I love love love working from home full-time but this is my chief complaint about it - before COVID (at least in the smaller places I worked), if you brought your laptop into a meeting, spent the entire time typing, and didn't engage anyone, you'd probably get either a warning or it would be your last meeting. It forced people to actually pay attention and not just pretend like they were, or at the very least risk getting called out for it.
And while 12 is certainly pushing it, I've definitely been in productive working meetings with 6-8 people where all have been contributing.
Since 2020, it seems everyone wants to carbon copy the office at home. I expect because they haven't (yet) developed WFH skills, which is understandable, especially in organizations that were abruptly thrusted into the home without experienced leadership to guide those unfamiliar with the environment along.
My experience is that nobody wants to ask the first question because it sets the bar. But that doesn’t mean nobody wants to participate.
It's a leadership thing. Good leaders do that.
It's actually kind of obnoxious to call on people like that. Even if it may seem like a "leadership thing" -- which may explain why it seems such a favored technique among wannabe alpha manger types.
I'm with the parent commenter: if people are in the flow (and give a shit), they'll definitely have something say (and your difficulty will be in getting them to keep it short). If they're not, and you're getting crickets -- it points to a deeper problem. That cannot be solved by, in effect, throwing chalk at people to get them to speak up.
If the meeting isn't germane to your work, why are you in it?
I know people who do this because they're genuinely trying to get input from a broad set of people, some of whom will never speak unless they're asked directly. It doesn't have to be a mark of an alpha trying to beta everyone else.
This assumption does not match up with my experience.
>If the meeting isn't germane to your work, why are you in it?
I personally have gotten pretty good about declining meetings, but plenty of people aren't. Besides, I've been occasionally asked by my direct manager to attend a meeting that it turns out I wasn't actually needed at or remotely interested in for my work.
It would be nice to live in a world where meetings worked ideally and there weren't a bunch of people there wasting their own time, but that is sadly not the world we live in.
"Sorry, I don't see myself using this product/service/team - not because it isn't good, it just isn't relevant to what I'm responsible for/in charge of".
I feel like people treat meetings like this inescapable prison; once you're invited, you can never escape! It's bonkers. If you don't need to go to the meeting or don't have applicability… don't.
I work for a Fortune-listed company -- exactly the kind of place where attendee bloat thrives and I've never once had any manager or supervisor aggressively push back on my declines if they are valid.
When you force people to talk you are getting the metric (people asked questions) but because you are forcing it the metric becomes disconnected from what you actually care about - was this meeting a waste of time. You haven't actually improved things you've just obfuscated the problem.
The meta point being I don't think there are simple tricks or shortcuts to better participation.
Unless you invite totally irrelevant people to meetings, they should have some kind of view or feedback on whatever was just presented.
If you're asking someone who has literally nothing to do with that area of your work then, that's just kind of a weird situation. The key is tying the question to the area that is impacted by the person you're asking. It could be an open ended question and not even super specific.
So, let's say the demo is on a specific feature, then you might preface the demo by saying this is the way that you decided to solve the problem, but you want to hear from everyone on how you could have done it differently.
That gives people the cue to be actively engaged by putting them between the problem and the solution. It also gives them fair warning that you're going to call on them afterwords, so it gives them time to think of something that they won't feel embarrassed to say (some people need time to be creative, while others think about alternatives and questions on the fly).
Either way, if people aren't speaking up then they might not be engaged. That doesn't mean they weren't listening, it just means they don't know why they are there. Maybe it really is a waste of their time, or maybe they just think it's a waste of their time because they don't understand the expectations or purpose.
My dad was a successful executive and he gave me several pieces of advice when I joined the workforce. I think #2 fits in this case, "Expectations are to people, what oil is to an engine".
A meeting can be very valuable, but only when the meting takes place after the participants have taken in the presentation and are ready to discuss it. After they've understood the material and have gathered any additional context needed to relate the information to the bigger picture.
In my experience, when you do this the people involved will be much, much more engaged and you will see far more productive results from that. The "Let me bombard you with new information without the full context. Any questions?" meetings never go anywhere because the attendees haven't come prepared with the context they need. The people generally want to be engaged, but when something is sprung on them, it is hard to work with. Even when people do speak up, you can hear that they're struggling to relate it all together. Things are very different when it is an "after the fact" meeting.
I suppose it is fun to reenact the past once in a while, but it is strange that we want to do it so frequently when it so clearly falls flat.
Get back to me in a day or two after I've had time to read the documentation, play with it for a while, and, most importantly, think about it, and I might have some questions or comments. In the moment watching someone else dick around? No chance. Even if I wanted to participate beyond your expectations, my mind will be blank. Guaranteed.
> For me its frustrating
I too am frustrated by these types of meetings. An email/Slack/whatever message containing "Hey! Check out this UI testing framework. Think it would work for us?" would provide just as much information as the presentation, while allowing more time to actually investigate to a necessary depth and come back with a constructive response.
A followup meeting to discuss the merits of the technology after everyone has had a chance to consider it aren't so bad. When these are hosted I find people are much more engaged and interesting discussion comes of it. I have no qualms about being challenged or "seeming dumb" in these meetings.
> I wish I were surrounded by people that are more willing to give their 2 cents
Whereas I wish I were surrounded by more people who were interested in software engineering, not being an actor in amateur live theatre. Not that there is anything wrong with the latter, but time and place. Nobody wants to see your presentation at work. Sorry.
In a real meeting, someone who has something to add will actually have different facial expressions that can be read by others. It just feels so much easier to gradually cut in without feeling like you might be talking over someone.
And, IMHO, this is the main reason "async meetings" (e.g. email threads) are an improvement over sync meetings. Why put people on the spot, when you know you'll end up getting only a fraction of their mental capacity out of the deal? "War rooms" are for emergencies, not for creative thinking.
I don't get it either. In a meeting the other day I was asked about something I did six months ago. I responded with something to the effect of "Let me refresh my memory and I'll get back to you", but the boss laid on the pressure "well, why don't we try to figure it out now?" So we spent a lengthy amount of time talking about it and reached a conclusion.
When the meeting was complete I spent a few minutes fully engrossing myself in that work, like I wanted to do originally, and realized that what we concluded was wrong. Following that realization, I got back to them with the correct response... What a waste of time that was. It's not like we are talking about how nice the weather is. Technical discussion requires a lot of information that usually isn't available in the moment.
As a 20 year veteran to working from home, I have worked with teams who have embraced async communication in the past and it is amazing how much more productive it is. Now that everyone and their brother think they can work from home, without having built working from home skills, it's been interesting to say the least.
There must be two (or more) schools of thought on this then. I am the opposite. It's painfully obvious when people are just asking questions for the sake of it. It's completely pointless and wasting everyones times. Another thing I see is where the Asker wants to make a point about something. They make their point and then tack on a question at the end.
In your situation, someone doing some unsolicited sales pitch of something that I probably don't need doesn't automatically deserve my attention. They aren't entitled to any acknowledgment from me.
Recently a fellow developer was doing a demo of an automated UI testing suite and how it could apply to our product, and when it came time for questions or to show any sort of interest at all, its just crickets. I feel obligated to participate in situations like these, reach for questions or at least acknowledge other's hard work, because nobody else seems to want to. For me its frustrating, I wish I were surrounded by people that are more willing to give their 2 cents, even if it means a little bit longer meeting, rather than staring at a sea of blank faces that don't bother to queue their mic for the entire meeting.