How can you encourage participation from all attendees in a meeting?

Choose the right job for each person. The beautiful thing about a team is the diversity of individuals. Each person has their own unique perspective, skills, and strengths. People feel empowered when their strengths are highlighted.

In addition to technical approaches in meetings like NGT, I believe the facilitator or meeting chair has a role to play to encourage people to participate in a meeting. They should make everyone EQUALLY welcome. It is not a time to show more "enthusiasm" towards a colleague or friend; this will automatically give the impression that they're a rank above the rest and might put some attendees off. (They don't feel whatever they say matters as their presence has not been acknowledged!)

For any kind of meetings or brainstorming sessions, it makes sense to let audience know what is the agenda of meeting & what is expected out of them, why are we meeting & what do we intend to achieve by the end of the meeting/session. Letting the audience know the details & well in advance, helps them prepare for the meeting & when one is prepared, the participation is naturally there. Even questions must be welcome during the meetings/sessions. When people know the subject or are keen to know & contribute to the topic, we see participation. Attempt to make topic have some kind of value to everyone involved. Limit the number of attendees to only the relevant needed ones. Also set some rules for participation to avoid chaos like situation

ABC Meeting Management only sends a meeting request by defining a clear purpose, objective, and agenda. In addition, the best practice is to dispatch all related documents upfront so attendees can come prepared.

Additionally, one simple thing: keep it short. I know that in some cases longer meeting sessions to discuss difficult topics are needed. But, if possible try to schedule the meeting as short as possible because most people are not capable of attending multiple-hour-meetings and keeping the attention to a maximum. Shorter meetings might be more productive - and people are happy about the space within their calendar.

Using interactive tools during the meeting will increase and ensure people's engagement, especially if the meeting has many attendees or is undertaken online.

Asking open-ended questions in a meeting is a major thing. You can easily rephrase a yes-or-no questions into something with a little more substance. In asking something that requires more of a response, you are being inclusive and engaging your audience too. Open-ended questions can also lead to a better discussion surrounding the subject or bring up other subjects or tie-ins that maybe hadn't been mentioned yet.

The meeting moderator should provide a respectful and safe atmosphere to encourage attendees to participate and engage primarily in the brainstorming meetings. In addition, all attendees should take a fair chance to express their ideas within preplanned time slots.

To have maximum response from all participants, a primary aspect is to have an inclusive and secure environment for the team to express their opinions free of any judgement. Approval and positive affirmation can go along a way in encouraging the team to weigh in their voice. This brings in varying perspectives to the fore. While dealing with difficult issues feedback from all members can help in arriving with radical solutions. Being appreciative of contributions from the moderator and other members can help with the participation.

For meetings in presence: think about a "no-Laptops-and-phones-Meeting". I've noticed that during meetings a lot of people spend time answering emails or checking open issues. As a result they are not fully present which leads to a lack of appreciation. Of course, sometimes it is needed to present content or look things up. But it might help to remove every device from the desk.

Why don‘t you use NGT? Nominal Group Technique? Steps: 1. Everyone writes down ideas in private on index cards or similar. 2. The cards are collected, shuffled, and read aloud. 3. Identical or very similar ideas are merged. This also leads to discussing content. 4. The group uses a voting technique to prioritize the ideas. 5. The result is documented. NGT‘s “nominal” aspect consists in giving all participants nominally the same voice, despite the presence of dominant people or other inhibitors.

Facilitator rotation. Facilitator rotation in project meetings is a strategic practice; encouraging active participation and providing team members with opportunities to take on leadership roles, it fosters a sense of ownership and engagement. The rotation minimizes monotony, ensuring dynamic and unpredictable meetings, which, in turn, promotes creativity and effective problem-solving. This also guarantees that each team member has a chance to lead, contributing to skill development and creating a well-rounded, collaborative team culture.

Post-covid, majority of the meetings are now held online due to safety compliances. This poses greater challenges to obtain full participation from all attendees as they are not present physically. To ensure full participation is adhered, the meeting tone must first be set. Do not make the meeting to be bos-centered or bos-opinionated. Keep the meeting tone light and easy and most importantly, ego-free to ensure attendees do not feel reluctant to participate. Allow the attendees to speak freely and when they speak, the rest should listen and allow the speaker to complete voicing out their thoughts. This will give them the feel that they are not being dominated, suppressed or oppressed and naturally invoke more confidence.

First things first, I believe that one way to get active participation from the participants in a meeting is to invite the right participants to the meeting. Many times people have been invited into meetings where they didn't see how they added value to those meetings. It means that the convenor of the meeting ought to validate the invitees against the agenda & objectives of the meeting.