How to Get the Silent Person More Involved in Meetings

Meetings typically require attendees interact and participate during the meeting time. Active participation in meetings can yield much better results than those meetings where people provide very little input. Often meetings will have different levels of participation from the group. Some will talk a lot while others will talk very little or not at all. For those individuals not interacting with the group, there are some simple ideas you may try in order to encourage not only that individual but everyone else to become more involved.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Meeting Purpose and Agenda

1. Prior to meeting, an individual might provide a suggestion or pertinent information to you as the meeting leader. If an individual does this, ask them if you can introduce the idea and then have them talk a little about what they have found out in the next meeting. If they agree, add it to the agenda.
   
   You may also want to rotate responsibility for facilitating meetings and taking notes so everyone has a better understanding of these important meeting responsibilities. Whenever possible, you may also want to delegate different topics on the agenda to other individuals at different meetings so everyone gets a chance to share their expertise and shine as a member of the group.

2. During your meetings, it is important to remember you don’t need to rush through the entire meeting. Try to be patient and give people a little more time to think and respond to presented ideas. After a few minutes of silence, ask a question to prompt discussion or see if the group wants to continue.
   
   To increase the involvement of everyone at the meeting, call on different people to share their ideas, opinions, and thoughts on topics throughout the meeting. You do this by creating a safe respectful environment for open exchange of ideas and opinions. Never allow others to belittle anyone’s questions or ideas as this decreases respect and trust levels.
   
   During the meeting, you should also take a little time to praise good work done by people outside the meeting and say thank you for sharing in the meeting. Appreciation makes members feel valued. Valued people are more willing to speak up and share their ideas.

3. As a meeting leader, you will need to learn how to control individual talk time. If you see someone is not actively participating, look directly at them and use their name when asking a question to encourage a response and increase their participation level. You may have to do this a few times before they have the confidence to speak without prompting.
   
   If someone appears to be dominating the meeting or discussion, you should not let it go so far that it disrupts your meeting timeline. When one person takes over the meeting, other ideas are not shared and better decisions become harder to make as people may feel intimidated. Instead, you should thank the talker for their contribution after a few minutes and then move to the next topic or ask a question of a quieter team member.

4. At the end of the meeting, you should make sure everyone has an action item to do after the meeting. From a discussion topic, a need to assign someone a research item prior to the next meeting often comes up. Assigning the research item o someone gives that individual the opportunity to provide a report or presentation at that meeting.

5. After meetings and outside of the meeting location, you should try to talk with individuals who did not easily participate in the meeting to understand why they did not choose to participate. Perhaps they are not really interested in being on the team or they do not see how they add value to the meetings. Or their low participation could be because they are not interested in a particular meeting topic or they do not see how it directly affects them. Explain why they bring value to the team and what is in it for them.

Resources

• How to Encourage Active Participation in Meetings
• How to Create a Meeting Agenda That Works
• How to Prevent Rabbit Trails from Detouring Meetings
• How to Assign Meeting Action Items That Get Done
• How to Practice Meeting Etiquette to Participate Effectively
• How to Organize an Effective Meeting

[3-Point]

on 5/6/2009 Your approach is excellent and I learned a few new things about how to get everyone participating in a meeting--even the silent person.