10 ways to lead meetings that spark everyone’s best thinking

Not everyone is at their best in freewheeling meetings where the energy is high, the ideas are flying, and each new thought builds brilliantly on the last. A more introverted, soft-spoken, or introspective team member might keep a great idea to themselves because they aren’t comfortable joining the fray. Or they might come up with their best idea three hours later, after they’ve had a chance to think more deeply about the problem.

With these tips, you can facilitate meetings that are likely to draw out the best ideas from everyone — not just the strongest voices.

Before the meeting

1. Ask yourself,?Do we really need to?meet about this?

Because not everyone shines in formal meetings, consider other ways of getting the outcome you want.

A real-time meeting may be a good option when you want to:

• Discuss strategy.
• Have a coaching conversation.
• Share news of a big change.
• Solve an urgent problem.

But:

• To give a general update, you might send an email or a group chat message.
• To get feedback on a proposal, you might share a document with a deadline for written comments.
• To gather ideas, you might ask your direct reports to brainstorm on their own or in a shared document before gathering as a group.

2. Send out a detailed agenda.

In a meeting, if you’ve ever asked , “So, who has some ideas?” and been met with silence, it could be because people weren’t expecting the question. When you share the agenda ahead of time (and give people sufficient time to prepare, such as a week or longer for large, complicated topics), you give everyone the chance to be better prepared to contribute.

To get the meeting outcome you want, articulate your expectations about what will be discussed (e.g.,?“Please bring two ideas for solving our project backlog”). And if there are specifics about how you’ll facilitate the meeting, including that you’ll be asking everyone to speak, say so (e.g.,?“I’d like to spend the first half of the meeting hearing each person’s ideas before we discuss them. Please come prepared to share your ideas in three minutes or less”).

3. Gather ideas and anonymize them.

A typical brainstorm, where you fill a whiteboard with ideas as they’re shouted out, can lead to the loudest voices — rather than the best ideas — getting the most attention.

Instead, ask people to submit ideas in advance — by email, chat, or a survey you create. Then compile and present them in a shared doc for discussion without identifying who submitted each idea. This way, people can generate ideas at a time and pace that works for them, consider each idea on its own merits, and avoid the groupthink that sometimes infects meetings.

Or you could ask everyone to spend the first 10 or 15 minutes of the meeting writing their ideas anonymously on sticky notes, which you or they affix to a whiteboard (for an in-person meeting) or you add to a shared document (for a virtual meeting).

4. Privately ask more talkative participants to hold back and invite less talkative ones to speak.

If certain members of your team tend to dominate group discussions, it’s up to you as the leader to change the dynamic. You don’t want to shut anybody down, but by tweaking how the discussion unfolds, you can make it more likely that more voices get heard.

If someone tends to speak up and influence the group when they share their ideas, you might say in advance just to them something like,?“I’ve noticed that you are often the first person to speak, with people typically following your lead. I’m wondering how our discussions might change if others went first. Would you be willing to hold off and share your views last at today’s meeting?”?(If?you?are that dominant participant, make a point of letting your direct reports offer their viewpoints before you share yours.)

If someone on your team has good ideas but rarely shares them publicly, you might say to them privately, “I loved that email response you wrote last week to the customer who complained. Would you be willing to talk through your approach when we discuss customer satisfaction in today’s meeting?”?Or, more directly,?“I’ve noticed that you rarely speak up in our Tuesday meetings even though?you have so much?customer?support experience. Would you be open to sharing more today?”

5. Avoid scheduling back-to-back meetings.

Even the most outgoing people can feel like their brains are scrambled if they have back-to-back meetings on a variety of topics. For some people, even a single discussion is just as draining, so by allotting space between meetings, you give people who are more introverted the time to recharge.

During the meeting

6. Facilitate the meeting so everyone has a chance to share their thoughts.

A great meeting facilitator is like a marching band leader who knows when to tell the tubas to quiet down so that people can hear the flutes. To help every voice be heard, you might:

• Set a ground rule that no one will speak twice until everyone in the group has spoken once.
• Call on quieter team members to share their views first.
• Go around the room and ask everyone for their thoughts on a topic before moving to the next topic.
• In virtual meetings, allow people to contribute their thoughts via chat.
• Set a time limit, with everyone getting the same amount of time (one or two minutes) to make their points, and use a stopwatch or timer to enforce it.
• To support people who naturally pause while formulating their thoughts, prohibit interruptions by saying at the outset something like, “I’d like everyone to have the opportunity to fully express themselves, so please hold your thoughts until the person speaking indicates they’re done” or?“Before you start to speak, please count to five in your head to make sure the person who’s speaking has finished.”

And if a virtual meeting descends into people talking over one another, you might mute everyone and have them raise their virtual hand when they want to speak.

7. Build in time to think.

Sharing an agenda in advance is a good way to get people’s minds working and give them a chance to surface their thoughts before the meeting. But not everyone always has the opportunity to do the prework, and thought-provoking issues can come up mid-meeting.

But you can call a time-out in the meeting to let people think. For example, when soliciting possible solutions, say, “Could we all take two minutes to silently think about this before we share our ideas?”

A related suggestion regularly practiced by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is to?set aside the first part of meetings for everyone to read?printed agenda topic memos in silence and take notes about what is going to be discussed in order to clarify their thoughts without interruption before the discussion begins.

8. Break into smaller groups.

Some people are simply more comfortable sharing their ideas, collaborating, or being candid in small groups. And even the most outgoing person might hesitate before chiming in on a video call with 20 other people — especially if there are power differences among them. When you want to get everyone’s honest thoughts on an issue, try dividing into small discussion groups.

In person, you could send subgroups on walk-and-talks outside the meeting room. Online, use your video conferencing tool’s breakout room feature or have smaller groups do a conference call with each other for a virtual walk-and-talk. After each group discusses its ideas and returns to the meeting, a spokesperson can share them with everyone.

9. Don’t require people to turn on their cameras in every virtual meeting.

Being on video with everyone looking at you, monitoring yourself, and showing that you’re paying attention can be stressful and make some people anxious and less likely to participate.

If your job involves facilitating lots of virtual meetings, consider these tips:

• Let people turn off their cameras when the meeting is focused on a shared screen (people aren’t looking at one another anyway).
• If appropriate — maybe for groups that see each other often or for meetings late in the day when people’s energy might be low — let participants know in advance that video is optional.
• Invite people to turn off their video cameras when they are listening and turn them on when they’re presenting or would like to make a point.
• For meetings with clients or people you don’t know well, ask about their video preferences beforehand so that they don’t feel compelled to be on camera if they don’t want to be.

After the meeting

10. Give everyone the ability to follow up with further thoughts.

Ask anyone who’s had a flash of brilliance in the shower or after a full night’s sleep: Good ideas don’t always arrive on a predetermined schedule. Some people may keep thinking about an issue and come up with ideas long after a meeting ends. And they may feel more comfortable sharing those ideas privately.

To catch those postmeeting moments of inspiration, let everyone know that you’re always open to hearing their ideas — via email or chat, in person, at a 1-on-1 meeting, or at the next team meeting.

Article from Jhana @ https://aap.jhana.com/running-meetings/10-ways-to-lead-meetings-that-spark-everyones-best-thinking/