How to Design an Inclusive Meeting Environment that Engages Everyone

Intro

There’s a lot of value in tapping into all of your team's talent. However, to do so, you must create a meeting environment that encourages every team member to participate. You can do this by promoting inclusivity in your meetings.

In this article, we will discuss how to design an inclusive meeting environment that encourages participation from your entire team. We will cover the basics of inclusive meetings and why you’d want to create an inclusive space. From there, we’ll dive into some actionable tips for fostering inclusivity in your workplace.

Inclusive meeting environments: The basics

Inclusive meeting environments are crucial for engaging every team member and encouraging hands-on participation across the board.

The entire team should feel comfortable and encouraged to participate in an inclusive meeting environment. New ideas should be considered, and people should be empowered to think outside the box. Ideas should not be shot down, even if they are unconventional.

Furthermore, inclusive meeting environments should feel like safe spaces for everyone involved. At the very least, people’s preferred pronouns are respected, and discriminatory behavior is not allowed. Your team members should all feel comfortable, no matter how they identify.

Inclusivity in meetings also looks like offering accommodations to make the environment suitable for those with disabilities or impairments.

Why use an inclusive meeting environment

You can elevate your organization's output and productivity by allowing your entire team to shine with an inclusive meeting environment. Tapping into everybody's strengths will help you work better as a team.

Plus, creating inclusive meeting environments helps to create a workplace culture that is generally more inclusive and positive. This is great for keeping morale high and your team motivated.

How to curate an inclusive meeting environment

Now that you understand the value of designing an inclusive meeting setup let’s look at some ways to put this into practice.

1. Set ground rules

It is essential to format your meetings to allow people to contribute. To do this, you must set some ground rules ensuring psychological safety.

A crucial ground rule for creating a positive meeting culture is to demand respect for every team member. Develop a zero-tolerance policy for discrimination or harassment. Create a system of checks and balances that holds leaders and all other team members accountable for their actions to ensure that exclusively respectful interactions are a cultural norm in your workplace.

When setting ground rules, you should also set expectations. In many types of meetings, some people may naturally feel like observers when they have nothing specific to present. However, if you want these people to chime in, specifically let them know that you want them to weigh in, whether offering an opinion or presenting a plan of action.

2. Offer accessibility aids

Many teams include people with disabilities and impairments. Offering accessibility aids is very important to cultivate these individuals' talents and ideas effectively.

For example, if a member of your team is hard of hearing, it’s crucial to facilitate communication in meetings in a way that is accessible. In many cases, this can be accomplished by using conferencing software with live subtitling. This way, the hard-of-hearing team member can read people's words in real time.

Suppose you have a visually impaired team member. In that case, you can make your meetings more accessible by thoroughly explaining any graphics in presentations or using high-contrast images that they may be able to see.

Of course, these examples do not apply to every team. As a team leader, it is up to you to assess the needs of your team and provide aid as necessary.

3. Invite people to contribute

We talked about setting expectations when you want people to contribute. With that in mind, you should take this further by actively creating opportunities for people to contribute to the conversation. This will look different in different meeting formats or discussions.

Let’s say you’re making an important decision that affects a large portion of your team. It is worth going around the room and explicitly asking for each person’s opinion. This is as direct as you can get.

When discussing lesser issues, you could open the floor for questions, comments, and concerns. This is where it comes in handy to have a strong company culture that empowers people to know that their voice matters so they will speak up in an open forum like this.

For efficiency in meetings with large groups of people, you don’t necessarily need everybody on the call to speak verbally on a matter. Instead, in a virtual meeting, you can ask people to drop their thoughts in the chat, and then the leaders on the call can quickly run through the responses and acknowledge them accordingly.

4. Let one person talk at a time

You should create a meeting culture that prevents speaking over one another. When people are talked over, they may get frustrated, lose their train of thought, and feel discouraged to speak up.

Of course, it’s easy to talk over someone by accident, but as a meeting facilitator, it is your role to stop this from happening. It sounds simple, but if someone is already speaking and another speaks over them, ask the second person to hold off until the first person finishes.

By staying on top of this, you can create a culture that prioritizes letting people speak without interruption.

5. Encourage people to “raise their hands”

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Sometimes, finding a chance to talk on a conference call can be difficult since the cues you’d use to speak up at an in-person meeting aren’t always as noticeable when you’re remote. Fortunately, video conferencing tools, like Zoom, have an option for participants to “raise their hand” to indicate that they have something to say.

Although this feature is available, people don’t always use it. That’s why it’s important to remind your team where to find this button and encourage them to use it when they want to contribute to the conversation.

6. Record meeting minutes

Keeping a detailed record of meetings is an excellent tactic for keeping everyone engaged and encouraging inclusion during meetings. It helps ensure everyone has a chance to speak and that their words are accurately recorded. This encourages collaboration, enhances participation, and improves accountability.

Furthermore, having clear records of meeting minutes is a great way to track who typically participates and contributes. This also allows you to identify who tends to keep quiet during meetings so you can prioritize creating space for these people to speak up.

Meeting minutes apps offer a great way to streamline this process. This technology keeps all of the details organized and accessible to your entire team.

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7. Get smart with hybrid meetings

If you offer hybrid or remote work schedules, creating a hybrid meeting setup is essential to facilitate effective communication between those in the office and at home.

With that, you should ensure remote participants are allowed to weigh in since it can be difficult to chime in when the in-person portion of the team is talking.

On this note, if you don’t currently offer hybrid or remote work options, you should consider it. Hybrid work is a more accessible option for many people since it allows them to work in an environment that is more comfortable and suitable for their needs.

8. Leverage one-on-one follow ups

Some people are naturally shy, and they may be less inclined to express their thoughts in a group setting. With that in mind, you can use one-on-one follow-up meetings to give these individuals a more comfortable environment to weigh in on a topic.

By meeting in a more private setting, more reserved people may feel more comfortable speaking up and sharing their ideas. Once their ideas are validated or fleshed out one-on-one, they may feel confident enough to share in a larger group setting.

9. Create an Agenda

Creating an inclusive meeting environment requires thoughtful preparation and accessible materials to make sure every participant feels engaged and valued. Inclusive leaders are wise to create an agenda so everybody knows what to expect and can prepare their own thoughts and notes accordingly.

Using a PDF editor from Smallpdf can contribute to this goal. For instance, before meetings, facilitators can use this tool to modify PDFs by adding annotations, comments, or highlights to emphasize key points, making it easier for attendees to follow along.

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On top of that, providing participants with fillable PDFs or enabling them to add their notes directly within the document encourages active engagement, especially for those who process information better visually or prefer interactive formats.

Suppose a team member has a visual impairment. You could use this tool to enlarge text, adjust contrast, or add descriptions that align with accessibility guidelines, creating a more inclusive experience.

Conclusion

You can take many approaches to create an inclusive environment for your team meetings. By doing so, you can engage your employees more and improve your operations. Plus, it helps foster a culture of inclusivity across the organization.

How will you make your meetings inclusive?