There can’t be many people around who love the idea of going to a meeting, how about you? A common issue is getting the introverts in your team to speak up. So, how do you improve meetings – get more people to speak up in the first 5 minutes, develop the team spirit and create a business focus?  One simple question and five minutes will do it.

How do you improve meetings?

Get everybody to say something in the first few, and last few minutes of your meetings. It will improve engagement and the follow up actions. It may seem painful at the time, but stick with it, it’s worth it. Done well your whole team will contribute.

For the beginning part it’s important people join in and don’t feel stressed about it as that helps them contribute more later on. A good way of doing this and helping your team to gel is to ask each person to give a 30 second answer to the following question

“What one word success and non-work success have you had in the last week?”

It starts the meeting positively, helps people realise they have had some good things in the last week and helps them share stories with other team members. It’s a bit like small talk at the beginning of a conversation, it’s a conversational lubricant.

Getting the quiet people to speak up more in meetings

Leaders often say report back that one of two people never really speak up. If they feel engaged in the first few minutes they’re much more likely to  speak up later.

Other simple tactics include:

• A clear agenda sent out a week early, as the gift of time can improve meetings
• Stick to the agenda
• Make sure there’s a real meeting purpose
• Stop brainstorming, start writing
• Managing the conversation so some people don’t hog the limelight
• End on time

How to end your meeting, to improve the meeting.

At the end go round and ask:

“What’s the most important two actions you’re taking and how to do you rate the meeting on a scale of 1-10?”

The score is really useful at helping you all understand how to improve the meetings for each other. If somebody scores it low, ask what one thing they’d like you to do differently next time

This is one of a series of tips in the book “Running Meetings that make things happen”. The book is also available on on Amazon,

Articles on how to run effective meetings - Virtual or face to face. Click here.