Meetings are a regular part of many jobs. At Lunaria, meetings are a regular part of my every day. I get excited to meet with the team at Lunaria, and happy with their outcomes. This happiness and satisfaction is by design. When building the team at Lunaria, it was important to us to design meetings to make every single person on the team feel like they belonged at the table.
I did not always like meetings, just thinking about meetings made me sick. I’d often leave meetings defeated, unhappy or lessened. I thought I was a nervous person, and so meetings did not fit my personality. But I was wrong.
Certain meeting structures, practices and types make people feel excluded and prevent engagement. A Harvard Business Review Study survey found that only 35% of employees felt consistently comfortable contributing in meetings.
Often, the groups that feel the most uncomfortable about participating in meetings are minorities within the organization, women, BIPOC’s, people of different ages, or history with the company.
Meetings are amazing opportunities to not only create a sense of belonging but further encourage inclusion. We put together a meeting tip sheet with some of Lunaria’s favourite best practices to improve meeting inclusion.
Text-based version of the infographic available here.
