How To Have Better Hybrid Meetings

Name: How To Have Better Hybrid Meetings
Rating: 5.0 (2 reviews)

If you have to do hybrid, you can do it well

Created byMatt Barnaby

Last updated 1/2024

English

What you'll learn

How to run more effective hybrid meetings where some attendees are online and others in the room so that meetings are more meaningful
How to facilitate more productive meetings in a hybrid setting
Learn strategies and tools to make your hybrid meetings more effective and engaging
Practical activities to test and use
Understand the technology that helps

Course content

4 sections • 9 lectures • 30m total length

Tackling the Hybrid Meeting Challenge1:24
Welcome!

If you’re here it’s probably because you’re also grappling with one of the most intriguing challenges in the world of teamwork: running effective hybrid meetings.

It might sound simple having some people in the room and some online, but we know it is far more difficult than it sounds if you want your meetings to be meaningful and not waste people’s time.

Here at the Institute for Online Collaboration we are experts in hybrid and remote work. From the early days of gathering around a spider phone to the latest hybrid tech, we have seen it all.

By the end of this short course you will have some practical and effective strategies to make your hybrid meetings much more engaging for more of your people, more of the time.

Here’s what to expect:
Engaging video lessons covering a range of topics from planning for participation to the best tech to use for hybrid meetings
Downloadable toolkit with key content and activities for your to keep
Action checklists for meeting leaders and participants to come prepared
Learning checks to ensure you’re capturing the most important takeaways from each lesson

If you have any questions or issues, feel free to reach out to us at hello@instituteonlinecollaboration.org.
Why Hybrid Meetings Are Often Horrible4:59
“You cannot have a meeting of minds when most of the minds are not in the meeting.” - Elise Keith, Where The Action Is

Hybrid meetings are meetings where most of the participants are in the room together, with some remote - working from outside the office, from a satellite office, or at another company, for example.

This kind of meeting is increasingly common. In some organisations, almost every meeting has at least one remote participant. But, they're often very unproductive with disengaged or distracted remote participants. Participants might not enjoy them, or think they’re a waste of time.

If you're struggling with hybrid meetings, you're not alone.

Many people don't realise that these 'hybrid' meetings are really tricky to facilitate. They're much harder to lead well than all-in-the-room or all-remote meetings.

Do consider the option of ‘one remote, all remote’ it’s even slightly possible! It’s much better to have a level playing field.

If everyone dials into a video call from their own laptop, from a quiet place, using a headset, you can have a really excellent conversation. Good video conference tools, such as Zoom, allow you to see everyone at the same time, or break out into smaller groups for parts of the meeting.

Hybrids are especially subject to the ‘doom loop’ or ‘doom spiral’. People who experience a bad hybrid meeting have low expectations for the next one, so they fail to prepare, dial in expecting to multitask or whatever, and then have another bad experience.

If hybrid is the best available option:
Engagement is key
Use the best available tools (probably not a spider phone)
Plan ways to include and engage the distant people
Use your attention to drive success
Track and change the meeting’s energy as you go along.
Reflection activity #1

Why engagement is key2:36
Engagement is the secret sauce for human-to-human interaction, and in the world of hybrid meetings, it is critical.

Hybrid Meeting Poisons: Disconnection + distraction + discomfort = disengagement

Hybrid Meeting Antidotes: Relationship + Active attention + Human friendly = engagement

Additionally, it is important to align expectations to ensure meetings are as engaging as possible. Try answering the following questions before your next meeting:
What are you expecting?
What are they expecting?
How can these be aligned to reality?
Let's talk about tech2:00
Engaging remote participants isn't just about technology. But you might be making your life harder than it needs to be.
Set Your Remote Participants Up For Success
Make sure they have:
A great internet connection
A quiet place to call from
A headset
A webcam
Reasonable lighting
The ability to turn off notifications
Enough screen space to see the video call and any online tools you use
Learning check #1
Reflection activity #2

Include just the right people3:53
One thing that is fundamental to successful hybrid meetings is ensuring the right people are in the room and only the right people. This can be more challenging than it sounds.

Rather than scheduling long meetings that cover multiple topics, best practice for remote and hybrid meetings is to break larger meetings up into shorter, more focused sessions with only the relevant people involved.

