How to Use Notes

So you’ve come up with your top five messages.

I would also recommend that we flesh it out and really come up with a script for this meeting.

However here’s what’s different about a script for a one on one meeting versus standing up and giving a speech.

If you’re giving a speech it’s perfectly fine to have notes to look at.

You may use a PowerPoint.

I would not recommend using notes for a one on one meeting.

If you want to use a PowerPoint that’s a separate issue.

Whatever you do don’t read PowerPoint people hate it anytime they really hate it and one on one meetings.

But the reason I want you to come up with notes and more of a script is not that you’re going to memorize it and not that you’re going to have it in front of you in a meeting with a kind of silly having a whole bunch of notes for a one on one meeting unless you’re president United States and you’re having 20 meetings a day.

That’s a different issue.

But for most of us in the business world the nonprofit world the political world you need to be looking at the person the whole time.

That’s why you shouldn’t have notes.

However when I have found is that the sheer act of writing down notes whether you’re doing longhand or typing it brings clarity to the mind.

It’s going to make it easier for that to come out when you’re actually speaking so that’s why I want you to come up with sort of a finished structure.

It doesn’t have to be all written out.

Word for word doesn’t have to be in full paragraph form but your main ideas.

Any example any story anything you want to really make it come alive.

I need you to put it on the sheet of paper so that you can be looking at it before the meeting starts.

Don’t have it out once the meeting begins.