101 Questions For Better Meetings

It is encouraging to see that companies are increasingly recruiting employees from a more diverse range of backgrounds. Once diversity is achieved in a team’s composition the focus needs to move to all voices being heard and valued. There will be no return on investing in diversity if we continue to discuss and decide in the same tired old way.

The questions offered in this book have been designed to assist leadership teams to create an environment where all members can engage in more effective discussion and decision making. These questions help to balance participation by suggesting ways to navigate around common challenges like handling dominant speakers, interrupting rambling monologuers and eliciting input from members who typically contribute less. 

Some questions are offered for raising during meetings, others are more suited to a one-on-one scenario with a member outside of the group meetings and some are for you to pose to yourself.

Depending on the familiarity of your team members and your current communication style you may want to open with a statement of intention; especially if the questions offered in this book are very different from the way you currently communicate with each other. If so, I suggest opening the meeting with a statement such as,  “In my role as Chairman/moderator of this group I may, at times, need to interrupt each of you in order to clarify a point, manage time or balance participation. I will only do so in service of our shared interests of effectiveness in collective discussion and decision making.”