“Why Doesn’t Everyone Contribute in My Meetings?”
Dave Buffham
Performance Coach and Director - I help organisations and teams maximise their performance and potential!
Do your meeting outputs and actions reflect the combined wisdom of the team or the noise in the room?
Throughout my 25 years working in leadership roles and as a team coach, I have witnessed and participated in hundreds of meetings that are dominated by the contribution (noise?) from less than a third of those attending.
- How can this lead to the best outcomes for these organisations?
- What is the value of the silent/missing contribution?
- Why don’t some team members contribute?
- How can you get more people involved and ‘In The Game’?
Most of us are familiar with the concept of Introverts and Extroverts, but what does it really mean in practice? I often hear the stock answer from introverts when they are challenged about their low contribution – “I like time to reflect!”
Studies of our brains have shown distinct differences in the brains of so called introverts and extroverts and in particular the presence of dopamine and the size of the prefrontal cortex.
In reality this presents itself as:
“Introverts Think to Speak” and “Extroverts Speak to Think”
So at the point a discussion topic starts the extroverts launch in and take up all the oxygen in the room. Not only is this disruptive to the train of thought of the introverts it can make them appear even more removed.
This can mean that the discussion has moved on and the decisions have been made before the introverts have spoken, and so they don’t speak – Valuable Contribution Lost!
What can be done to ‘Maximise Introverts Contribution’ in meetings?
- Circulate the agenda and pre-reading upfront – this takes their reflection time out of the meeting
- Be clear on the agenda about the decisions that need to be made / desired outcomes
- Give reflection time before each discussion and structure the initial input e.g. brainstorm, post it notes etc
- Be comfortable with silence – Pose questions and allow space for people to answer
- Use a blend of smaller group / pairs work to develop ideas – you could split the team introvert and extrovert
- Use a facilitator or team coach to draw more people into the discussion
- Get the Introverts to organize and chair your meetings – ownership gives them prior reflection time
At this point you may be thinking “Isn’t that an awful lot of work and effort? Is it really worth it?”
Imagine the impact created by your team leaving the room deeply committed to bringing the meeting actions to life, having been listened to and really understood.
Can you really afford, in a world of increasing competition where new ideas and speed to market are imperative, to overlook the contribution of half your workforce?
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For more of the science stuff, check out:
The Brain Of An Introvert Compared To That Of An Extrovert: Are They Really Different?
Medical Daily Aug 21, 2014 By Lecia Bushak
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Dave Buffham is a self confessed ‘High Functioning Introvert’ who helps Senior Teams in a wide range of organisations Maximise their Performance by Aligning their Focus and Behaviour. Dave is also a licensed practitioner for the Insights Discovery personality profiling tools.
If you’d like an informal chat to discuss your team challenges, please contact me via my Linked-in profile.
Director at Leading Edge Performance
8 年Great suggestions Dave. I often think the challenge is amplified once the meeting falls into free fall discussion, despite our best intentions. One of the more obvious ways of raising collective responsibility through awareness is to ensure team members understand the preferences of others in the group. Using a tool like Insights Discovery or Lumina Spark helps organisations create a common language to qualify the differences and maximise the input of every meeting participant.
Director at Red Penguin Limited - Enabling organisations to achieve their objectives... through their people
8 年Dave - as a fellow introvert I think this is a great article... and now I'd like to go away and reflect before I make a further contribution! More seriously, I wonder what the combined impact of all the missed opportunities to listen to introverts amounts to?