As someone who is an introvert at heart, making my voice heard in meetings early in my career was often a daunting prospect.

I would get tense, tongue-tied, flushed and either clam up, or blurt out something pretty nonsensical as I felt my colleagues’ eyes burning into me.

I was letting myself down.

I also wasn’t helping my team.

Now I see with client’s teams’ – often (but not exclusively) younger members - who would benefit from a meeting environment that was open and collegiate instead of ‘efficient’ and bureaucratic.

The aim should never to be efficient for efficiency’s sake. A 20-minute meeting in the longer term may not be cost and time efficient if the wrong decisions are being made.

Adopting a shared ritual to get everyone onboard the meeting and focussed from the beginning can be beneficial for all.

By checking in at the beginning a precedent is set that everyone is welcome to speak. No one voice is louder than the rest.

It also settles the nerves of those - like me in my youth - who sometimes need to feel comfortable and relaxed before being willing to open their mouths.

Some check-in questions to try might be:

What’s the most important thing you’re working on today?
What’s the best thing you did last week?
What’s your big worry at the moment?
How are your energy levels (mark out of five) and why?

The aim is not to merely reinforce old behaviours so letting the senior voices set the tone.

You want a meeting to be productive. But you also want everyone to play their part otherwise why are they there?

This is an opportunity to build better understanding between team members or, at an organisational level, between functions or business units.

By checking-in at the beginning of meetings you give people a bit of a push towards creating a positive meeting environment and a sharing culture.

And you will give everyone the confidence so that even those with the quietest voices begin to use them.