Hybrid meetings: 5 best practices for better outcomes
“Clear and immersive audio is paramount,” says Erik Pham, CEO of HealthCanal. “We invest in quality microphones, speakers, and headphones to eliminate audio disruptions and ensure that all participants can be heard and understood.
“Clear and immersive audio is paramount,” says Erik Pham, CEO of HealthCanal. “We invest in quality microphones, speakers, and headphones to eliminate audio disruptions and ensure that all participants can be heard and understood.”
Hybrid meeting technology
Collaborative software tools — running inside your Zoom, Webex, or Teams or by sharing a screen — can evolve your hybrid meetings from a conversation about work to actual work. These move the focus of the meeting away from the talking heads and toward the task at hand, which, if you hope for collaboration, is the direction you want attention to go. They enable you to share information in the moment, brainstorm, and capture ideas, and eliminate post-meeting housekeeping.
“Embrace collaboration platforms,” says Maryia Krauchanka, chief research officer at Cloverleaf.me, a coaching automation company. “These platforms should be intuitive, making it straightforward for team members to contribute, discover, and access shared insights.”
When you have the right tools, you can quickly go from agreeing on an idea to collaborating on its execution. Pull up a digital whiteboard to brainstorm ideas. Instead of discussing a design, build it together in a collaborative chart such as Lucidchart. Or work out the details of a project plan by pulling up your work management tool.
Brown says that Qumulo uses digital whiteboard Miro during its hybrid meetings. “It’s useful for retrospectives, ideation, and brainstorming exercises,” she says. Sometimes, though, holding a piece of paper up to the camera works, too, she says. “When we are talking about core designs, some people like to have a piece of paper and a pen handy so they can draw a design.”
“We’ve explored specialized hybrid meeting software solutions that facilitate equitable participation for both on-site and remote employees,” says HealthCanal’s Pham. “These platforms offer features like virtual whiteboards, breakout rooms, and attendee engagement analytics.”
Instead of sacrificing an entire human to the task of taking notes, you can have an AI, such as Otter.ai, transcribe the meeting. “These services automatically transcribe and translate spoken words into text, enhancing accessibility and comprehension for all meeting participants,” says Pham. They will also hunt for action items from the meeting and share the notes with everyone who attended.
Hybrid meeting best practices
In addition to having the right technology in place, the following tips can help make for a more effective meeting experience for all, regardless of whether they are in the office or dialing in remotely.
1. Put everyone on the screen
Good hybrid meetings require people to be good at moderating, facilitating, and participating. For that, you need skills, habits, and meeting hygiene.
For Mark Schlesinger, senior technology fellow at fintech company Broadridge, the all-video calls that became the default meeting method during the pandemic brought a heightened level of collaboration that his team didn’t want to lose in hybrid meetings.
“Suddenly everyone had a voice,” he says of the Zoom calls. “It wasn’t always the conference room taking over the conversation.” As the company moved to a hybrid model, “we needed a solid solution to retain this collaborative nature.”
Schlesinger discovered the solution — a mashup of video calls and in-person meetings — when discussing the problem with his in-college daughter. She told him that the rule for classes at her school was, “even if you’re on-site, everyone has to flip their device up and enable video so everyone can see everyone, including the instructor and remote students, on their screen.”
This is, essentially, what they are doing at Broadridge, though they use in-room audio for better fidelity. This setup retains everyone’s voice, gives a visual — and a name and title — to everyone in the meeting, and “it’s less likely that the conference room talk will overshadow the remote participants,” says Schlesinger.
2. Get help with moderation
A good facilitator is essential to a hybrid meeting. And everyone I spoke with agreed that improving your own facilitation skills and developing those skills on your team is essential to the future of a hybrid meeting universe. Since the entire world suddenly needed to start building this muscle when remote work became ubiquitous, online courses in meeting facilitation have become common. But sometimes, even the best facilitator needs help.
“I try to have somebody moderate the chat,” says Brown. Because watching the chat channel while speaking to a group requires more sensory inputs and gray matter than most humans come equipped with. Tasking another team member with watching that channel helps remote people ask questions, and get them answered, so that the in-room participants don’t overshadow.
3. Set shared expectations
Many people I spoke to suggested issuing a meeting-etiquette policy so that expectations around participation and matters once dictated by the workplace will be spelled out for meetings that happen, in part, in living rooms, basements, and spare bedrooms.
“You can set these meeting expectations at any time,” says Trish Bishop, an IT project manager turned leadership coach. “You can say, I’m feeling like the team is not getting full engagement in this hybrid environment. Let’s set shared expectations.”
She suggests getting the team to come up with the rules themselves, rather than issuing them from on high because it’s easier to get buy-in and the expectations will more likely reflect the reality of people’s home lives. The rules can cover everything from whether the video camera should be on, what an acceptable background is (at least for externally facing meetings), or if a presentable wardrobe is required.
4. Respect everyone’s time
But no policy directive, however egalitarian, will overcome a poorly planned or managed meeting.
“Keeping people engaged is a habit that starts with the agenda,” says Kuma’s Kimble. “If you’re not sticking to a set agenda and not respectful of people’s time, they will check out.”
Losing people in meetings is a problem that extends beyond the conference room.
“Nothing kills a culture and destroys motivation like having too many meetings or meetings where nothing gets done,” says Dean Guida, founder of Slingshot and CEO and founder of Infragistics. “It affects performance and whether people quit or stay.”
5. Create equality through purpose
Kalbach says good hybrid meetings need more than an agenda. “You need a purpose and a way to get there,” he says.
Even with an agenda, he says, the usual dynamics unfold. Dominant voices talk while quieter ones fade back and maybe — if their camera is off — cook pasta or do laundry. You will be looking for ways to bring everyone’s attention back.
“If you bring an activity, though, then say, ‘Let’s do a two-by-two matrix and we’re going to decide together by voting’ — that way, you ensure participation,” Kalbach says.
Another trick for keeping a meeting focused, he says, is to create a system for turn-taking.
“A popular one is popcorning, where the last person to speak picks the next person,” he says.
Not only do these tricks overcome verbal traffic problems, “you can start thinking about meetings as places where you get stuff done,” he adds.
Once you start looking for a purpose instead of an agenda, you’ll find it. If someone says, “We need to get this document together,” and your meeting needs a purpose, you might bring the document and get the work done in the meeting.
“That way, you come out of the meeting with no action items because you already did the work,” Kalbach says.
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