Go Take a Hike: The Benefits of Walking Meetings

Go Take a Hike: The Benefits of Walking Meetings
By: Allison D. Salibian, B.S., CPT

We've heard the phrase, "Go take a hike," and it usually signifies someone telling an adversary to take their ideology and get far away.  However, research published just this year shows that sharing and discussing work-related concepts can increase ingenuity and inventiveness.

Daniel Schwartz, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, co-authored a study, Give Your Ideas Some Legs, showing that creative output increases by an average of 60 percent when someone is walking.  "The kind of creativity we found for walking is more generative, more brainstorming [than sitting indoors]," he says.

Many business owners have embraced walking meetings.  Steve Jobs, the late founder of Apple, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey of Twitter have all been known to favor walking meetings.  Recently, Nilofer Merchant, a former technology executive, extolled the benefits of walk-and-talk meetings at a TED conference, noting the health advantages and the closer connections people form when away from the more traditional setting of a conference room.

Julia Kline, a Ph.D candidate at the University of Michigan, co-authored another study, Your Brain on Speed, also published this year, which found that walking speed does not diminish "spatial working ability" -- essentially the ability to walk and talk and remember items that were discussed.  "These two findings really should encourage people to get out into the world and walk during their meetings," she says.  "Walking meetings have become one of the ways that you can motivate the whole company to get up and get moving."

As a personal trainer, I encourage staying physically active throughout the week, warning against sedentary practices, such as eating at your desk or going home and sitting in front of the the t.v. after work.  However, my eyes have been opened to another way to encourage movement.  Now that I know walking speed has been shown not to negatively effect assimilation of data during walking meetings, may I suggest a HIIT training meeting?  For example, 30 seconds at a quick pace where no one can really speak because of heavy breathing, followed by 2.5 minutes of slow, steady-paced walking where the content of the meeting is resumed.

Anyone out there in cyberspace up for the challenge?  Let me know, and I will come lead your group's pace.