It's Monday morning and I'm sat going over a few things before a planning meeting. And it's got me thinking about rooms.
I've loved speaking at big events. I still do.
There's nothing quite like a full room. The buzz before you walk on. The laugh you weren't sure would land, landing. The energy of hundreds of people all thinking about the same idea at the same time. It's the closest thing to DJing I've found in business. You read the crowd, you build it up, you pick your moment.
A few years back, Facebook served me up some memories. Pictures of me on stage in front of big audiences, from this same day in earlier years. I loved seeing them.
But the thing I noticed was where I was that day. I was in a small, invite only room, doing something very different.
That event was focused on one thing: implementation. Doing the work. We went so deep, and worked in such a practical way, that the audiences in those old pictures would have been far too big for it.
Based on the feedback after day one, I felt like I was doing some of my best work yet. Two decades of experience, filtered down into two days, for a handful of people who were ready to use it.
That's when it really clicked for me. As much as I love the big events, the biggest breakthroughs happen in smaller rooms.
You can't see a lightbulb moment from a stage
Not properly, anyway. In a small room, you can. It's the moment you ask someone a question they've never been asked before, and you can see them actually think about it for the first time. The pause. The look. Then the sentence that starts with "Oh...".
It's the moment the pieces suddenly fall into place, and someone realises the thing they've been stuck on for months has a simple next step.
Those moments are why I do what I do.
I think there are a few reasons smaller rooms work so well.
Nobody can hide. In a big audience it's easy to nod along and change nothing. In a small group, you're going to be asked what you're going to do about it.
People get honest. When the room is small and the trust is real, people stop polishing and talk about the real problem.
And the group helps each other. Some of the best ideas in a small room don't come from the front at all. They come from the business owner sitting next to you who solved the same problem last year.
That's why I consider it an honour to run monthly group coaching at our Cheltenham offices, along with regular events for our partners and clients. They're rarely the biggest rooms I work in, and they're often the ones where the most changes.
