Encouraging the 'Quiet Ones' to Speak Up
Most of us are not eager to attend the many meetings that clog our calendars, but we recognize that they are an inevitable part of office life. And once you’ve been to enough meetings, you start to recognize the different types of meeting attendees. First, you’ve got the enthusiastic ones. They’re excited to interact with colleagues, so they arrive in the meeting room or join the video call a few minutes early to lead the pre-meeting small talk. During the meeting itself, they are active participants, always ready to offer opinions or lighten the mood with a funny story. Then you’ve got the disconnected ones. If it’s an in-person meeting, they are there in body, but not in spirit. They’re likely to be surreptitiously working on something else during the meeting. If they’re on a video call, they probably have their camera off, actively multitasking. The regular attendees are there because they must be, but they understand the need for the meeting and want to help the team achieve its