Tips for improving your hybrid meetings
At Rees McCann we’re all in favour of well-designed and executed hybrid?working, but we strongly recommend all-remote over hybrid meetings wherever possible. The fact is that hybrid meetings are?much?harder to run well than in-the-room or all-remote meetings.
If you?have?to run your meeting as a hybrid (some people in the room, some remote), then here are my top tips.
First, apply everything you know about creating good (remote) meetings and plan it well. You’ll probably need to double or treble your usual design time.
Then, carefully design, plan and action, both from a facilitation and a technical point of view:
In particular, you should pay super-close attention to the warm-up stages. You’ll need to start earlier, and be?miles?more directive than you would be in-the-room.
Here’s why. In-the-room the default is to speak to the other people as they gather, to make small talk, to say hello to friends and acquaintances, to find out about the people you don’t know, to start to build psych safety. All that would happen before anyone stands up and says: “Hello and welcome.”
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By default, none of that happens online. And it definitely doesn’t happen across the?hybrid bottleneck. Typically, then, the remote people end up at a disadvantage. So I recommend using remote-meeting best practice and doing things like:
For anything other than very small groups (more than about six people) use the?Web Events That Connect?structure, breaking up whole-group conversations with short, focussed breakout conversations.
More tips:
There are remote-meeting tips here:?https://reesmccann.com/2020/02/27/suddenly-working-from-home-what-you-need-to-know-about-remote-meetings/ and here:?https://reesmccann.com/2019/12/04/the-basic-ingredients-of-effective-online-meetings/?which will also apply to hybrids.
What have I missed? What questions do you have? Please comment below.
Expert dans l'accompagnement du changement et le management de l'innovation pour les entreprises publiques et privées -
3 年I have never hosted hybrid meeting or rather when I did people in the room spontaneously scattered in the office to make the meeting entirely remote.
Performance Coach in Business | Strategy & Flow Agility | Professional & Team Coach (ICF) | Director of Thought Leadership in ICF UK
3 年I don't think that you can set so many breakouts with Roomies and especially hybrid breakouts. It is a difficult one and I can see some upcoming challenges between the people that made the effort to commute and those that did not and some form of privilege / revenge playing out. No two ways about it, it is difficult. My experience working with "systems" (teams / groups) is that if in doubt, you put it to the team instead of acting as expert. So, I would recommend to spend extra time at the beginning to set an Alliance and take this time to slow it down, establish agreements and then hold the mirror to the team if they don't follow them.
Champion of Your Personal and Leadership Presence: In-Person and Virtual
3 年Spot on Judy. I especially like your recommendation to double-down on planning, the in-room buddy, and the other tools to make sure remotes are included. I would reinforce the need for a dedicated facilitator, who has been given the authority to facilitate. Also to think about the seating layout in the room where people are video-conferencing together. I was asked recently, "where should I sit to be best seen by the others in a video-conference room?" I recommended having the main speaker or the facilitator sit in the seat with the best view of the camera, especially if the most senior person has a small role. I believe the whole 'BS' about seating hierarchy and who sits at the head of the table should be turned upside down when working virtually. The seating should be chosen to serve those who are remote and not the status (or egos) of those in the room. Thanks for posting this!
Transforming Collaboration Across Healthcare and Beyond with Certified Professional Facilitation at Health Data Forum, Health Regions Summit, and Digital Health Portugal.
3 年Obhi Chatterjee thought this may resonates and I recall I wrote something about your pioneer hybrid meting when no one was even dreaming of this pandemic.
Coach, consultant, learning designer
3 年Thank you for this and for getting the conversation going! This week I cohosted a hybrid team coaching event and it felt like mental gymnastics, having to juggle thinking about the experience of the participants in the room and that of those connecting remotely. We used multiple rooms, multiple channels, had people buddy up, etc. There was lots of goodwill amongst participants, which certainly helped. The biggest challenge was probably habit. I found that as soon as the conversation got going "in the room", the participants connecting remotely were temporarily forgotten or unable to participate. So it worked well for the more structured activities, and a bit less well for the more spontaneous bits...