We spend far too much time in business staring at each across board room tables, in over and under heated meeting rooms with suspect coffee, in anonymous buildings, up and down the length and breadth of the country. People too easily can take up psychologically combative, overly protective positions in these conventional settings. Our natural defences and default positions of pride and prejudice are made to feel comfortable, serving to curtail an honest and revealing business conversation.

We spend far too little time actually talking to each other and listening. Properly talking and really listening. But when we walk with others, we talk with others. We move forward, shoulder to shoulder, as equals on a shared journey. A walk is essential an act of side-by-side accommodation, equality and collaboration. Which is a good start to better insight and understanding.

The informality that results from being away from the trappings of us Vs them, hierarchy and role-play can be of great relief to those of us charged with giving counsel to clients on the critical but often hard to reach subjects of underlying and over-arching business meaning, differentiation and brand.

Walkie-Talkie, a proprietary process I’ve developed, based on the very un-proprietary act of simply walking and talking, has really helped many clients to open-up and dig-deep in the search to understand both their personal and corporate ambitions and what makes their business special.

Walking and talking helps you think. You’re distracted by your need to breath and follow the road ahead, which reduces the human propensity to either over-or-under think; less pat, political answers and intellectual shallow breathing, less time and space to concoct over-complicated ramblings. You are moving, literally changing physical and mental state by the second. The conversation, like your body keeps moving on.

A walk sweeps you up and immerses you in the moment and the ‘interview’ more deeply and completely. All the time aided and abetted by the surges of adrenaline and oxygen flowing through your veins and brain.

The truth flows freer from minds engaged in an activity like walking. So, the insights gained and self-awareness achieved from a brand building perspective are more numerous, sharper and, I believe, truer. Truth and integrity should ultimately be the price of entry of building a brand to survive the real world we’re living in. A place of inherent cynicism, nowhere-to-hide transparency and make-or-break empowerment. Walking and talking can get us closer to the truth of a brand’s potential.

Colloquially, ‘a good long walk’ has long been lauded for its about to ‘clear the head’, ‘blow out the cobwebs’ and ‘give yourself some space’. So, it should come as no surprise that a, in the right company, designed to get the under the skin of a business and its key protagonists, walking and talking can be a mightily powerful tool in the brand development armoury.

I’ve used my structured version of a simple walk to great effect in helping clients open up to give more insightful and genuine answers, to more searching, provocative questions.

I’ve employed Walkie Talkie on the foreshores of Forres with a leading environmental lawyer, for a Dragon’s Den entrepreneur on the mean streets of Soho, 2 partners in an aviation start-up on the golf courses of North Berwick and with the Marketing Director of a leading rail network, walking countless miles of station concourses, railway carriage interiors and city centres across Europe, to help win a £billion franchise-bid.

Oxygenation, provocation, self-awareness and insight…that’s what a good walk can bring. So, next time you need to look deep inside yourself and your business, close the laptop, switch off the mobile and go outside with someone to keep you company and give you counsel.

The walk will do you good.