Why Your Quiet Team Isn't Sharing Ideas - and What You Can Do About It as a Humanitarian and International Development Leader
Why do your team members stay quiet in meetings—especially the ones you know have valuable input?
Many NGO leaders misread silence as a personality trait—assuming introverts are just "shy"—when in reality, team dynamics, leadership behaviors, and lack of trust are the true culprits keeping voices unheard.
In this episode, you'll discover:
- Four hidden ways your leadership style might be unintentionally silencing your team.
- Learn how to create a safe, trusting space that empowers even the quietest members to share confidently.
- Walk away with practical tools to shift team dynamics, build confidence, and unlock more diverse ideas.
Hit play to learn how to lead more inclusive, high-performing team meetings where everyone contributes and grows.
What Is Your Leadership Style? Free Quiz:
Want to know how to lead better? It starts by understanding your leadership style. To find out yours, take my free quiz “What Is Your Leadership Style” - you’ll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team and a few practical ways to become an even better leader. Just click on the link fill out your quiz and click submit.
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Are you the reason that your team does not contribute ideas? Find out on today's episode.
Welcome to the Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader podcast. The podcast helping humanitarian and development supervisors make a greater impact by taking control of your time, leading more inclusively and empowering your team all the while avoiding stress. Burnout and overwhelm. I'm your host, leadership coach and former aid worker, Torrey
Peace. Are you ready? Let's get started.
Hello, my modern NGO leader. I hope you're having a wonderful week. And once again, this is the second video I think that we're doing on YouTube. So [00:01:00] if you wanna watch us there, I'll put a link in the show notes of the podcast.
But yeah. Welcome. So today we're gonna talk about why does my team or certain members of my team not contribute their ideas more? This is a complaint or a request I get from leaders taking my course occasionally, especially when they see certain people on their team as more shy or what most people would call introverted.
And first of all, I do wanna say that being an introvert does not necessarily make someone shy. That when you're an introvert, really what it means is that after you've been around a group of people, you need time to regenerate your energy. Like it drains your energy to be around a big group of people for a long time.
It doesn't [00:02:00] necessarily mean that you are quiet or that you're shy, so I think it's important to point that out because a lot of times we like to assume that introvert means quiet or reserved, but that is not always the case. Okay. So when the team is not sharing ideas, or certain people are not contributing on the team, everyone loses, right?
I've been part of teams where I'm an introvert. But I am more shy of an introvert and sometimes I felt hesitant to speak up, especially if there are extroverts also on the team or people who are more talkative, let's say. And if the leader does not take responsibility in managing the group dynamics here, then one or two people can really dominate these conversations.
Or maybe you're sitting in a meeting with your team and you [00:03:00] are the only one talking and they're all just nodding their heads and listening and they're not contributing. So we all lose when we don't get full participation from everyone, right? Because we lose out on their ideas, their perspectives their unique solutions.
For ways forward to solve challenges. There's so many reasons why it's advantageous to get everyone on the team to participate. Plus, if they're not participating, they're probably not growing. They're probably not stepping out of their comfort zone. They're probably not feeling challenged in their work.
And so that is also not a great thing if we want a high performance team. Now we tend to think as leaders that the problem is the team, right? The problem is that this person is quiet or shy. The problem is that they're [00:04:00] introverted. But what I want to introduce to you today is when we say the problem is them, then it automatically becomes more difficult for us to address.
When we look at instead the problem being ourselves or what is within our control as a leader, then we are doing what I call taking responsibility and we have a more likely opportunity or chance to address it. This is actually a tool and something I teach in my "Becoming the Modern NGO leader" course is how do we take responsibility for
achieving the results that we want in our work and our life? And in this case, if we want a team that speaks up more, how do we take responsibility for that? And what can we do as a leader and how we might be contributing to the problem?
So in today's episode, you're gonna discover four ways [00:05:00] that you may be actually discouraging your team from speaking up, how to encourage your team to speak up by focusing on what's within your control. As we said, taking responsibility and the important point to consider when measuring team participation.
Alright, let's get started. Once again, taking responsibility, something that I teach, is how do we focus on the situation we want? The result we want in this case is for our team to participate more or speak up more. Okay? How do we take responsibility for that? We focus on, what can I do about it? What is within my control in this situation?
So one reason why your team may not be speaking up is because of trust. They feel perhaps that they cannot trust you or others in the group [00:06:00] to be supportive if they share something that maybe is what they would consider not a good idea. Or they don't feel comfortable enough to really share their full ideas or express themselves because of how the group might judge them. Or how you might judge them.
So keeping that in mind, then we need to ask, okay, how do we create a safe space where they feel comfortable to speak up? And part of that is by when people speaking up, really reinforcing that, rewarding the behavior you want to see. Really appreciating people's ideas, using their ideas.
