FULL TRANSCRIPT

00:00 – Show Opening

Are you a professional who wants to become a more effective leader? Then get ready for daily tips from the coach, with the experience and inspiration to help you succeed in any leadership situation. You’re listening to the Meeting Leadership Podcast, with Gordon Sheppard.

00:27 – Start Here – Podcast content starts here!

Gordon Sheppard Speaking

Welcome back to the Meeting Leadership Podcast, where we give you the practical tips and the strategies that you need to up your leadership skills and learn how to run highly effective meetings. I think you’re going to find this episode really valuable, because today we’re going to talk about how to better engage your introverts in meetings.

00:45 – Meeting Personality Types – It takes all kinds to run a great meeting, including introverts

Now, of course, there are many different kinds of people in your meetings, right. There’s the talker, there’s the sleeper, the keener, maybe the overly-caffeinated, and the list, it kind of goes on and on. Of course, it takes all kinds of people to run a great meeting, but today I want to zero in on what I’m going to call a goldmine, because today, talking about introverts and giving you maybe some tips and tricks and tools to help get the best out of them can be a really strong investment of your time.

01:13 – Susan Cain – Introvert Expert

 As we get into this, I have to talk about Susan Cain, who is an expert on introverts. By the way, I discovered her on a TED Talk, and I’m going to put a link to that TED talk in the show notes, and get this, it’s called, The Power of Introverts. Now, one of the key points that Susan Cain makes is this, she says, “Any time that people come together in a meeting, we’re not necessarily getting the best ideas, we’re just getting the ideas of the best talkers.” 

01:42 – MROI – Help Introverts contribute to your overall Meeting-Return-On-Investment

Are you just nodding your head in agreement right now, because you can think about your last meeting and all those talkers that kind of took over things, and that quiet person who didn’t quite contribute, but you wish they had? And when you think about it, you have to ask yourself, are you losing some of your best opportunities in meetings because you haven’t taken the time to make sure that your introverts are fully contributing? And if you’re the type of meeting leader who likes to measure their MROI, or meeting return on investment, then you know what I’m talking about, and you know the value of getting everybody fully engaged, especially the introverted people in the room.

02:17 – Question 1 – How much of an opportunity to contribute are you giving the introverts in your meetings?

To help you fix this problem, I’ve got three important questions. Now, here’s the first one. How much of an opportunity to contribute are you giving the introverts in your meetings? Now, you have to think about this for a moment because it requires a couple of things. One, you have to be self-aware, so you have to know maybe if you’re the talker. Are you, as a meeting leader, for example, being overly dominant in the situation and actually not allowing airtime for the people in the room? Or are you, as the facilitator-leader of the meeting, allowing other people to be dominant in the situation, forcing that introvert to be even more quiet than usual?

02:56 – Question 2 – What is the cost of not getting the full participation of your introverts? 

Once you figure those things out, then you have to ask the second question, what is the cost of not getting their full participation? Will you lose money? Will you lose time? Will you lose engagement, all the effort that’s been put in to try and build a cohesive team in that room? Is that something that simply can’t happen when the introvert is not in the best place to contribute? And how many times have you been at a business meeting, a volunteer meeting, a meeting where decisions were made, and then after the meeting, the quiet introverted person took you aside and said, “Well, we could have done this instead, but I just didn’t want to say anything”? I think that’s happening more often than we’d like to admit, and that’s why we’re taking time in this episode to get at this very issue.

03:41 – Question 3 – What would happen if you touched base with the introverts on your team before your next meeting?

 Which leads us into the third question, which is, what would happen if you touched base with the introverts on your team before your next meeting? Now, the introvert might say something like, “You know, I’m not comfortable saying my best ideas out loud during meetings because I don’t like to speak in public.” Well, then you, as the meeting leader, could talk with the introvert about what those ideas are, and then you could make sure that those ideas are shared during the next meeting.

04:05 – How To Help Your Introverts To Grow – Teach them how to bring out their best ideas

This can happen in a couple of ways. One, you can work with the introvert to help them learn how to do public speaking. Now, that can be a long road, but it can be highly valuable because it can really increase the engagement level of the introverted member on your meeting team. Of course, if that’s just not going to happen, then what you can do is get those best ideas from the introvert before the meeting, and then ensure that those ideas are introduced. That way, the introvert will feel acknowledged, the best ideas are getting in there, and now you’ve got these sort of two techniques that you can take to up your meeting return on investment. 

04:05 – MLP  #012 3 Ground Rules For Great Meetings – https://meetingleadershipinc.com/12

Of course, all throughout this process, what you’re really doing is establishing trust with this team member, and if you’d like a few more suggestions about how to establish trust in meetings, then I recommend that you check out episode 12 of the Meeting Leadership Podcast. It’s called, Three Ground Rules For Great Meetings. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to leave a link in the show notes so that you can find that easily.

05:01 – Recap of all 3 Questions – Answer the questions and improve overall participation!

Now let me take a moment to recap the three key questions that you want to answer, to make sure that you get the most out of the introverted people in your meetings. Number one, how much of an opportunity to contribute are you giving the introverts in your meetings? Number two, what is the cost of not getting their full participation? And finally, what would happen if you touched base with the introverts on your team before your next meeting? Can you envision what’s going to happen in your meetings when you successfully answer all those questions? I think your introverts will get more into it, I think everybody around them in the meetings will start to participate at a higher level, and the meetings themselves, well, the sky is the limit.

05:41 – Meeting Leadership Academy – ​https://meetingleadershipinc.com/academy​

I just want to take a moment to let you know that this episode of the Meeting Leadership Podcast is brought to you by the Meeting Leadership Academy, where you’ll find great live and online training solutions to help you build your leadership skills and learn how to run highly effective meetings. Visit meetingleadershipinc.com/academy to learn more.

06:00 – Shout Out – Znanji

Of course, I am loving the comments that you’re leaving on the podcast, really appreciate it, and if you send one in, I will definitely read it out on the show. This one comes in from [Z. Nangi 00:06:11], and they said, “I love the five-minute quite strategy in each episode. It gives me concrete ways to hold a meeting that will be efficient and effective.” Thanks so much for that comment, and thanks for using the word concrete, because that is a reinforcement for exactly what I’m trying to do here on the show, get things into your hands, into people’s hands, that they can use and take action on to make their meetings better, to up their leadership game. As always, I’d like to say thanks for listening, and we’ll see you tomorrow, on the Meeting Leadership Podcast.

06:44 – Podcast Outro

Thanks for listening to the Meeting Leadership Podcast. Be sure to subscribe for more strategies to help you become an outstanding leader, and don’t forget to rate and review so we can bring you fresh content every day. We’ll see you tomorrow, right here on the Meeting Leadership Podcast.