I worked with and led multiple diverse cross-functional teams over the last 10 years. Working in tech and creative industries, I noticed decision-making and meetings were a huge pain point for most teams. Brainstorming has a bad rap, meetings are universally dreaded and making decisions as a team ends up being an arduous and unnecessarily complicated task.

Over the years, I studied teams I worked with and used some of these tricks to help facilitate more productive discussions and ensure every member’s strengths are used in the best way. Here, I’m sharing the results of my experience and lessons learned. Please note that, while my lessons usually address managers, the majority of these tactics can be used by any team member involved in decision-making.

So for starters, I’ll help you solve a major pain point of decision-making: Not everyone participates equally, this is something I noticed in every team I worked in, and you’ve probably experienced it too. Which is why the first chapter focuses on making sure everyone gets to participate, specifically in meetings.

Chapters

How to get the most out of your meetings and make sure everyone speaks up

How to encourage conflict and escape groupthink

How to get people around you to be creative

How to get the most out of your meetings and make sure everyone speaks up

Whatever you’re doing - you’re at least somewhat responsible for making sure everyone’s included. Now, let’s paraphrase that - you are responsible for making sure you include everyone.

If you’re not the team leader, that’s fine too, these techniques are non-intrusive and will be appreciated in any team. Because, spoiler alert: everyone likes being included and being a part of a stronger, more creative team. Here are my tips for moderating meetings with diverse opinions, encouraging productive discussions and more creative output.

What you'll learn

• How to run successful meetings and make sure everyone speaks up
• How to ask more specific questions
• How to help introverted members on your team feel included
• How to encourage productive discussions
• How to make sure everyone comes prepared

Make sure everyone's prepared

Send everyone an agenda beforehand and encourage your team members to add to it. Give people time to prepare talking points, then ask them to share. This way, while some people will still take more time and talk more, you still made sure everyone spoke. Every meeting’s goal should be that everyone contributes.

Make sure everyone introduced themselves

Has everyone at the meeting made an introduction? Or have some members started with themselves and didn’t bother to give others the space (this happens a lot)?

Let’s fix that - call out some of the quieter members and ask them specific questions. If people are introverted, simply saying: “Emily, let’s hear more about you!” is not going to cut it and will make them feel singled out.

Here’s a better way to ask: “How about you, Emily, what do you do, what’s your thing?” And then - listen, give them the space to talk. Always make sure to ask a small followup question to signify a) it’s ok for them to talk and b) you’re genuinely interested in what they have to say.

Be proactive about asking for opinions

Know the room. You don’t need to know people for a very long time to know they’re quiet or introverted. It shows rather quickly.

Keep in mind that these people will be less likely to speak up and help equalize the playing field for them. Encourage them to speak up with - ”Hey, Tom, what do you think about this solution?”. Specific questions will get you a long way but it’s a thin line between wanting to include someone and singling them out.

As a rule, you want your questions to be specific enough but at the same time you don’t want to call people out directly for being quiet or only address someone when they seem distracted (we’ve all been in that meeting).

If it’s important figure out a system

If you’re in a meeting and it’s crucial to get everyone’s opinion (and this should be the case in every meeting, otherwise you’re missing out on the full strength of your team), then the best way to reduce a single person’s labor is to have a system at hand.

For example: "As we talk about certain issues, we’ll go over them in a circle / in alphabetical order" (make sure it’s random, don’t give people the advantage because of e.g. their seniority). A system also encourages people to listen better in order to know their turn. This will ensure your teammates make space for others to talk and - over time, people will feel less anxious about speaking up as they feel a certain space is just for them.

Break down monopolies

If someone tends to always take over the discussion, interrupts or talks over others (we’ve all worked with these people), you should deal with them directly. For starters, privately remind them to be a better listener and make an effort to include others. Encourage them to listen to others before sharing their opinions and remind them to ask questions before talking. You can also share this guide with them. You’d be surprised how many more people are willing to speak up when just one takes a step back.

If that doesn’t work, a good way to get someone to be quieter is to give them a task, i.e. ask them to summarize the meeting later, remind people when the meeting’s about to end in etc etc.These people will also be less likely to interrupt or talk over others when there’s a clear turn system at place. Lots of people speak up as a way to mediate an awkward silence or help a coworker who, to them, seems stuck.

Give quieter people a task

If you have people who chronically don’t speak up in meetings, they might feel underprepared or less confident. You can fix this by sharing the agenda with them beforehand and asking them to prepare a talking point. So, at some point you can say: Next up, we’re still discussing the rocket launch, Amber, can you give us a quick introduction? (OR I believe Amber has the insights we need for the next thing on the agenda.)

Be a listener, not a talker

If you’re in a position to schedule and run meetings at a company - it seems like you already have a decent amount of power. Share some of that with your coworkers by choosing to ask and listen instead of just talking.

And as a general rule - no meeting should be run by one person, this is a recipe for unproductive, one-sided conversations. As a manager, you should strive for getting the most out of your team, and letting them do the talking is a great way to start.

Rolling meeting leaders

One of the best ways I found was pretty simple - get quieter people more engaged by asking them to run meetings. This will give them more confidence and a different view of the meeting. Being in charge of a meeting enforces the fact they have a space to talk in. Don’t underestimate your quieter team members, it’s on you to find ways for them to flourish. Of course, before announcing anything publicly, privately ask them if they would be up for helping out by running a meeting. This way you’re also framing it as a favor, rather than a lesson you’re trying to teach them.

Be attentive

Focus on what’s going on at the meeting and how the talking is distributed. If some people are talking more than others, even worse - talking over others, you should do something about it. Have these strategies at hand so you can seamlessly intervene and make sure everyone gets to speak. When you notice someone’s been interrupted - make sure to remember to go back and let them finish their thought.

Give people some time to gather their thoughts

When you sense people are getting tired or a particular issue is too complex give your team the time they need. You can also take a small break and let people bounce their opinions off of each other before diving in. Try saying: “Hey, let’s take a small 5-minute break to give everyone time to think and then we can discuss further” Once we’re back we can start from Emily and go clockwise”. This is specific, actionable and inclusive.

And you’ll benefit from a phenomenon called incubation period - it’s one of the four stages of creativity and many creative workers deem it crucial to their process. You likely have experienced this when for example, thinking of that really good argument hours after talking to someone.

Ask specific questions

As a rule, the more vague your questions are, the more confident people have to be to answer. This means your discussions will inevitably favor louder, more confident people. To counter that, you should aim to involve your entire team since only everyone participating will guarantee you’re not missing out on your best ideas.

Share etiquette

Have a few ground rules and share them with everyone before meetings. You can also share this guide with them. You can try to use these tips on your own but it’s more productive that you let everyone else in on the initiatives and make a more creative team together.

Give credit

Praise is important and being proactive about positive feedback is one of the most important things you can do as a manager. Remind people their opinions are valued. Reward people for speaking up if you want them to continue doing so. Before calling out someone to weigh in on a specific issue, remind them why you care about their opinion and why they're the expert. This will help them be more confident about speaking up.

Show you’re listening

Ask questions, quote people (make sure to give them credit) and in general show that you’re listening and valuing every opinion. There are enough books and articles about how to be a better listener so I won’t go into that but as long as you’re aware that being a good listener doesn’t come naturally to most people, there's space for improvement. After all, you owe it to your team.

Mind your language

Saying: “What do you _guys_ think about this?” unconsciously signals people who are not guys their opinion isn’t valued. Here are some alternatives to consider and make your language more inclusive:

Hey folks / Hey team / Hey y’all! (for that Southern feel) / Hey everyone! What do you folks / people / all think about this?

What does everyone think about this?

How does everyone feel about this?

Over to you

So that’s it, these are my tips for running more inclusive and creative meetings with diverse teams. Let me know if you used these or if you have any feedback on the content.

How to encourage conflict and escape groupthink

For starters, I want to reiterate that conflict isn’t always productive or civil and teams who have a lot of conflict and rely on it to fuel discussions should definitely change something about how they work. However, if your team tends to get along well and have strong interpersonal relationships, it’s easy to fall into the trap of always agreeing which will lead to missing out on growth. If your team can’t productively disagree, your work will ultimately be a product of group-think and it will be harder for you to grow and innovate.

