Three years ago, Jon Bradshaw was sitting in a darkened convention center hall, waiting for the opening session of a meeting to begin.And then, for a few seconds,he had
absolutely no idea where he was. “I’d been traveling and flying constantly,” said Bradshaw, the London-based business develop- ment director for the IMEX Group, “and I could have been in many different countries.”
Thosemoments of disorientationwereawake-upcall for Brad- On_the_Web
Jon Bradshawwill present “Convening Leaders Orientation” at PCMA 2011 Convening Leaders on Sunday, Jan. 9. He also has created a series of video messages especially for Convening Leaders attendees; the videos willbe posted on the PCMAYouTube channelat http://bit.ly/a4KW3E. For more information about Convening Leaders, visitwww.pcma2011.org. To learn more about Meetings Mindset, visitwww.meetingsmindset.com.
shaw,aformer semiprofessional soccer playerwhohas climbedon Mount Everest and Mount Kilimanjaro, and completed a 3,500- mile bike trip through Europe. Accustomed to preparing himself bothphysicallyandmentallyfor athletic challenges, Bradshaw had done neither of those things in advance of themeeting. “I had not been training,” Bradshawrecalled. “I hadn’t been eating well. I had- n’t been lookingaftermyself.”Andthatwasaprob- lem, given that his employer easily had spent thousands ofdollars to sendBradshawto themeet- ing. “How was I going to perform well,” he said, “if I didn’t knowwhere the hell Iwas?” That painful realization becamethe kernelofan
idea:Whynot createways of helpingmeeting atten- deesmeasure, analyze, and systematically improve their performance at meetings? “We prepare for drivingtests, for exams, forpublic speaking,” Brad- shawsaid.“Whyaren’t people physicallyandmen-