Hybrid meetings aren’t new. It’s just that before the pandemic we were pretty bad at them.
I’m sure you remember the not-so-distant days of relying on the ‘spider-phone’ in the centre of the meeting room table. Someone would be given the job of tapping in endless numbers and passcodes to enable remote participants to “join” the meeting. Remote participants would be asked to introduce themselves and then be pretty much ignored for the remainder of the meeting, aside from the odd cursory question when someone remembered there were other people at the end of the “spider-phone”. And of course the audio left a lot to be desired, with people in the room struggling to hear remote participants and vice-versa. All in all a pretty poor experience for all involved.
Then of course Covid came along, and we upped our virtual meeting game considerably. And now as life begins to return to some semblance of normality we are back in the realm of hybrid meetings. What do we mean by hybrid meetings? Quite simply those meetings where some people are in a physical space together and others are joining the meeting from a remote location. But now we know better than to put up with shoddy meeting practice that was ubiquitous before Covid. Getting hybrid meetings right can be a challenge but there are some simple principles that can help to smooth the way and create a better experience for everyone involved.
1.Get clear on the purpose of the meeting and consider who REALLY needs to be there. Yes this is obvious, and relevant for any meeting not just hybrid meetings, but it’s where we need to Harvard Business Review analysed the meeting invites at 21,500 global companies and found that although meetings are a bit shorter since the start of the pandemic, people are attending 13% more of them, and the number of invitees has risen by 14%. Some companies have meeting free days to try to overcome diaries filling up with meetings. Ask yourself ‘is this a meeting or an email or a quick call?’.
So you’re clear on the purpose and you have decided that yes, you definitely need to schedule a meeting and you’re clear on who needs to be involved. The meeting will need to be a hybrid meeting so what next?
2.Think remote first – before covid it was often the case that remote participants felt left out, or like they mattered less when it came to meetings. One of the big learnings from working remotely through a pandemic is to adopt a remote first approach. What we mean by this is to prioritise contributions from remote employees -ask them to say hello first, go to them first with questions. Harvard Business Review even suggest those participants who are in the same room actually use their laptops to log into the meeting, to facilitate a remote first mindset. I’ve seen this work really well but check your sound settings before you get going to avoid audio issues like feedback.
Which leads me onto the tech…
3.Get the tech right – to think remote first we have to make sure the tech has been tested and is working. It’s no longer good enough to settle for poor quality audio via the spider phone. We have to make sure the tech is in place and can help to deliver a good quality meeting experience.
And of course I couldn’t write this blog without mentioning engagement.
4 .Think about how to engage participants in your meeting -let’s be honest sometimes it’s tempting to drift off when we’re in a meeting. But there are lots of ways we can keep people interested; use emojis to check understanding, use polls to ask questions, use collaboration tools such as Miro to get encourage contribution, use plug-ins to enable you to show slides behind you rather than toggle between speaker view and shared screen. There are lots of helpful tools out there that can make the average meeting a little less average.
And finally some general advice that will help the effectiveness of any meeting, be it hybrid, remote or in person:
- ask good questions
- engage others -if you’re in broadcast mode the meeting might’ve been better as an email with info attached
- model active listening
- draw out concerns -back to using good questions to do this
- manage conflicts
We need to step up our game to do hybrid meetings well, but these simple ideas can make all the difference. As ever we’d love to hear your thoughts on what makes a good hybrid meeting.
