When you are meeting with a team member or consulting with a customer or client there is often one easily overlooked ‘thing’ that can cause that other person to feel ‘inferior’ and negatively impact on that consultation or the outcome of that meeting.
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Regards
Diederik
TRANSCRIPTOPN
The Importance of Chair Heights In Meetings
Hi, it’s Diederik Gelderman here. Welcome and thank you very much for joining me today
What I want to talk about today is communication breakdown, and one of the many ways in which it can happen.
And what I’m going to talk about may really shock you because it has to do with chair heights. Yes, that’s right.
When you have a meeting with a colleague, a team member, a client, a customer and the chair heights are unequal — now whether that’s a one-on-one meeting or whether that’s a group meeting around a boardroom table or a consulting table or something like that — if the chair heights are unequal there will be a huge decrease in communication outcome.
That is because that person on the lower chair height is going to feel inferior and to some degree ‘threatened’ by the person that’s on the higher chair height.
Therefore that ‘lower’ person (and I’ll use an Australian idiom here) will ‘get their back up’ to some degree and be less willing to communicate openly and therefore you are very likely to end up with an unequitable solution.
The chair Heights may not deliberately be different, but even if they are accidentally different, the same thing applies.
I see that situation occurring commonly where you’ve got a boss or an owner sitting on a chair on one side of a desk and someone else sitting on a more comfortable armchair or sofa or recliner on the other side of the desk and typically those chair heights (on the other side) will be lower.
That’s a big no-no; it will really impede the conversation.
If you can’t change those chair heights then may I suggest that in the corner of your office that you have two comfortable armchairs that are at an equal height – and you ‘meet’ people in that little nook.
If that’s not possible, then take that colleague or that team member or that client or that customer to a local coffee shop or a bar (a non-alcoholic bar of course because you don’t want to be drinking on work time ?) —a non-alcoholic bar or a coffee shop or a little meeting place where the chair heights are equal and have that meeting there.
It’s really, really important to maximize your communication outcome and a big, often overlooked impediment is chair heights.
Now, the last thing I’m going to add is that if you are in a boardroom situation wherever and whenever that happens to be, if you’re hosting that boardroom situation, go around the table, before everyone else gets there and make sure the chair heights are all the same.
Or, if you’re a participant and you’re the first one there, may I suggest that if it’s appropriate, that you go and do the same thing because that’s really going to improve the outcome of that meeting.
See you on the next video. Bye-bye.