Hear from All Employees in Meetings with These 6 Strategies

It’s 9:30 a.m. on a Monday. Time for your weekly team meeting and the one opportunity you have to get a clear sense of everyone’s progress. During these sessions, you want attendees to communicate what they’ve achieved and the difficulties they’ve faced in the past seven days, so you can establish how best to help or guide them. But alas, you already suspect Peter will talk too much, and Ravneet will talk too little — if at all. You’ll spend a good chunk of the meeting trying to mitigate the ever-escalating tensions between Ann and Carlos, who seem incapable of agreeing on anything, and another chunk glaring across the room at Eleanor, who you know will open WhatsApp the moment she sits down and fail to listen to a single word anyone says. Making sure everyone’s voice is heard during a team meeting can be tough. There will be the odd employee who is lazy, difficult, or disinterested, but, in most cases, the biggest challenge comes with balancing the bigger personalities alongside the more introverted ones. The latter group isn’t at fault, so it’s important to employ strategies that empower them to speak up, rather than cause them additional pressure and stress. The following techniques may help.