From the course: Teamwork Foundations

Encourage quiet team members

From the course: Teamwork Foundations

Encourage quiet team members

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Some people, like me, don't need much encouragement to talk, but others are more introverted and need it to be pulled out of them a bit. Often these quiet people are the listeners, the observers, the thinkers. They're the people who might spot the one vital flaw in your plan, so they can be the most important ones to find out about. A good team player will identify them and make sure that they're encouraged to make their valuable but reluctant contributions. I used to work in a manufacturing company with a friend called Clive, and he was very, very clever, but he was quite shy or maybe cautious, so in meetings he tended to say nothing at all. So the boss would be talking about some big problem, and everybody would be saying we we don't know what to do. And afterwards, after the meeting, Clive would say to me, of course, Chris, what they should have done was X, Y, and Z. And I would say, well, why didn't you say that in the meeting, Clive? And he'd say, well, I wasn't really sure, and you know, I didn't want to say anything. So I developed a little strategy when we were in the meetings together. So when the boss was saying, we've got this problem, I would say, Clive, what do you think? And Clive would say, oh, well I think maybe we could try this. And everybody would say, that's brilliant, yeah, let's do that. So every meeting, all I would do really, was say, Clive, what do you think? And I would just kind of drop him in it. And I think to start with, he didn't like me doing it, but it worked really well. And he built up quite a reputation for being a clever guy who knew the answers. And I was really just his facilitator. So sometimes being a team player is just a case of encouraging somebody else to talk. It doesn't have to be difficult at all. So who do you know who has great ideas but doesn't always speak up when they should do? And could you involve them more when you're in meetings and group discussions?

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