Decide that welcoming people is important

There is certainly more to welcoming than meets the eye.

Yes, there is, and that is why people often overlook the importance of welcoming people.

Enough already—I get it. I’m willing to spend some time welcoming people as long as I don’t spend the whole meeting doing it.

While it’s important not to allow welcoming to take over your meeting, it is equally important to make sure people feel welcome throughout your meeting. In the next chapter, you’ll learn how to connect people to each other and the task, which builds on the welcome and creates connections between people that allow the work to flow.

The decision to spend time creating an environment where people feel welcome is one only you can make. How much time you allot and how you welcome people is up to you. The important thing is to decide to do this.

Once you have decided that creating a welcoming environment is important, you open up possibilities for creating that environment. Until you decide welcoming is important, nothing can happen.