7 Tips to Running Inclusive Meetings

Fostering diversity—in people and in thought—in your organization breeds innovation, and inclusive meetings are an essential way to get the most from your team. Ensuring meeting attendees feel empowered to participate summons a broader base of backgrounds and insights, resulting in more innovative ideas.

Encouraging participation is a win-win. It makes your employees feel welcome and valued. It also supports your company’s success. Research by McKinsey shows diverse companies outperform their less-diverse competitors. They found those companies in the top 25 percent for executive team gender diversity are 25 percent more likely to achieve above-average profitability.

Tips To Running Inclusive Meetings

Here are seven ways to run inclusive and effective meetings, ensuring everyone on your team feels heard and included.

1. Rotate Meeting Facilitators

Rotating team members through the role of facilitator can help foster inclusivity. As each team member leads the meeting and guides the conversation, they naturally bring a different style and perspective to the role.

As a leader, you can teach other team members how to facilitate! While each style will end up different, you still want to make sure they know how to:

Keeping the meeting on track
Inviting members to share
Protecting them from being interrupted
Giving everyone a chance to speak.

2. Encourage Collaboration on the Agenda

A decisive step toward an inclusive meeting is sending the agenda in advance so your team members can preview its contents and make additions and comments where appropriate. An outline is enough as long as it provides discussion topics.

Seeing the agenda in advance allows attendees to think about what they want to say and how they can contribute. For people who aren’t as comfortable speaking up during the meeting, a preview of the agenda allows them to add their comments without being put on the spot.

Inviting everyone to participate in the planning process increases both inclusion and accountability.

3. Practice Active Listening

During the meeting, it’s good practice for the facilitator to listen attentively and affirm and amplify ideas as appropriate. Underrepresented groups or soft-spoken people are more likely to be talked over or dismissed.

The goal of active listening, affirming, and amplifying is two-fold. First, you ensure that people who do share feel heard and appreciated, which creates a safe space where everyone can share. Second, by making everyone feel heard, you encourage engagement.

4. Allow People to Contribute Their Way

Inclusivity should not be confused with conformity. The goal is not to transform everyone into assertive extroverts or people who speak the same way. Instead, the goal is to keep the team engaged and benefit from its diversity.

The leader needs to be mindful if some people are tempted to dominate the airtime or interrupt others, managing that constructively. However, providing multiple pathways for members to contribute is equally important.

If you host online meetings, this may be through the chat function. Someone may prefer to type in their thought rather than speak it—this allows this gives space for more people to contribute.

If you host meetings in person, allowing people to comment on the agenda before and after the meeting opens additional pathways for team members to contribute without putting people on the spot. If you allow comments on the agenda after the meeting, set a time limit on those contributions.

5. Remember, People Process Information Differently

Another effective way to increase inclusivity is to include more than one modality in your meeting presentation. Some people learn visually, others take in information auditorily, and others learn best by doing.

You can cater to individuals with different learning styles through the following:

Include a written agenda (for visual learners who like to read).
Have a few visual slides or share your screen (where appropriate).
Have a demonstration (where appropriate).
In a virtual meeting, allow people time to type responses during a silent pause. Some people cannot process auditory information while typing.

6. Make It Safe to Share Opposing Views

For a meeting to feel truly inclusive, presenting an unpopular or opposing perspective must be safe. This may be one of the most challenging parts for some leaders because it requires breaking through unconscious biases and bypassing groupthink.

The key is respect. When opposing viewpoints can be heard and discussed respectfully, team members will feel safe sharing their less popular thoughts and ideas—which can lead to innovation.

If you are only hearing ideas that agree with you, your team could benefit from additional diversity. A critical component of an inclusive team is encouraging healthy discussion of opposing views.

7. Share Information Post-Meeting

Include those team members who did not attend by sharing videos, transcripts, or meeting notes. Make sure to include any action items agreed on during the meeting, including the timeline for each and the parties responsible. This simple action ensures that everyone involved stays in the know, even if they weren’t present for a specific meeting.

Allow a day or two for individuals to contribute ideas or comments on the agenda. Communicate the contribution deadline but give attendees and those who missed the meeting time to process the topics and share their post-meeting ideas.

Inclusivity Powers Innovation

Diverse teams are a growing reality, and fostering inclusion in your meeting develops the talent you have, increasing engagement and fueling innovation.

At Insight Global, we help organizations excel by building diverse teams. We help you implement DEI initiatives that foster high engagement and high growth. Would you like to know more? Speak with one of our expert recruiters today.