How to facilitate a meeting Tip 10 - Invite quiet participants to speak

Dominant voices can drown out valuable ideas in meetings. Address quiet participants by name and ask for their specific opinion on the topic at hand. This draws out diverse input and leads to more balanced, successful meetings.
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How to facilitate a meeting, tip number 10: invite the quiet participants to speak. Quite often, meetings will be dominated by a few people who are more comfortable, more knowledgeable, or just louder in the group. But everybody was invited to that meeting for a reason. Everybody should be providing input, getting something, contributing towards the specific goal or output that the meeting is there for. And your job as a facilitator is to help ensure that everybody is participating in the best possible way. Now, if you don't invite the quiet people to speak, you might be missing out on good ideas, creativity, important information. You might also be allowing the loud person who always talks just to maintain the stage, even if it's not moving the topic towards the desired goal or the specific output that you're looking for. So when you're running meetings, invite the quiet people to participate. Now, how do you do this? Well, either create a pause or wait for a pause in the discussion and invite somebody by name to join in the discussion. Don't say, oh hey, Emma, do you want to join in now? That's not very helpful for her or for the discussion. Instead, ask for her opinion. So, Emma, You're a specialist in this topic. Do you have a— do you agree, or do you have a different perspective on what was just discussed? Ask for somebody's opinion, insight, or input into the topic that's being discussed, and draw those quieter people into the group. If you do this, your meetings will be more successful, and they won't be dominated just by a few loud voices.
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