The reason for this is to minimise the number of people waiting around for their part of the agenda. Ultimately, you only want the people who are going to be engaged present otherwise you risk higher levels of disengagement.

Some questions to ask yourself when planning your hybrid meetings:
Is a single meeting needed to cover all of these topics or can I schedule multiple shorter meetings with just the relevant people?
Is it necessary for everyone on the team/in the department to be present or can I invite a smaller group of only those people who absolutely must be there?
If we must have a larger meeting, is it possible to invite remote participants for specific parts of the meeting so they do not have to sit through most of the meeting disengaged?
When inviting people, ask yourself: is this person going to be actively engaged? If not, reconsider whether they really need to be there
Plan for participation3:54
Being a distant participant is hard. They’ll be missing lots of visual and audio cues, even with good technology.

Local distractions tend to take priority: it’s the way evolution has designed us. And on the flip side, it’s difficult for remote participants to get themselves heard and acknowledged.

A good hybrid meeting starts with a good meeting. Get the basics right.

As the meeting leader, ensure that:
Everyone knows why they are there
Everyone has a part to play throughout

Take steps to:
Build trusting relationships
Reduce groupthink

Adapting Activities
Consider what the purpose of the activity is. Can we do this remotely and achieve that purpose? If not, can we:
Redesign the activity to make it work.
Introduce tools to make it work.
Find another activity to achieve the same purpose.
Tracking and changing the meeting energy6:44
In our research, the biggest fear of meeting facilitators moving to remote work was that they would lose the ability to track and change the whole group’s energy.

In fact it is doable, but it is different. As the meeting leader, the quality of your attention can determine how the meeting turns out.

“As the facilitator, you need to be listening carefully for a drop in energy, noticeable delays in replies, half-hearted responses, and silence when conversation is called for.” - Nancy Settle-Murphy

Tips For Tracking Energy
Limit numbers
Be methodical with explicit check-ins until sensing energy becomes second nature
Listen for silence, delayed responses etc
Ban “mute”. That has practical implications…
How else might you do this? Use your imagination

Tips For Changing Energy
Find ways to use your existing energisers in a hybrid setting – or find new ones
Play with your voice tone: get close to the microphone if needed
Avoid having “difficult” conversations in a hybrid context: switch to in-the-room or all- remote format
Driving successful hybrid meetings3:32
“The quality of your attention determines the quality of other people’s thinking.” - Nancy Kline, Time To Think

Tips For Driving Engagement
Set up expectations, human relationships, technology
Give priority to the remote person
Call on the remote person first in any go-around
Check in with them on each item
Give them an in-the-room buddy
Ask for the participation you would like
Check in with remote participants afterwards
Learning check #2
Reflection activity #3

Congratulations! You made it.1:39
The Institute of Online Collaboration gives you access to the world’s best online collaboration services, tools and training.

You can contact us for:
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Requirements

There are no prerequisites other than the ability to access videos and PDFs provided

Description

If you’re here, it’s probably because you’re also grappling with one of the most intriguing challenges in the world of teamwork: running effective hybrid meetings.

It might sound simple to have some people in the room and some online, but we know it is far more difficult than it sounds if you want your meetings to be meaningful and not waste people’s time.

Here at the Institute for Online Collaboration, we are hybrid and remote work experts. From the early days of gathering around a spider phone to the latest hybrid tech, we have seen it all.

By the end of this short course, you will have some practical and effective strategies to make your hybrid meetings much more engaging for more of your people more of the time.

Here’s what to expect:

Engaging video lessons covering a range of topics from planning for participation to the best tech to use for hybrid meetings
Downloadable toolkit with key content and activities for you to keep
Action checklists for meeting leaders and participants to come prepared
Learning checks to ensure you’re capturing the most important takeaways from each lesson

All videos are short and to the point so you can dive straight into the learning.

Who this course is for:

People who need to run hybrid meetings in their workplace

How To Have Better Hybrid Meetings

What you'll learn

Explore related topics

Course content

Introduction2 lectures • 6min

Diving in2 lectures • 5min

Getting in to the nitty-gritty4 lectures • 18min

Rounding off and next steps1 lecture • 2min

Requirements

Description

Who this course is for: