How to make meetings more inclusive

Question: what percentage of your working life do you spend in meetings?

A TED talk by David Grady and Jason Fried revealed that there are over 3 billion meetings a year, with the average professional spending more than half of their 40 hour workweek in meetings - and for executives the amount is far higher.

That's a LOT of meeting time!

According to a survey published in Harvard Business Review, 71% of meetings are unproductive and inefficient - and, personally, I think the real figure is much higher.

Unproductive meetings?waste time and money, as well as damaging employee wellbeing and productivity; often forcing employees to break their line of thinking to attend an unrelated meeting or making them feel uncomfortable, or lacking in some way.

In my experience, meetings primarily serve only to:

• Breed other meetings.
• To be used as commitment devices, to help make sure employees follow through on certain tasks.
• To appear busy and signal importance; the more meetings you attend, the more important you are.

For at least 50% of the workforce, traditionally-structured meetings are also non-inclusive.

They're usually dominated by, and favoured towards, extroverts, and inaccurate judgements are usually made about introverted employees based on their contribution at meetings, even though they aren't accommodating introverts' needs, or taking into account their neurobiological differences.

Similarly, other neurodiverse employees may struggle in meetings.

Most businesses are therefore sleeping on some simple changes that, if implemented, could save them money and boost employee moral, performance and productivity.

How to make meetings more inclusive for introverts

Here are ten simple steps to make your meetings more inclusive, productive and psychologically safe:

1. Work on your culture

If employees don't feel psychologically safe, they won't openly share, no matter what structural changes are implemented; an organisation's culture is the foundational element of psychological safety.

Conduct an honest review of how employees feel about your workplace's culture; you could use an anonymous poll, for example.

Aim for a 'fail forward' culture, where employees are encouraged to be open, vulnerable and to take risks.

Unconscious bias training, and coaching around self-awareness and fixed/ growth mindset, can help individuals to understand their own role in achieving a cultural reset.

2. Ask yourself: is this meeting really necessary?

Most of us have experienced the meeting that really could have been an email; ONLY call a meeting if it is absolutely necessary.

This is especially true of meetings which aim to ideate, innovate or result in any form of creativity, because true creativity is almost never harnessed in a meeting room.

For introverts, especially, creativity flows when space is created to enable it to do so.

Ideas rarely come in the moment:

They appear in the shower.

Or on a walk.

Or when engaged in something entirely unrelated.

Give your people space, the ability to go on walks and time to think and I guarantee you that the result will be far more powerful than any amount of collective ideation sessions!

3. Talk to your colleagues 1:1

As managers, make time to speak to your direct reports 1:1, so that you can understand their preferences and needs.

Introverted employees may prefer:

• speaking first at meetings so that anxiety doesn't have time to build.
• questions to be held until the end if they are presenting.
• talking through issues in smaller groups, or one-to-one.
• the opportunity to share ideas anonymously.?
• asynchronous meetings.

But we're all different.

Introverts aren't a monolith; neither are neurodiverse employees.

Therefore taking the time to truly understand differing needs and preferences will enable you to get the best possible outcomes for all.

It will also help your colleagues to feel seen and valued - and the power of this cannot be underestimated.

4. Send an agenda in advance

Due to the way the brains of introverts are wired, they typically need longer to process new information and thoughts, as well as formulate a response.

This is often why they often aren't speaking up in meetings; they require more time.

Sending an agenda that contains the meeting's discussion points at least 48 hours in advance of the meeting will empower the introverts as they will have had time to formulate their response by the time the meeting begins.

Doing this also helps to build the foundations of psychological safety for introverted attendees.

5. Appoint a facilitator

Have a facilitator lead the meeting to ensure everyone has the chance to speak; extroverts tend to process thoughts by speaking and so can otherwise dominate the conversation.

However, don't do what most facilitators do and single out the quieter attendees:

I wouldn't be able to count amount of times I've heard, "Sam, do you have anything you'd like to add?" and felt instantly sick, because being put on the spot like that is both uncomfortable and anxiety-inducing.

It's not inclusive to do this; it creates unnecessary stress and there are other, better, ways (more on this in #7).

6. Ditch the icebreakers

We have been conditioned to believe that ice breakers are a necessary evil, especially if meeting attendees don't already know each other.

The truth is, this is fake news.

