Leading Team Meetings As An Introvert Is Not Only Possible, It’s Beneficial

Attending a meeting is very much like watching a movie, while leading a meeting better resembles directing one.

As an engineer, you participate in a lot of them, probably more than you’d like to! You are like the person in the first situation, taking on a passive role.

It’s easy to listen to discussions without actively engaging in them, like sort of watching a movie while being on your phone or doing work on your laptop. Every once in a while, something will draw your attention, but only for a short time.

You can’t do that as an engineering manager (EM). You are the director now, with responsibilities such as:

Guiding the narrative: setting the agenda
Collaborating with actors: encouraging participation from the attendees
Influencing performances: providing feedback and steering conversations
Making script adjustments: adapting as the meeting unfolds, making sure tangents or other issues don’t take the meeting off course

Of course, this is easier said than done, especially as an introvert who likely struggles with social interactions in some way, shape, or form. But it is possible to do (even beneficial, as you’ll see further below), and the first step is understanding why team meetings need to happen in the first place.

Team meetings aren’t just for the sake of meeting

While team meetings often feel like a burden – especially as an introvert – they do serve an important function. For me, they’re primarily about group cohesion.

My team operates 100% remotely, which offers many advantages but also comes with some disadvantages like a sense of isolation and lack of togetherness. Meetings are just one of the several steps we take to address these problems and maintain a successfully functioning team.

So, rather than disconnected individuals working on random tasks, we have a greater sense of belonging. And not artificially, either. My goal is always authenticity – not something that feels forced.

So, even though my team works all across the globe and aren’t able to come together in the office, they can jump on a Zoom call or Google Meet. The solution isn’t perfect, but it helps.

And there’s more to team meetings than just getting together – another value is the ability to make quick decisions.

Async communication is an extremely useful way of doing things, but depending on everyone’s schedules, responses can sometimes take:

Hours
Days
Or even longer

A team meeting brings them in minutes.

That being said, a meeting’s reason doesn’t just determine why you’re gathering in the first place – it also determines its goal.

And their reason determines their success or failure

To take the above example about meeting for group cohesion, what is the goal of that meeting? It’s to build a stronger team, but you can (and should) get even more specific.

For example, maybe the goal is to make people feel more comfortable sharing ideas with one another. Or maybe the goal is to give them a chance to air out some frustrations and clear up any misunderstandings. Maybe the goal is both.

Whatever it is, when you know the reason for the meeting, you also know the goal. This, in turn, helps you decide if the meeting’s been successful or not.

If people are supposed to feel more comfortable sharing ideas with one another, and they’re not doing that, or it feels forced, you have an unsuccessful meeting. However, if people do air out their frustrations and clear up any misunderstandings, you have a successful one.

So, lead team meetings knowing they do have a purpose. And once you know what that purpose is, you also have a good start on knowing how to accomplish it.

Being an introvert does make leading them more difficult

One of the biggest problems I struggled with as a new EM was the anxiety I suffered from prior to a team meeting. I had no experience leading them as an EM, and I was afraid I would mess up. But this feeling is natural, especially as an introvert about to dive into a demanding social situation that puts you center stage.

To go back to an earlier point, you’ve been in countless meetings as an engineer and had the opportunity to see how those EMs handled them. This should mean you know exactly what to do. But even if you carefully paid attention to everything they were doing, you probably still feel like you don’t.

And you’re an introvert! So, everything you’re feeling and thinking is amplified ten times over.

There is hope, though. I am proof of that, as are many other introverted EMs. These feelings will diminish with time, experience, and practice.

While you’re waiting for that to happen, you can tap into some of your natural strengths.

But being one also gives you ways to make them more productive

You may find this difficult to believe, but as an introvert, you have many innate skills that serve you well as an EM. This is also true for leading team meetings.

But knowing what these strengths are or seeing how they are strengths isn’t always easy. So, it’s worth covering what they are.

Deep listening

Talking is not the only key part of meetings – listening is, too, especially when multiple people are involved. After all, if the meeting leader doesn’t take the time to actually listen, they may as well be giving a lecture. Then, people really won’t be paying attention.

As an introvert, you’re going to naturally excel with this skill. While others may be waiting to respond, you’re genuinely listening to what contributors are saying.

And I can’t tell you how important this is in setting the tone of the meeting. You’ll make everyone feel valid and important, which leads to several improved outcomes, such as:

People want to contribute more (or for the first time)
Greater team unity
Faster consensus on various issues
And deeper engagement

Taking your time

Some people are impulsive or reactive. This can apply to introverts as well – anxiety can make us do that sometimes. But many of us also take our time to consider everything before speaking, which goes hand-in-hand with deep, purposeful listening.

And giving these thoughtful responses, once again, makes the other participants feel heard. Also, taking this time and remaining measured makes you come across as more calm and confident.

This, in turn, sets the meeting’s tone and influences how everyone else interacts with each other. As a result, meetings are less likely to go off-track or become heated. Again, you get better results and you get to them much faster and more consistently.

