior member of a large negotiation, I watched someone in the ‘other team’ taking notes. On an old-fashioned paper notepad, every time they turned a page, they would strike 3 vertical lines down it to divide that page into 4 columns.

From where I sat, I could see them scribbling, but I couldn’t see what they were scribbling.

In a break, I approached them and asked.

They told me they were not a very emotional person, not naturally good at empathy nor ‘reading the room’ or any of those people-skills. They knew those skills were important. They knew the lack of them naturally was holding them back. Even as a clinical ‘numbers-person’ they knew they’d be missing important info. So, they’d created their own artificial system to force themselves into noticing and noting not just the factual content of a meeting but to mechanically 'read the room'.

The column headings were:

1.???? Facts

2.???? Feelings

3.???? Actions

4.???? Questions

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For example, we might be discussing data costs, so they’d note the $ info in the first column. If a decision-maker in the room pulled a face or rolled their eyes etc, they’d note the reaction in general terms in that column. (They wouldn’t literally say “Terry rolled their eyes”. They might draw a face emoji :-) of their own to represent the reaction).

They’d reflect in real-time during the meeting and note down any actions or questions arising from that emotional or factual content in their relevant columns. Then later in a break or afterwards, they’d approach the reactor and talk it through, asking questions. (I’d now suggest using a process like our ‘Questioning Diamond’.)

I borrowed their idea and used it for 3 months until I got it habitualised. Then I kept using it but didn't need the actual paper and columns anymore.

If you think emotional intelligence skills like this are fluffy hippy tree-hugging nonsense, Here's a brief extract from my book 'The Brain-Based Boss':

Thomas Gilovich, a leading psychologist looking into decision-making and behavioural economics, said, ‘One of the most important findings from my field of psychology is that the tiniest little change in circumstance can have big impacts on people’s behaviour’.

Maybe you’re one of those managers who say things like, ‘They’re paid to show up and do a job, they should show up and do that job’? OK, fair enough. Go with that. Technically, you’re right. People should. All this psych, touchy-feely mumbo-jumbo is a waste of time.

It’d be a much simpler and duller world if that was true but it isn’t. In 1982, neurologist Antonio Damagio showed with his patient ‘Elliot’ that our brains cannot make rational decisions without emotional processing. ‘Elliot’ had an accident that damaged the part of his brain that processed emotions. As a result, he suffered from pathological indecision. That has nothing to do with ‘shoulds’ or ‘shouldn’ts’ but is simply a fact of our physical and mental systems.

You’ll read research later in this book about how to help people harness their subconscious and emotions to make better decisions and generate greater success at work. I always suspected that was true but I never suspected that without that emotional processing going on subconsciously, we wouldn’t just make inferior decisions, we’d be unable to make?any decisions at all.

Check out our sample Emotionally Intelligent Meeting Notes template. It’s pretty basic. Try it for a month or two then it’ll become a habit and you won’t need a template anymore.

Have a crack. Let me know how you get on, and any thoughts on the concept or practice.

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