How to Gather Input from a Working Group

stephanie • November 14, 2022
Four people around a table looking at a laptop, one person smiling. Purple, yellow, red colors.

When organizing a working group meeting, often the reason for gathering is to collect input and expertise from your members. This is important because working groups and cross-functional teams are most powerful when the expertise of the group is effectively leveraged. The trick is figuring out how to capture that input in a way that is productive.


Recently Stephanie was working with a client, Rachel, who wanted to collect input from her working group participants, but she had a couple of concerns:


  • She felt like she was the most “junior” member of the working group, so she didn’t feel empowered to “ask” for anything from the participants; she felt uncomfortable making her participants “work.”
  • She knew that if she gave participants “prework” ahead of the meeting, no one would do it.
  • She was afraid that the same three voices would end up dominating the conversation.


To address these concerns and gather input productively, they focused on three things: 


People like to be useful 


People like to be able to offer value. To that end, making participants “work” in a meeting is part of what gives that meeting meaning! Once Stephanie reassured Rachel that the literal act of asking participants to “work” during the meeting would be what made them feel like the meeting was a good use of their time, they moved on to focus on Rachel’s other two concerns.


Build time to do the prework into the meeting


Assigning prework can be a strategic part of meeting design because it can help get participants into the right mindspace, or more importantly, get them to gather information that will be relevant to a decision that will need to be made during the meeting. If the culture of the working group is such that participants simply won’t do any prework, then part of your meeting design plan needs to be to literally use the time to gather that information. Participants have blocked that time on their calendar to work on the stated goals of the working group, so they’ll be more willing to use it to be productive. Once the relevant information has been collected, the working group can move on to making a decision or innovating.


Explicit structure to the conversation will democratize the voices


When it comes to navigating the loud voices in the room, one of the best strategies you have is to be really explicit about how you structure the conversation. The more open-ended and loose the conversation is, the more likely the loud voices will dominate. One trick is to pre-think exactly what questions you want answered, and put them into a worksheet of some kind. It can be fun, when in person, to blow up the worksheet to a poster-sized document, and have groups of 3-5 work on completing it together before reporting out to the rest of the room. When in a virtual environment, consider creating shared documents that can be edited in real time by groups of 3-5. In either case, your structure helps ensure that all voices are heard. Plus, as a bonus, you’ll end up with  a set of artifacts that you can then use in your follow up and planning for next time.


What are your favorite ways to gather input?


This article is Part 3 of a 3-part series on planning and leading your working group meetings.


Here is the full set of articles from the series:


  1. Designing A Meeting For A Working Group
  2. Clarifying Success For Your Working Group Meeting (With Downloadable Tool)
  3. How To Gather Input From A Working Group


Summary of Takeaways

The power of a working group lies in the collective expertise of its members, but capturing that expertise requires intentional design. Here’s how to gather input productively:


  1. Embrace the "Work" in Working Group: Don't be afraid to ask participants to roll up their sleeves. People actually find meetings more meaningful when they feel they are contributing value and being useful.
  2. In-Meeting "Prework": If you know your team won't do preparation ahead of time, build that time directly into the meeting agenda. Since they’ve already blocked the time to focus on the group's goals, use the first few minutes to gather necessary info or context so you can move quickly to decision-making.
  3. Structure to Democratize Voices: Open-ended discussions often allow the loudest voices to dominate. To prevent this, use explicit structures like worksheets or shared documents.
  4. Small Group Collaboration: Break the group into squads of 3–5. Whether using a poster-sized worksheet in person or a shared digital doc virtually, small groups ensure every voice is heard and result in clear artifacts you can use for follow-up.
  5. Focus on Artifacts: By structuring the input-gathering process, you don't just get a conversation—you get tangible results (the "artifacts") that move the project forward.



The Bottom Line: Leading a working group isn't about having all the answers; it’s about creating a structure where others can provide them. When you move from "talking at" to "working with," you turn a meeting into a productive engine for results.

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