Icebreakers simply aren't necessary to bond people, aid learning or facilitate engagement.

And just because something has always been done a certain way doesn't mean it has to always be done that way.

Adults are perfectly capable of connecting with each other authentically and what actually keeps them engaged is to hear something interesting that they can relater to, learn from or that will benefit them.

Anything else is just corporate fluff and/or a waste of time.

Most people I've spoken to, even those who like public speaking, dislike the 'creeping death' of two truths and a lie, or sharing a 'fun fact' but, for introverts, it's a truly painful experience.

In a virtual meeting, the chat function can be sufficient for attendees to introduce themselves; in person, allow attendees to interact, and connect, with each other naturally.

7. Provide alternatives

Experiment with different ways in gathering attendees' thoughts and contributions.

For example, each attendee writing a solution on a Post-It and then providing time for all solutions to be considered and/ or further additions made before discussion takes place.

You can also use anonymous voting systems like 'dot-mocracy', where attendees can add a dot to their three favourite post-its.

In virtual meetings, encourage attendees to use the poll and chat functions; the latter tends to be especially favoured by introverts, who are often more comfortable providing written, as opposed to verbal, contributions.

8. Remember smaller is always better!

When it comes to meetings, smaller is always better.

That goes for both time and number of attendees.

In the early days of?Amazon, Jeff Bezos instituted a rule: the number of meeting attendees should be small enough that they can be fed with two?pizzas.

That's usually fewer than eight attendees.

Often, employees are being invited, or required, to attend meetings that they really don't need to attend.

This doesn't only waste their time; it can also detrimentally impact the meeting outcome, as too many attendees mean the meeting can be more likely to go off track or fail to achieve the intended objective(s).

Similarly, keep meetings as short as possible and timebox agenda items.

Donna McGeorge, the author of The 25 Minute Meeting: Half the Time, Double the Impact, believes that the most impactful meetings are less than 30 minutes in length.

9. Post-meeting collation

In addition to sending an agenda in advance of the meeting, also provide some form of medium for meeting attendees to add additional thoughts within a certain time frame post-meeting.

This provides an opportunity for anyone who wasn't able to contribute during the meeting, or who needed more time to think, to still provide a contribution.

Collaborative documents, such as a Google doc, are ideal.

10. Use Polls

Whether before, during, or after meetings, using polls, can be a useful way of gauging thoughts and collating feedback.

Sending periodic anonymous surveys to employees can also help to measure their psychological safety and if anything needs adjusting.

What would you add to this list?

The benefits of making meetings more inclusive

Companies that create an environment where everyone feels safe enough to express their opinions freely and honestly have a definite advantage over their competition.?

McKinsey's 2020 Why Inclusion Matters study reported that a diverse and inclusive employee base—with a range of approaches and perspectives—is an asset when competing in a fast-moving, globalised economy.

Research conducted by Gallup found that disengaged employees have 18% lower productivity, 37% higher absentee rates, and 15% lower profitability.

These figures translate into a cost of 34% of the disengaged employee’s annual pay rate.

In contrast, employees who feel appreciated are more satisfied with their work and less likely to be absent, or to leave the business.

Furthermore, a sense of belonging in the workplace boosts job performance by more than half (56%).

You can only win by making your meetings more inclusive for introvert, and neurodiverse, employees.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

____________________________

About Me

I help introverts develop authentic confidence, through coaching, training and digital products, so that they can thrive without having to change who they are, and companies through training, coaching and consultancy, to address the workplace bias towards extroversion.

Through developing my own authentic confidence I have been able to build a life on my terms, working part-time for full-time income, travel solo around the world, work with companies like Google and speak, with confidence, to entire auditoriums. I've already helped thousands of individuals, across 169 countries globally, to develop confidence and communication skills, as well as manage Imposter Syndrome and limiting beliefs. Helping others feel enough is my passion.

If you are an introvert looking to feel more confident, set boundaries to help you balance your time and be able to understand, and communicate, your value to others; a leader looking to better support your introverted talent;?or a company committed to achieving intersectional equity and inclusion, DM me or?visit my website, to find out more about how I can help you.

Alternatively, you can?subscribe to my email list?for additional updates and inspiration; I periodically send out free tools and resources to my email subscribers to help with their transformation. Sign up?here.