What helps here is the fact that we try and remove ourselves physically and mentally of the day to day struggles of being parents of two young children, with busy careers and personal lives.

It helps to have an environment where you can speak openly – not all bars will give you enough privacy to talk about private matters.
- We will usually leave our house after the children have gone to school, arriving in town around 9h30-10h00.
- That will be the starting point of the day. We’ll start with “what did you like the last 6 months and what would you like more of in the next 6 months?” and will take it from there. Usually for us, the bulk of the discussion will happen between 10h00 and 12h00. It sets the tone for the day, we’ll discuss key subjects and usually use the afternoon to get into more detail or discuss subjects we have touched upon in the morning but weren’t able to fully discuss.
- We’ll have lunch at a nice place in the city. Usually not particularly fancy, just a place with good food, that doesn’t take ages to make and that makes us both feel comfortable.
- After lunch, we’ll decide where to return – either we’ll return to the morning location again or switch scenery. This part of the day is usually used to get into more detail or discuss subjects we have touched upon in the morning but weren’t able to fully discuss.
- We’ll end the day whenever we’ll feel like it or will sometimes have drinks and dinner after. This is also a perfect moment to reflect on the day, to summarize the key agreements we made and look forward how to act on the key action points.
I imagine you can easily translate this to a team or business setting.
- I tend to make notes of the key things we discussed during the day as well as the key action points. I will store them online, somewhere we’ll both be able to access them (e.g. Google Drive or Notion).
