How to Get Your Office Team to Participate in Meetings

Office meetings, meant to be productive and beneficial for team unity, all to often become exactly the opposite: awkward, one-sided, and uninspiringconversations that only involve the team leader and one or two employees that try to stick out above the others. Is this high-school all over again? Lectures, mass boredom, and select brown-nosers? Unfortunately, team meetings can often develop this atmosphere, with unseen consequences after the chairs are pushed in.

Unbalanced participation can lead even well-balanced employees who speak up to leave feeling unconsciously above their colleagues and their position requirements while those who don’t speak can leave feeling less valuable, underachieving, and totally dependent upon your direction. But there are cures to break this pattern either before or after it develops and direct meetings toward what they should: valuable and productive group exercises that benefit everyone.

Timing and Length

Aim for the sweet middles of the workday. When people first arrive to work they are under-caffeinated and ill-adjusted from their commutes. Likewise, edging close to either lunch or clocking out can make employees edgy and anxious to leave as the subtle threat of the meeting running over into their personal time creeps in. When no one wants to be first or last to speak because of chronological discomfort, no one will.

Let people exchange their good mornings and get situated before trapping them in a meeting room before mid-morning. People are fresh after lunch and this is a great time to catch employees at their best and set them up for the remainder of the day.

Location

Make sure that the location for your meeting is bright and airy. Too warm and your participants will fall asleep too cold and people just won’t be able to get in the zone. Be sure there is adequate space so that everyone has a seat. If you do not have an appropriate set up in your office, it may be worthwhile hiring a meeting room at a local business centre. These kind of facilities will often have break out areas for more focused team discussions and they usually provide tea, coffee and refreshments to keep your employees fueled.

Interest and Variety

Another common threat to meeting discussion is boredom. Employees fear being reprimanded if caught not catching the entirety of a monologue and lose energy to contribute if little variety is included. Make sure to use visuals in your presentations that relate what your saying and capture interest from the less attentive.

Tone too is important. Humor puts people at ease while the right touches of seriousness alert them to what should be treated with most respect and effort. Another great way to avoid monotony is the use of analogies that are simple or complex. The human brain is wired to make connections and talking about the same subject without putting it in context can damage the clarity necessary for good conversation.

Getting people to speak can be more fun than challenging if you think of it in a new light. Exercises, like one minute, unadulterated brainstorming for each person in the room can warm everyone up for group discussion. Similarly, don’t leave all the talking to yourself. Having other presenters among the group puts everyone on a more comfortable even keel.

Purpose and Reward

Make sure your meeting is divided up into units of time so things don’t drag on and so discussion stays focused on important points. This automatically makes most aware of what is trivial and avoids anyone’s feelings getting bruised. To this end it can be useful to start off the meeting with a set agenda and structure to explain what decisions and goals need to be reached.

Prizes might sound a bit elementary but they can actually be very effective in even a meeting environment. One option is to start off the meeting with announcement of a particular tricky issue that will get a free sandwich or similar gift for the person that offers the best opinion. Or, to avoid being selective, have a box of donuts in waiting for the moment an effective solution or satisfying midpoint has been reached.

Giving praise and encouragement is also important in appropriately measured degrees. Save the greatest praise for comments that deserve it but give a bit of credit to everything that is said so everyone feels valued. To avoid the boring classroom atmosphere when calling on someone to participate, start off by quickly explaining why that person’s perspective is useful and relevant. They will most likely jump on the chance to offer their unique opinion.

What all these points help to achieve is what makes any meeting a great meeting: a sense of shared purpose and value. So, avoid boredom, bad timing, and favoritism and try out a few new tactics; the results will be better than you think.

Kelly Wilson is an experienced writer who has contributed to a number of publications, including many categories and and many other topics.