Which would you rather do: Take a walk? Or sit in a meeting or training session (in person or virtual)?
Before you answer, consider that in a survey of some 220,000 adults, those who sat for more than eight hours a day had a 15 percent greater risk of dying within three years than those who sat for fewer than four hours a day, according to a March 2012 study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
So combining exercise with training or meetings might be a good idea. While it won’t work in every context, a walking meeting or training can be effective, especially when it comes to brainstorming, visioning, reflection, goal setting, networking, etc. “The exercise is invigorating,” says Atlanta consultant Ron Broussard, “and studies show walking stimulates a more creative process. It puts everybody in a comfortable state,” he says. “The creative juices flow, and participants can bounce ideas off one another.”
No less a meeting leader than Greek philosopher Aristotle may have walked around while teaching. He’s associated with a school called the Peripatetics—from Greek for “walking around,” or for a sheltered walkway or for the conversation that occurs in such a sheltered walkway. Aristotle, it turns out, had at least one student who particularly distinguished himself: Alexander the Great, who conquered everything from Greece to India and spread Greek culture over the whole area.
In the same high-minded vein, Chicago consultant Bob Wright says he knows of a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who teaches walking meditation.
LEARNING SIDE BY SIDE
Author and business professional Nilofer Merchant blogged in the Harvard Business Review in 2013 that she changed a routine coffeehouse meeting to a walking meeting and found that it worked. “I liked it so much it became a regular addition to my calendar,” she writes. “I now average four such meetings and 20 to 30 miles each week.”
Merchant adds that she can “listen better when I am walking next to someone than when I’m across from them in a coffee shop. There’s something about being side by side that puts the problem or ideas before us, and us working on it together.”
She adds what may be a key point: “The simple act of moving also means the mobile device mostly stays put away. Undivided attention is perhaps today’s scarcest resource, and hiking meetings allow me to invest that resource very differently.”
Consultant Matthew Ferrara of Andover, MA, agrees. A walking meeting or training “pulls people away from their smart phones, laptops, and tablets, as well as removes them from potential in-office interruptions,” he says.
Merchant, who also lectures at Stanford University, points out that whether it’s at a desk, conference table, or coffee shop, we’re sitting when we could be moving. She cites research that claims we sit 9.3 hours per day—compared with 7.7 hours of sleep—and that’s not a good thing, according to health experts.
HITTING YOUR STRIDE
Training consultant Carolyn Balling regularly conducts early morning walks at Training magazine’s annual Training Conference & Expo. It’s an excellent networking opportunity, she believes, and she has done much the same thing with co-workers in the past.
“Walking while talking is more relaxing than being in a meeting or training room, sitting across a table, or being wedged into our small cubes, where you have to drag in your own chair to have someplace to sit,” she points out. “It’s the physical action and mindlessness of walking that can open people up, I think. The same sort of relaxed interaction happens when groups do routine physical work, too—such as collating masses of binders for a training project or putting together goody bags for conferences or something where the work doesn’t require much thinking, so people talk in a relaxed way.”
Ferrara thinks walking meetings work best “when the goal is to explore or brainstorm an issue, opportunity, or challenge. As long as the place people are walking doesn’t require a lot of concentration, the combination of physical and mental exercise can lead to some good ideas and discussions,” Ferrara says.
What’s the best place for a walking meeting or training? Some companies have attractive campuses with walking paths and even ponds. On the other hand, Balling has taken her walking sessions across shopping mall parking lots and along busy streets.
BABY STEPS
Of course, there are a few down sides. If you have something specific to get done during a walking meeting or training session, you may need to limit the numbers. “I couldn’t envision more than three or four people,” says consultant Wright. And if you have a data dump, you may want to stay with your PowerPoints in a meeting or training room.
If prospective meeting participants are ill, disabled, or just out of shape, the walking session may be viewed as all but impossible, even discriminatory. Another problem: “People just don’t want to get sweaty, or are wearing the wrong clothes,” Ferrara adds. So if you insist on a walking meeting or training, plan it far in advance, he advises.
Ferrara also finds walking meetings or trainings don’t work well when weather is poor, the route is difficult or distracting, or the leader needs to pass along a lot of information. That might mean your walking session needs to be a stroll as opposed to a power walk, especially in hot weather.
That said, you don’t have to walk outdoors. What about the mall? Or down your cavernous corporate corridors? Or even in your own office. You now can walk at your own pace while you’re working at your keyboard, participating in a virtual meeting, or taking a computer-based training. The TrekDesk Treadmill Desk is an elevated wide desk that is positioned above a treadmill equipped with special motors designed to run for long hours at slow speeds, typically around two miles an hour. So you can walk while you work and get in the 10,000 daily steps recommended by the surgeon general.
Cornerstone Health + Technology High School in Detroit recently purchased a TrekDesk, which has its own office space with a window, and staff take turns using it. “It’s not only a great alternative to sitting at a desk,” Chief Operating Officer Josh Britton noted in a recent Detroit News article, “I find I do my best thinking while in motion.”
Likewise, with all the new training apps for mobile phones and tablets, it is possible for learners to walk and be trained at the same time—although audio modules are probably better suited for training on the move than visual ones.
In short, walking meetings and trainings can work, but you must pick your spots. And, of course, be careful not to walk backward, waving your arms to emphasize a point. That look on your learners’ faces may not mean they are riveted by what you’re saying. It may mean you’re about to fall into the corporate pond.
