HBR Guides to Being an Effective Manager Collection (5 Books) (HBR Guide Series)

CHAPTER 28

How to Do Walking Meetings Right

by Russell Clayton, Christopher Thomas, and Jack Smothers

Fran Melmed is the founder of Context, a communication and change management consulting firm. She spends her days performing communication audits for organizations and meeting with clients. Sounds like a recipe for a sedentary workday, right? On the contrary. Fran is part of a growing trend known as walking meetings or “walk and talk.”

A walking meeting is simply that: a meeting that takes place during a walk instead of in an office, boardroom, or coffee shop. Nilofer Merchant wrote in Harvard Business Review about her own transition to walking meetings after realizing that, like many Americans, she was sitting way too much while she worked. ...