In order to make sure your ideas and decisions are the best they can be, you’ll need to have an atmosphere where conflict is encouraged and appreciated and coworkers can respectfully disagree with each other. A functioning team that still disagrees regularly should be the goal of every leader, so here’s how to get your coworkers to disagree with you.

What you'll learn

• How to proactively ask for feedback
• How to make sure your team-mates give you honest feedback
• How to make sure you’ve explored every aspect of a decision
• How to make better decisions with a team
• How to make sure you don’t favor your own ideas

Give your team time to prepare

We’ve all been there - vague, brainstorming meetings appearing in our calendars out of the blue expecting people to come and churn out hundreds of creative ideas at the push of a button. So in order to prevent uncertainty, as a rule of thumb - never call a meeting without sharing an agenda beforehand.

In order to make sure everyone’s prepared for a productive discussion, share any information you might have and research you’ve done. Basically - make sure people come to meetings with extensive (and equal) knowledge about the topic about to be discussed. This way, by keeping everyone in the loop and giving them enough time to think, you’re more likely to come up with better ideas and have an actually productive discussion.

Be proactive about it

When preparing to pitch an idea, or call a brainstorming meeting - privately message your teammates reminding them that conflict is crucial to collaboration and that it’s ok to disagree with you. Do the same when asking for feedback- be proactive about disagreement. Remind your coworkers it is ok to disagree with you. I usually love to end my requests for feedback with a simple: “I don’t take feedback in the workplace personally so don’t worry about hurting me - we have a more important mutual goal here.”

Be the last to speak

Your team members will want to echo your opinions if you’re in a position of power. Hence, it is in your best interest (although, understandably might be counterintuitive) to discourage them from doing so. Therefore, let them speak first and only share your opinions later. Make sure all your team-members have spoken and everyone has stated their opinion before you have. The previous chapter deals with leading more productive meetings so I won’t go into specific tips further but - rolling meeting leaders could come in handy here, make someone else in charge of the meeting if it’s important to you to have a more level playing field.

Don’t show up

Even better - let them have the meeting without you. This might sound radical but consider letting your employees discuss and come to a decision without you. They’ll be more likely to be open when just their peers are present, the meeting will naturally be more relaxed without managers around and the inclusive atmosphere will likely lead to more productive discussions and better decisions. You still don’t have to go with whatever they decide on the meeting but this way you will make sure that your team has discussed freely and that your organization has better odds at succeeding - when everyone’s opinions are equally considered.

Fight your ideas

The most prolific decision makers find and explore flaws in their plans. If you’re the one pitching an idea, be aware that you will naturally be rooting for it so it’s a good practice for yourself and the team (and ultimately - your results) to expose the flaws in your plans. You want to be prepared for the worst case scenario so explore your plans and discover why they won’t work. You will be doing yourself and your organization a favor and making your arguments stronger in the process. If you know everything that can go wrong as a result of a decision - you will be better prepared when something does, it’s a trait every leader should work on.

Actively bring up alternatives

Even when you think you've settled on a solution, make sure to have alternatives and see how people react to them. If you feel like you have no alternatives to consider - this might be a sign that you haven't put enough thought into this. Don’t let your coworkers believe there’s only one solution and it’s coincidentally one brought up a) by the team leader and b) at the beginning of a brainstorming meeting. Make sure you have other solutions to compare to before you settle on one. Even if you think of terrible alternatives - have them ready - this will help your team think in different terms and be more creative. Never leave a brainstorming meeting that ended without a single disagreement.

Ask people why your idea is bad

So let’s say you do settle on a solution, that’s great! Now debunk it and name all the bad outcomes and things that might go wrong. This will help you consider other solutions but also help you figure out the downsides of your idea and help you prepare for any scenario. Ask: What is the worst thing about this idea? Take a note from debate clubs all over the world and ask people to argue against ideas they like. Don’t just ask people to agree with you. Make everyone in the group name at least one flaw of the chosen idea. If people can’t name flaws your idea isn’t perfect - it’s just either not well thought out or your team doesn’t care enough to think about it. Either way - back to the drawing board.

