Is it quite hard for a facilitator to encourage active participation from team members? If you ever acted as the facilitator of your team, I am sure you must have found some participants who did not intend to speak even if they had something to share. Well, this is a very common issue in team meetings. We would learn here the techniques that you can apply during team meetings to get your team members more engaged.
1. Invite the right members
As the facilitator of your team, it’s your responsibility to make sure all the team members are actively participating in meetings. Sometimes, meeting invitations have few folks who would not be required as they are not directly involved in the topic that will be discussed during the meeting. As a result, you can never expect participation from those members. Hence, make sure you invite the right members to make the meeting fruitful.
2. Ask questions
Now let us suppose that all the right participants are present in the meeting however still some members are hesitant to speak. What would you do as a facilitator in this case? Your first job is to make them comfortable. You can ask questions like “Hey John, you did a great job in resolving a similar kind of situation before. Do you think we should proceed with this activity now?” This is just an example. My main point is to bring the positive attributes of your team members during a meeting and then ask them about their opinion. It will make them feel respected and they will feel much better to give their thoughts on a certain topic.
3. Give chance to everyone
Sometimes it may happen that only one or two persons are doing all the talking and because of that, others are not getting any chance. As a facilitator, you should say “Hey John and Sam, both of you had some valid points and now I think we should give others a chance to talk about their opinion”. Then you call the names of the members one by one and ask them to share their thoughts on the topic being discussed.
4. Set an agenda
When you are scheduling a meeting, make sure to have an agenda defined so that the members participating in the meeting are aware of the agenda. This is to ensure that all the members prepare themselves before the meeting. Remember that in a professional environment, nobody would disrespect a person’s thoughts. I agree there can be a disagreement and disagreement should happen during a meeting so that people get to know the various pros and cons of the topic under discussion. However, that does not mean one should hesitate to voice his opinion because of any disagreement. As the facilitator, your job is to encourage people to speak even if there is going to be disagreement. Conflict resolution is entirely a separate topic and I have mentioned some strategies to resolve conflicts in this article.
5. Empathize
In front of a larger group, do not blame or point out anyone if you don’t get active participation from them. Instead, try to empathize with them and ask them questions like this “Hey Sam, I understand you might be feeling a bit hesitant to speak about this topic but I want to reaffirm that every member’s opinion matters here” .This sentence might help him in feeling a bit relaxed and eventually he would also share his thoughts. Once he shares his opinion, thank him for his valuable opinion. Other members who are not actively participating would also get inspired by how you handled the situation and they would more likely to share their thoughts as well.
6. Have a one to one conversation
If you see that none of the techniques as discussed above, is proving to be helpful for an individual, set up a separate meeting with the person and try to understand the reason for his non-participation. Ask him how you can help him so that he can share his opinions without any concern. The individual will feel more connected then. He may be nervous in expressing his thoughts but when a leader approaches him with a helping mindset, that will definitely boost him up and he would try his best to make active participation in the next meeting.
Conclusion
Active participation in team meetings is not difficult. However, as a facilitator, you would need to know all the techniques as discussed above to make sure all the team members are actively involved during a discussion. All these techniques will still be applicable for a remote work setup as well.
I hope this article would help you in gaining more active participation from your team members.
If you were a facilitator before, how did you get your team members to get actively engaged during team meetings?
