How do you plan to include people

It sucks to be forgotten, ignored, excluded or left out. So in a team or group meeting, how are you planning to include people? 

In meetings and workshops we may have presentations scheduled, information to share and decisions to be made. 

But how will you involve and include people in the session? 

Inclusion happens better when it’s by design. 

We know that people get excluded, overlooked and forgotten if we leave it to chance, or our bias and ego. 

Take that meeting agenda you’ve got and work out when and how you’ll deliberately include and involve people. 

Where can you :
- Ask people their thoughts and opinions
- Encourage them to share stories
- Invite comments, answers and suggestions
- Welcome questions, queries and insights 
...and more. 

Too many meetings have the ‘any other questions?’ footnote at the end as a way of involving people. 

But by then, it’s kind of too late. 

Start sooner. Right off the bat!

Create opportunities for involvement, participation, contribution and inclusion. 

It makes for stronger engagement ... as well as better outcomes. 

Accidentally excluded

It sucks to be forgotten, to be left off the list, overlooked and be invisible. It can happen by accident when we overlook or forget someone.

Yet this exclusion - when accidental - is not necessary, again. One ‘accident’ of leaving someone off a list somewhere should alert you that you need to be hyper-aware of inclusion. Every single time you’re trying to include people... check your list.

The standard questions of ‘who do we need to invite?’ or ‘who comes to this meeting?’ can’t be trusted to our overloaded attention and memory.

Set up a system. And have others check it too. Heck, even Santa makes a list ... and checks it twice.

Ask not ‘Have we missed anyone?’ - it’s a closed question that is easy to answer with ‘No ... I don’t think so.’

Rather ask, ‘Who have we missed?’ Our eyes, ears and brains then go searching for the missing pieces and names of actual people who should be there.

It’s not an ‘invite everyone’ solution either, as we drown under the weight of too many people at too many poorly led meetings. Who has been accidentally excluded ... and therefore needs to be deliberately included?

Do you ‘work' the chat box

More training sessions and meetings are online than ever before. But many of these feature just a few dominant voices, taking up most of the air time.

Facilitation skills are needed more than ever.

How do you get people more involved, engaged, participating, learning and contributing? Don't undervalue ... the Chat Box! The chat box in your online webinar/meeting software is a brilliant source of engagement.

Sadly, many presenters, leaders and speakers don’t ‘work it’ and they get caught up in their content and slides, fall behind with the comments or run out of time and miss the gold that’s right there in front of them. Participants in meetings and workshops want to engage and contribute.

The chat box is one place where you can leverage ideas, input, suggestions, questions and comments. It is a skill of being able to work with your content plus an agenda, plus the participants contributing via the chat box.