You're leading product planning meetings. How can you ensure every team member feels heard and valued?
Ensuring your product planning meetings are inclusive isn't just good practice—it's essential for innovation. To make everyone feel valued, consider these tactics:
- Implement a round-robin format to give each person a turn to speak.
- Use anonymous feedback tools for honest input without fear of judgment.
- Celebrate diverse ideas by highlighting how each contributes to the project’s success.
How do you foster inclusivity in your team discussions?
You're leading product planning meetings. How can you ensure every team member feels heard and valued?
Ensuring your product planning meetings are inclusive isn't just good practice—it's essential for innovation. To make everyone feel valued, consider these tactics:
- Implement a round-robin format to give each person a turn to speak.
- Use anonymous feedback tools for honest input without fear of judgment.
- Celebrate diverse ideas by highlighting how each contributes to the project’s success.
How do you foster inclusivity in your team discussions?
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Often great ideas can come from unexpected places (or people). However, how you format the process/meeting might shut some of them down. While giving turns for everyone to speak sounds great, this can be very time consuming, derail the flow of the meeting, or make some brilliant introverts uncomfortable. I would encourage everyone beforehand to share their thoughts and ideas online (it could be via a form or sli.do so people can vote). Allowing anonymous comments opens the door to negativity (especially if there's some toxicity going around in your company) but you can moderate the comments. It's worth it to make people comfortable sharing ideas without judgement.
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Implement a round-robin format to give each person a turn to speak. Often great ideas can come from unexpected members in the team. However, how you format the process/meeting might discourage them. Your role as a moderator is critical.
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Share the meeting agenda in advance and explicitly encourage all team members to come prepared with their ideas, questions, or concerns. Let them know their input is valued and expected. Rotate meeting facilitation among team members so that everyone gets a chance to lead discussions and feel empowered. Explicitly recognize the contributions made by each team member, either verbally during the meeting or later in written communication. A simple “That’s a great point” or “Thank you for bringing that up” can go a long way.
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- In addition to setting an agenda ahead of time, set expectations of requiring active participation from all - Give every member a chance to share their input. This allows folks who tend to be quieter to also present their feedback - Allow free discussions without judgement of wrong or right to encourage healthy debate/brainstorming - Have team members take turns playing different roles (customer, partner, PM, sales etc) in taking a product to market to spur discussion - Use collaboration tools to continue offline discussions where some might be more comfortable to provide their input - Follow through with feedback and analysis of the different ideas so everyone feels heard. Adopt the disagree and commit principle to drive alignment
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As a PM, being in a meeting where my voice isn’t heard or my opinions aren’t valued would feel discouraging. To create a shift, I’d focus on fostering open dialogue and building an environment where everyone feels comfortable sharing their ideas. Some people thrive in group discussions, while others prefer private settings—so offering both online and offline channels is essential. Establish a feedback loop and use retrospectives wisely. Tools like Mural can be valuable for gathering input. It's important to highlight and celebrate when someone’s opinion shifts your perspective, and don't forget to celebrate small wins. Motivation is key to success. Be a good listener and always act upon the feedback you receive.
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