Running effective hybrid meetings can be tricky. Those who are physically present in the room tend to engage in side-chatter and those who join through video conferencing often feel left out of the flow of the conversation and decision-making process. Some teams have tackled this challenge by hosting only in-person or fully remote meetings, but given the globally distributed nature of many teams these days, it is not always practical to have everyone join a meeting in the same way.
Whether we like it or not, we will have to get good at running hybrid meetings. And getting good at running hybrid meetings will not come down to hosting many of them. In fact, the key is to host only as many hybrid meetings as are critical to your operations – not a single one more than you need. Hybrid meetings should be curated and organized well in advance to allow every participant to contribute optimally – the key is quality of outcomes, not quantity of meetings.
Running successful hybrid meetings is key to a building location-agnostic culture. Here are some golden rules to guide you through your next hybrid meeting:
Design an Agenda with the Outcomes in Mind
We have all attended meetings that are hijacked by colleagues looking for a platform to communicate their own agendas. Such occurrences in the hybrid environment are a huge no-no. The only way to ensure that everyone’s time and energy are being used to their fullest is to create and share well in advance a clear agenda of the expected outcomes and how the team will get there during the allotted meeting time. Oftentimes agendas list a topic that should be covered and roughly how much time is allocated to that topic, but for hybrid meetings, the agenda needs to clearly mention what decision or outcomes is expected from each intervention or focal point.
Make Sure Every Meeting Participant is Necessary to Get to the Outcomes
Team members can often be pulled into in-person meetings rather spontaneously to incite specific questions, provide special knowledge or know-how or to encourage learning and development. These are all valid reasons to attend a meeting, but when organizing hybrid meetings, the main reason someone should be invited to attend is because their input and/or buy-in is necessary for the decisions that need to be made. Hanging out on the sidelines of a hybrid meeting without much purpose tends to drain a team’s collective energy and sets the wrong tone for participants who are dialing in remotely and potentially struggling to keep up with the conversation in the room.
Provide Strong Facilitation for the Meeting
Hybrid meetings not only need strong facilitation, but I would even go so far as to say that they need curation. Participants who tend to dominate the conversation need to be managed so that everyone feels that their voice is being heard. Physical cues that normally help the conversation along are lost during hybrid meetings, so having a strong moderator that keeps the conversation flowing becomes pivotal in running a successful hybrid meeting. This is equally valid for team members who may be more introverted and who need more prompting to share their thoughts. The role of the facilitator is to ensure that the conversation is at all times targeted to achieving the outcomes of the meeting.
Pay Attention to Time Zones
If your team is distributed across a wide range of time zones, it is key to keep in mind that not everyone will come to the meeting with the same level of energy. Some team members will just be starting their day, while others are perhaps overdue in ending theirs. Hybrid meetings should ideally accommodate everyone, but that is not always possible. Given the agenda outcomes and the decisions that need to be made, schedule the meeting so that key people are participating during a “comfortable” time for them.
Ask for Participant Feedback Immediately
Feedback is critical to refining the way meetings are run – this is even more important in hybrid situations. People “walk out of” meetings with tangible feelings about their contribution, the outcomes, the level of productivity and collaboration and the degree to which participants were or were not in sync with one another. Capturing this feeling rapidly at the end of a meeting can tell you a great deal about how your hybrid meeting went and whether participants felt that it was a good use of their time. Various software exists that can help you capture meeting feedback quickly – this could be a great way to go if your team is highly distributed.
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