So that it's not all just coming from you or one person, but making sure that we include everyone and really encouraging when someone does speak and you see that behavior that, that this is what we want, right? So how to build [00:07:00] this type of trust. And they're really gonna be watching how you react when others share ideas or opinions and feeling like if they have the ability to be able to do so in a safe way or not. So that's one thing is that you might not have created a safe space that they feel comfortable sharing.
And the next time you have a meeting to observe, who is the ones talking?
Is it you? Is it one person on your team or is there equal amounts of sharing between the team members? And sometimes leaders when they feel uncomfortable, like their team is very quiet, so they feel like they have to fill the gap by talking. But what we have to remember is that, and this does relate to qualities of an introvert.
Like for me as an introvert, I need more time to think before I talk. [00:08:00] And that means really with that kind of a team, you're gonna want to allow silence. You're going to want to allow them to think through, before they express themselves. Maybe you do that by asking a question and having them write down the their ideas and give them a few minutes to do that.
And then you ask them to share so they feel prepared to be able to do that. Or maybe after you ask a question, you just pause until someone speaks up or maybe you call on someone and ask them to, to share. So that's another thing is really creating an environment where you're being intentional about allowing spaces, silence.
Time for people to think and to be able to then share and not just all from one person. [00:09:00] Also another thing that might be happening is you haven't asked them what would make them comfortable to share. Maybe they don't understand that's something that you really want. Maybe you find yourself talking and filling the gaps all the time.
But they have just become used to that and everyone is comfortable with that, with you talking. So maybe, expressing that you would like to hear from them more and how can you encourage them to participate more and just getting their own ideas and what would make them feel more comfortable.
And maybe that's a question you ask and you say, okay, next time we meet, I want you to come with ideas about this. So you give them that space and time to think about it as well. One leader suggested recently to give them questions in advance that they can think about. So when they come to the meeting, they're also prepared.
I think that's a great idea as well. [00:10:00] Okay. Finally, you haven't helped them trust themselves. So this could be an issue where they don't believe in themselves or their ideas, or they feel intimidated because other people in the group are more senior or have more experience. I coached someone over the last year who had this problem the problem being not believing in herself.
And her inner monologue was "my ideas aren't good enough. I don't have enough experience to share". And basically it was confidence and her ability to add value to the conversation. And so that's something that you can also help with too by encouraging them to speak up, by validating what they say.
By emphasizing that even if you don't have experience, you still have something valuable to share.
So another thing to remember is that it [00:11:00] may not happen all at once, right? You probably won't go from a team that is quiet or a few people who are quiet to all them sharing
at the next meeting. But just know it might take some time. Keep in mind why it's worth it, right? Why you are doing this? You want more team contribution. You want them to be more confident and to grow and imagine how over time. Once you're able to achieve that, how rewarding it will be for you and for them and measure whatever progress there is.
There was one student I had who was really frustrated because he felt like his team member who he had been coaching and working with over like a month or so and encouraging him to speak up was not doing so as much as he wanted. But when I asked has he progressed? He said yeah, actually he has become more [00:12:00] confident.
He has started speaking up more, and so I told him this is what you need to focus on. You need to focus on the wins. You need to focus on that change because that change indicates that he is progressing, he is making progress, but you just need to be more patient because it's just not at the rate that you want it.
Okay, so really quickly. What can we do as leaders to encourage more of our shyer quiet members to speak up and contribute? Number one, to make sure that you build the right trusting environment. There's no judgment, and we know you're really positively reinforcing the behavior you wanna see. Number two, allowing everyone the time to talk.
Maybe sharing questions in advance or giving them time to write down something and think about it before everyone shares. Number three, asking them what would make them more comfortable to share and emphasizing that you would like to see them contribute [00:13:00] more and the value of that and why. And number four is building their own confidence in themselves and how to do that through validating what they're saying.
Through focusing and really rewarding their progress and acknowledging it so that they can feel even more confident to grow. All right. And, the end result will be a team that contributes more, has more diversity of ideas, more inclusive and is probably more motivated as well.
Because I know for me, when I feel heard by someone like my supervisor, I feel more confident, I feel more motivated, and like I'm contributing to the team. Alright, so that's it for today and if you like this, please do subscribe, whether it's on the podcast or on the YouTube channel. And until next time, keep [00:14:00] evolving.
Bye.
Are you the type of leader that tells others what to do or to let them figure it out for themselves? Understanding your leadership style is a first step to deciding what's working for you and what's not. To find out your leadership style, take my free quiz. What is your leadership style? You'll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team, and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.
Just click on the link in the show notes, www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz. Fill out your quiz and click submit. So what are you waiting for? Go to www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz and discover your leadership style now. Your team will Thank you for [00:15:00] it.