Summaries are super

In our overwhelm of information, meetings, emotions and the impact of change, to summarise ...is to care. We can’t possibly be listening as well as we might usually.

So don’t just finish your meeting, call or session. Make time to recap and summarise and bring it all together. Spend just a minute, or 3 or 5, summarising what happened, where we are at, what is next. 

It’s ok to repeat stuff. 

We don’t do it enough in ’normal times’, so it’s needed even more in these new normal times. As you bring things together, tying up lose ends for people, reminding and recapping, you’ll help them release some of the mental cognitive load they’ve been carrying.

You help do some of the sorting and storing work for them and their brain. It’s just a smart, leader-y thing to do. 

And it’s a caring thing to do, considering the emotional weights that can fill our mind. A synopsis, a digest ... a nutshell. 

Their brain will say ‘thank you’ even if they don’t. It’s a service most certainly worth the time and effort.