Engaging Virtual Meetings

3Psychological Safety: How to Get the Quiet Attendees (and everyone else) to Engage

Google conducted groundbreaking research on what makes a team effective. Their research indicates that five factors are important for team and meeting performance. They are:

 

Let's focus on #1, psychological safety. Psychological safety is the invisible factor that helps your meeting become engaging. In every meeting, everything I do is to help create psychological safety for attendees I have never met and who have never met me.

Attendees do not engage if they do not feel psychologically safe. Your quiet attendees may be introverted, shy, challenged by being on camera, or for many other reasons. One way to know you are beginning to create psychological safety is that your quiet attendees take one new step. For instance, they contribute by audio. They choose to turn their camera on. They contribute to the meeting by chat. It is critical that the quiet attendee chooses to contribute, not that you called them out to do it. Attendee choice is a key factor for psychological safety. Most attendees like to have choice and be in control of their input.

One way to get your quiet attendees to engage more is to acknowledge or thank them. You do not need to draw unnecessary attention. For example, just a “Thank you (name) for contributing” will do. By acknowledging, there is significant research that says ...