The Case for Walking Meetings in the Modern Workplace

The first time someone suggested taking a one-on-one outside, I laughed. We were in a glass-walled meeting room in a Brisbane office tower, and the idea felt almost cheeky. But that walk along the Brisbane River changed how I thought about work conversations, and how my colleague thought about them too. Learn more about Mischa Andriessen.com.

Walking meetings are not a gimmick, and they are not new. Philosophers walked and talked for centuries, and many celebrated thinkers used the practice to think aloud. What is new is the workplace, the schedules, the always-on culture, and the need for a different way to handle conversations that have become harder in screen-bound offices. The evidence behind the practice is stronger than most people realise.

In Australia, the conditions for this kind of thinking are almost embarrassingly good. The climate is friendly to outdoor conversation for much of the year, the country is threaded with paths and parklands, and there is a cultural ease with informality that other workplaces struggle to match. A walk-and-talk fits the local temperament, where a flat hierarchy and a relaxed register make it easy to say, "let's take this outside." Below, a look at what the practice can do, how to do it well, and where it tends to work best.

Why Walking Changes the Conversation

There is a particular quality to face-to-face conversation that happens while moving. The body is engaged gently, and the mind is freed from the pull of a screen. Walking boosts divergent thinking, the loose, exploratory kind that helps people generate ideas rather than simply judge them. It also reduces the markers of stress, which matters more than most expect when an agenda is difficult.

For anyone who has sat across from a colleague and felt the room tighten, the physical change matters. When two people walk side by side, eye contact becomes optional, and that single shift can lower the temperature of a difficult conversation. People disclose more, listen more, and interrupt less. The same principle that has long guided therapists, walking side by side rather than across a desk, applies equally to the manager and the peer.

The other piece, often overlooked, is rhythm. Walking imposes a natural pace, and that pace gives conversations a steadier cadence. People slow down, take breaths, and choose words more carefully. Even a brisk twenty-minute loop can shift the tone of a working relationship. It is not magic, but it is a reliable, repeatable change in conditions, and that is what most of us need.

The Australian Context: A Country Built for Walking and Talking

Australia has natural advantages that make walking meetings easier to run than in many other places. The urban centres tend to be flatter, sunnier, and laced with public paths. Sydney's harbour foreshore, Melbourne's Royal Botanic Gardens, Adelaide's parklands that wrap the city, Perth's Swan River foreshore, and Hobart's riverside walks all offer office workers an easy escape within minutes of leaving the building. Proximity is what makes the practice realistic during a working day.

The culture helps too. Australians tend to be more relaxed in professional exchanges, and a flat structure means a junior team member can comfortably suggest stepping out without being read as eccentric. The "no worries" register, the "arvo" and "servo" shorthand, the casual "brekkie walk" suggestion, all combine to lower the formality of a working chat. When the language is already casual, the step from meeting room to footpath is a small one.

The light is also worth mentioning. Long summer evenings in Brisbane or Perth mean a 5pm walk can stretch comfortably into the cool part of the day, giving teams more usable hours. The downside is the heat, the sudden rain, and the occasional snake warning on a bush track. None of these are dealbreakers. Australians are used to working around the weather, and a walking meeting is no exception.

A Practical Guide to Running One Well

Like any meeting, a walking meeting can fail. The most common failure is treating it as a stroll with no agenda, which drifts into small talk and produces nothing useful. The opposite failure is trying to do a full indoor meeting outdoors, with someone taking notes by hand and the pace becoming unnatural. A good walking meeting has a purpose, a route, and a rough time, with twenty-five to forty-five minutes as the sweet spot.

Set the purpose before you leave the building. Two or three clear questions are enough. The walk is the thinking, the writing is the commitment, and the two should not be merged. This surprises first-timers, who expect a meeting to end with a conclusion. A walking meeting is often most valuable precisely because it does not.

Phones on silent, out of sight. Audio notes recorded before or after. The route should be flat, predictable, and quiet enough to talk without raising voices. Loop routes beat out-and-back, because the conversation does not have to wrap up at a turning point. A coffee stop at the end gives the conversation a place to land. If you want more on structuring focused one-on-ones, the stop multitasking notes are a useful companion read.

Common Objections and How to Handle Them

The first objection is always the calendar. "We don't have time" is the most common line, and the most revealing. If a thirty-minute one-on-one at a desk produces little, then a thirty-minute walk that produces real thinking is an upgrade, not a cost. The same thirty minutes, spent differently, can do the work of an hour indoors. That is the trade, and it tends to make sense the first time someone tries it.

The second objection is the "some people can't walk" point, and it deserves respect. Not everyone can manage a long loop. The fix is simple: keep the route short, choose a flat path, offer a chair-and-stroll hybrid followed by a seated coffee. Accessibility is not a barrier, just a design constraint. The same qualities can be partly recreated at a window seat overlooking a park.

The third objection is the more interesting one. "What if the conversation gets too personal?" Walking seems to lower defences, which means some conversations will go deeper than they would at a desk. In most cases, that is exactly what you want. The preparation is the choice of who you walk with, the choice of route, and a willingness to let the conversation go where it needs to go.

Walking, Creativity, and the Slow-Burn Conversation

The work that actually moves a business forward is rarely the kind that happens in a sprint. It is the slow-burn conversation, the one that needs time to find its shape, the one that needs a little room around it. Walking provides that room. It removes the visual clutter of a meeting room and replaces it with a more continuous sensory environment where the brain has permission to wander.

Writers have known this for centuries, and software engineers have rediscovered it more recently. The "walk to think" is a small but real productivity tool, and the effect compounds. A team that walks together once a week for six months will produce a different relationship than a team that only ever meets in a room. Trust is the thing that makes the rest of the work possible, and walking is one of the cheaper ways to build it.

In a country as outdoor-oriented as Australia, the practice also offers a small but real counterweight to the always-on culture. The country has a long tradition of valuing time outside, from the Sunday arvo at the beach to the long lunch in the park, and a walking meeting fits that texture. It is a quiet way of saying that work is part of life, not the other way around.

Making It Stick

Like any new habit, a walking meeting programme needs a few small things to survive. The first is permission. Senior people need to walk for it to feel normal, and a CEO who takes their one-on-ones on the footpath is worth more than a hundred internal memos. The second is a default. Teams that book a "walk and talk" as the default get more out of the practice than teams that book it as a special event.

It is also worth being honest about what does not work. Very large groups do not walk well, and a team of fifteen cannot think together on a path. The practice is best for one, two, or three people. Topics that need to be written down should be written down before or after, not during. A walking meeting is not a substitute for tough decisions, it is a way of preparing for them.

If this sounds like a lot of fuss, that is a fair response, and the one that tends to fade after the third or fourth walk. After that, the practice stops being an experiment and starts being a default. People ask for it, plan around it, and notice when it does not happen. That is the moment when a small change has become a real one.

Where to Begin

The easiest place to start is with a single one-on-one that already exists on the calendar, a weekly catch-up, a monthly chat, a quarterly review. Pick one, propose a walk, suggest a route, and keep the agenda small. If it works, the next one will be easier, and the one after that easier still. The first walk is the only one that needs persuading.

Australia is a country that already knows how to have a serious conversation on a footpath, around a barbecue, at a cricket match, or on a coastal walk. Bringing that ease into the working week is not a leap, it is a small step, literally. A pair of comfortable shoes, a rough plan, and a willingness to leave the desk behind. From there, the practice takes care of itself.

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