The Hybrid Meeting Challenge: Engaging a Distributed Audience

Imagine.

You walk into a conference room along with four other colleagues. You’re back in the office and it feels incredible to sit around a table, together. This togetherness feels great! Side-by-side, you all log into the meeting... because half your team is still remote.

The meeting starts and the facilitator, who is working from their mom's house in Wisconsin, is projected on a large screen. The person next to you is scrolling on her phone. Across the table, your colleague is furiously typing on their laptop. Who knows what the remote team members are doing at their home offices. They are silent, aside from one person who just dropped a comment in the chat.? Two have their cameras on, most do not. Someone forgot to mute. A dog barks in the background.

Though there are only about 10 of you – there’s a lot going on. Distractions, side conversations, digital noise, eye contact (or no eye contact). Side whispers.

This is the norm. Virtual meetings are not going away; companies have hired employees with the expectation that they will work exclusively from home; leaders have moved to new states with the expectation of primarily remote work. And then there are those who will do a combo - a little office time, a little home office.?

For an extended period, we were all in this “remote mode” together and suddenly we’ve had a shake-up - the rules have changed! When part of your audience is in the room, some are attending via video conferencing, some are possibly running errands and tuning in via their mobile phone - the old way of presenting doesn’t cut it. Keeping this distributed audience engaged and feeling included requires a whole new level of planning.

Facilitation versus preparation?

Hybrid meetings necessitate a shift from presentation to facilitation. How do you tap into the opinions and perspectives of all attendees? Encourage their contributions? It’s the facilitator’s job to motivate the distributed group to share, to participate, to close the Wordle window. A skilled facilitator can engage an audience regardless of their location.

Those physically located in the room are likely to be more attentive and present, especially with each other. They cannot turn the cameras off. Those dialing in have more wiggle room to multi-task, become distracted and disengage.

Some strategies to test for your next hybrid meeting:

1. Understand who is going to be live or virtual. Try to gauge ahead of time who will be where to help you prepare. For example, for a large team conversation, if only a few people are going to be live, then it may make sense for everyone to dial in from their desks, no matter where they are.
2. Set expectations upfront. If you plan to engage your virtual audience, let them know to be prepared to be on camera and that this presentation will be interactive.
3. If appropriate, designate an official facilitator to keep the conversation in motion. This individual may be the presenter themself, or perhaps a support person.
4. Activate the chat. Designate a chat monitor to engage in real time with comments. Use the chat to drop links to resources, share notes, and to capture questions. Encourage both in-person and remote attendees to converse there. This is an excellent way to have remote attendees to feel included and heard.
5. Pair up participants in the room and on camera. If you’re doing breakouts of any sort, workshopping, or team presentations, consider linking remote attendees with live ones to strike a balance in participation.?
6. Give virtual attendees a purposeful role. This means being very thoughtful in planning meeting agendas ahead of time. Ask virtual attendees to share specific updates and give them the courtesy of a heads up; they may want to move to a quieter space or change the way they show up in terms of clothing or lighting.

Driving inclusive conversations in our new way of work

The concept of hybrid conversations, more broadly, is really an issue of inclusion. In our new way of working, which is constantly evolving, how do we make each individual feel included and valued? How do we recognize that we all have diverse ways of working – no one way is better than the other. How do we respect flexibility while driving a cohesive sense of team??

It's time we shift from a mindset of “all eyes on the presenter” to “every attendee has a purpose and a place.” With careful planning and a facilitation mindset, and a healthy appetite for experimentation, we can embrace this hybrid state of mind.

What is working for you in your hybrid environment? How are you driving inclusion for every attendee??