Don’t favor ideas

Watch not to fall in love early with an idea and even worse - openly favor a solution, especially if you're in a position of power. Others will be more likely to just go along and you will lose out on the potential of your group and jeopardize your projects. Always make sure to start with presenting several ideas instead of asking what your team thinks of one.As we’ve learned, your team will be inclined to agree with you which won’t bode wall for your organization at the end of the day.

Frequently ask for feedback

Be meticulous about feedback and make sure to follow up with your team members privately and ask for feedback. A lot of people won’t raise their concerns unless specifically asked to and it’s up to you to make sure they are. Ask specific questions, show you value their opinion and make sure to always have an open channel for bringing up issues. People should get used to raising their concerns at every stage of a project and it’s up to you to give them the space to.

Don't take feedback personally

Thank people and praise them when they disagree with you, especially if you’re higher up in the hierarchy of your organization. Once given feedback, address its specifics and reiterate your willingness to think about it and address it. Don’t get defensive, don’t play blame games, don’t respond to feedback with counterfeedback (I made up this phrase to show you - no such thing exists).

Make feedback anonymous

That being said, even with multiple spaces for feedback, for some people, it will still be fairly hard to speak up. For example, minorities are less likely to voice their opinions and no one wants to be labeled negative/pessimist or accused of prolonging a meeting simply because of disagreeing. Give people ways, such as an anonymous form after the meeting to voice their disagreements and concerns.

Get an outside opinion

Ask someone with a completely different perspective. Companies hire consultants often for this very reason - an unbiased, outside, fresh perspective. Invite someone impartial, ask them what they think about your solutions, even better - pitch them your ideas and see how they react. After all, so many ideas might seem great to industry experts surrounded by industry experts using industry buzzwords but will sound rather confusing to outsiders. Make sure to include them in your decision-making process so you notice any flaws on time.

Notice when people don’t disagree with you

Really, a lot of these tips come down to: actively ask people to disagree with you. And notice when they don’t. Each one of us thinks we’re the smartest, most creative person in the world and it’s easy to think that’s confirmed by the lack of disagreements we face. But, really - if no one disagrees with you and you’re in a position of power - it’s more likely you need to work on encouraging disagreement and actively ask people to question your ideas.

Over to you

So, I hope this encourages you to disagree with your coworkers and leads to more productive discussions and better ideas. I'd really love to hear your feedback about this guide, you can always email me at hi@dunja.party with any suggestions! My superpower is not taking feedback personally!

How to get people around you to be creative

Everyone wants to be more creative. And team leaders everywhere expect creativity and innovation from their teams on demand. You might be guilty of saying things like: “Let’s have a creative brainstorm” or “Give me your best creative ideas”. Further, managers expect creativity to happen on demand in gray conference rooms with uninspiring powerpoint slides urging their team to “make it pop”.

This, while intended to encourage your team might actually paralyze them out of being creative at all, by adding unnecessary pressure. Basically - creativity doesn’t happen that way. Creativity is not something you can demand at random times, you need to enable your team to think creatively. Which is why I wrote several ways you can get your team to be more creative and innovative.

What you'll learn

• What helps people be more creative
• How to inspire and not just demand creativity
• What you can do today to make your team think differently
• Why creativity doesn’t work on-demand and what works instead

So - let's dive in!

Give them space and time to think

Creativity happens in moments of boredom, silence and contemplation. Give your team time to enjoy that. Give them a topic to think about, don’t mention the word creative and give them the afternoon off or encourage them to be late for work the next day. Some extra free time while focusing on the problem at hand will give each member of your team the opportunity and motivation to think.

Change the environment

Move your meetings outside, take your team for a walk to get their blood and creative juices flowing. It’s unfair and unproductive to demand innovative and creative ideas in the same environment and routines they have every day. Do your best to switch up the routine for your team, take them out to an inspiring spot, get them to try a new thing - like showing them a new neighborhood or taking them to a new cafe, inspire them if you expect inspiring ideas. If you can get your team to nature, even if it’s just the nearby public park - you’ll get creative in no time.