Empathy

This is truly an introvert’s secret weapon. While others may overlook subtle cues such as body language or lack of engagement, you are acutely aware of each. That’s not to mention paying attention to when people are feeling frustrated, disappointed, and so on.

In other words, your natural empathy allows you to effectively read the room. And because you’re listening and taking the time to think, you can respond in ways that:

Keep the meeting on track
Reduce emotional outbursts and conflicts
And, again, make people feel truly seen and heard

As a result, you end up with more productive, focused meetings, and people feel more comfortable sharing their thoughts.

And you have plenty of effective strategies to help

Ultimately, what makes a strategy effective is whether or not using it helps. In addition, having strategies you know work takes some of the guesswork and pressure out of leading team meetings as an introvert.

Below are some that have worked for me.

Prepare

The thought of having to lead a meeting that is an hour (or more) long is enough to make you want to pretend you’re sick or call it off. You’re probably thinking, “How is this going to happen?” and, “What do I need to do?”

But the solution to overcoming this is simple, and as an introvert, it is fully within your wheelhouse: preparation.

Think of it like decomposition: take the whole and break it down into smaller parts. In this case, the whole is leading a team meeting for one hour. All you have to do is break it down:

Introduction/wrap-up: You know there will be an introduction at the beginning and a wrap-up at the end. Together, these will take you 10 minutes, so now you’re down to 50 remaining.
Contribution time: Then, say you have eight participants, and you want everyone to contribute. So, you allow each person five minutes of talk time. Added up, that equals 40 more minutes taken up.
Other topics: Now, you’ve only got 10 minutes left, which you can use to ask questions, maybe follow up on some points, or get other updates.

With everything added up together, you’ve just planned out an hour-long meeting! Not all meetings will be like this, but the principle is the same:

Determine how long the meeting needs to be
Break it down into what should be a part of it
And plan for each as necessary

What will truly become your problem as you become more experienced and confident is completing everything in just one hour. But you need to stay within whatever time limit you set because exceeding it lowers engagement and keeps people from other work tasks, including you.

Balance participation

Facilitating a meeting can be tricky. You have to balance a spectrum of personalities, and the ones requiring most of your attention are at opposite ends.

First, there are the talkers. Talking is necessary to contribute and refine ideas and solutions, but too much creates disengagement when one or two people dominate the discussion.

To combat this, you can take several steps:

Allow them to participate, but set limits on participation time (see the “Prepare” section above)
Cut them off when needed
Or thank them, summarize their point, and keep the conversation moving

Then, there are those who are more shy and reserved. For them, your goal is getting them more talking time. The problem is not making them feel uncomfortable by putting them on the spot. As an introvert, you know how horrible that would feel.

One thing you can do is engaging them with open-ended questions. These avoid a simple yes/no answer and elicit more interesting responses while respecting their comfort level.

Follow the two-pizza rule

It’s a well-established truth that no one wants another needless meeting. So, don’t create them!

Jeff Bezos is a proponent of two-pizza teams. This concept recommends that, for innovation and efficiency, teams should be small enough to be fed by just two pizzas.

You can also apply this rule to your meetings, although you can adjust it as needed. The key element is limiting the people you invite to only essential contributors. When meetings become too large, it leads to:

Communication becoming unnecessarily complicated
Uneven participation
Less collaboration
And ineffective decision-making

Remember, your goal is a successful meeting, whether that’s creating a greater sense of belonging or coming to a consensus on a problem. Determine how many people are needed to effectively complete that goal and stick to whatever number you arrive at.

The short version: be the director of your team meetings

Effective team meetings are purposeful, well-structured, and run fairly. Just as a director is crucial to the success of a movie, so are you to the effectiveness of a meeting.

That doesn’t mean they’re easy to lead, especially as an introvert, but you can successfully do so (even because you’re an introvert). Here’s how:

Know they do have a purpose: Good team meetings have a reason for existing. If you don’t have one, don’t call it.
This purpose determines their metric of success: If the purpose of the meeting is to mitigate growing conflict, then you’ll know you're successful if people aren’t as frustrated with one another by the end.
Your struggles are natural: Anxiety is a normal feeling to experience, especially as an introvert.
But there is hope: Time, experience, and practice help tremendously with anxiety. Also, you have natural skills you can call upon as an introvert, such as listening deeply, taking your time, and empathy.
And strategies you can use: These include preparing beforehand, breaking the meeting down into its various parts, balancing participation so no one’s dominating the conversation, and only bringing in the people who need to be there.

But don’t forget to reflect. You are not going to be perfect from the get-go, and that’s okay. Sometimes, even with all of the above, meetings just don’t go well, and it can be for many different reasons. Learn from your mistakes, adjust, and embrace continual improvement.

Coming up

Next Monday (3rd March), I’ll be discussing the importance of staying calm no matter the situation. I’ll share practical strategies for managing emotions, fostering a positive team culture, and maintaining respect as a manager. Be sure to subscribe below so you don’t miss out on this or any future updates.

See you then!

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Originally published on Medium.com

Content in this blog post by Alex Ponomarev is licensed under CC BY 4.0.