Get moving

Physical activity is proven to be good for creativity. So take your team out for a walk, bike ride or run or just have a fun activity together before sitting down to discuss work. Your team will be better energized and more inspired and it will be easier for them to think. You don’t need to organize an entire offsite event for this - just gather your team and take them for a walk, it will doubly help by giving them a new environment and some physical activity. If your team is remote, just organize a walking meeting with them.

Make use of the incubation period

Incubation period is what happens when we step away from a challenge or idea and focus on something else for a while as the original idea grows. The easiest way to prove you’ve already taken advantage of the incubation period is getting your best ideas in the shower. Give your team this time - schedule several meetings around the same idea and see how their ideas evolve with time - that's the incubation period. Ideally, you want to make use of the weekend so that your team members really have the time to relax between brainstorming sessions.

Give them options

Not all of your team members will be at their most creative during work hours or at the time of a meeting so make sure you give them other ways to contribute to the brainstorm at their own pace. A good thing to do is to have a running document people can contribute to whenever they want. Start the document about a week before and encourage team members to add ideas to it as they go. After this, you can also make sure to organize some of the activities suggested earlier (this is also a good time for a company offsite or just a free afternoon doing team building).

Help them get inspired

Creativity can come from any source of inspiration - life imitates art and vice versa. So at a time your team is stuck on a creative task, make sure you provide them with ways to stop thinking about it in order for them to get new inspiration. Share useful links - good videos, articles, games, visual art, whatever it is - it doesn’t necessarily have to be related to the topic at hand, send them inspiration and start discussions around it, this will likely help you get new creative ideas for your organization too.

Do the grunt work

Gather research, examples, ideas and share them with the team. A creative team needs to be well informed to think creatively, help your team do that. Lead by example and take charge of research and other admin work or hire someone to do it - enable your team to do their best work by giving them a break from menial tasks.

Make something together

Build a puzzle, write a poem, play with clay, paint, make a collage - get your team busy using their creative skills on something they don’t normally get to do. Get your team working together with crafts for a few hours and they will surely come out of it with more creative ideas and energized to get back to intellectual work.

Make use of routines

Make it a habit for example to brainstorm every day at 10 am. After a few days of doing this, your teammates will have built a new creative habit and will become more creative in anticipation. If you use other techniques I mentioned and regularly build an encouraging environment for your team, you will get more creative and innovative in no time.

Reframe the brainstorm

Focus on the worst solutions, first list out all the impractical ideas you can. Then focus on utopian solutions, ask your team - if we had no financial or time constraints, what would we do, what would be the best case scenario.

Track and write all these ideas down, take your team members further than they normally get to go. By giving them the freedom to forget the usual constraints (who will do this, how do we afford it, is that even possible?), you’ll let them get out of their thinking cages and think of really interesting ideas. Toning ridiculous ideas down is a lot easier than popping bland ideas up.

You can play with this, give your team new constraints, have them imagine different scenarios, let them get out of their normal routines and patterns and see what happens.

Over to you

I understand this might look like the least practical chapter - it's hard to change habits and sometimes you just don't have the resources or the authority to do some of the things I mentioned. That's totally fine - this should be a guide and none of these are set in stone, you can improvise and see what works for your team. In the end, a lot of these are about changing the environment, physically or mentally and I'm sure you can find other ways to do just that.

If you do find something else that works, let me know - I might add it here and credit you!

Next chapters

How to help your team make a decision

This one is tricky - what to do if you're stuck in a meeting where people just can't settle on a decision. When months of email and Slack threads still lead to no final solution - here are some of my tips for nudging people to finally get to. a decision everyone is happy with.

How to get better ideas

I already showed you how to get your team to be more creative and this chapter is related - I'll talk about how to help your team stay fresh and produce great work over and over. I'll talk about what it takes to get good ideas and how to make sure everyone does their best.

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