My three, top tips for more productive hybrid meetings

Hybrid meetings will be with us – forever.

Let’s clearly accept, that hybrid meetings will be difficult . . .

… and just get on with making them as productive as possible.

Recently, a client asked me for my top, three tips for conducting hybrid meetings. Numerous ideas and techniques came to mind.

Leaving aside how to make meetings better overall, as well as the criteria for when to schedule a meeting – I selected these three tips, -if I only could name three.

My three tips for productive hybrid meetings:

(please adapt the tips to your environment)

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Does your culture foster inquiry or punishment?

#1 How can we make it safe to question? #2 How might we make questioning rewarding? #3 How might we make questioning productive? #4 How can we make a culture of inquiry stick? In prior posts, I’ve shared many ideas from the landmark book The Book of Beautiful Questions. The above questions are from page 189 of the book, in a chapter titled Questions for stronger leadership. Below are expansions on the questions from the author, Warren Berger: For point ONE: ‘many employees – about two-thirds of them, according to one survey – feel “unable to ask a question a work”. They worry that the question will be unwelcome for various reasons, or even that is may be seen as insubordination. Have you ever even tacitly suggested you don’t welcome people asking questions? For point TWO: ‘one subtle way that

questioners in business are sometimes punished is by being “rewarded” with more work.’

For point THREE: ‘For people to be more productive in their questioning, it’s important to teach them that questioning can and should be aimed at achieving a desired outcome …not to debate philosophical questions endlessly, nor to wonder just for the sake of wondering.’ For point FOUR: ‘What if you ask employees to come up with one ambitious question a week, to be shared with their colleagues?

Own the Conversation

Implementation suggestion:
  1. Make a nine minute appointment with yourself in the next seven days, in a space away from your office.
  2. Choose one of the four questions to ask and answer.
  3. Make a definite time to share the question and answer it with a trusted colleague.

Are you just winging your presentations?

It continues to surprise me how many executives miscue when delivering large audience presentations. Recently, two of my clients shared separate vignettes of C level executives leaving a poor impression after their respective presentations. Executive number one was obviously unaware of, or didn’t care about, the importance of the crucial impression a leader leaves with the first presentation to his/her organisation (a major Sydney start-up hub). ** My client who had observed the presentation said something to the effect of: ‘There was no take-way message and no energy in his delivery . . . it left me uninspired and feeling that the person had wasted my time”.  Ouch. Executive number two held a high ranking role with a large multi-national IT company. My client who listened to this executive, found him uninspiring. He came across like he was winging it. ** Here is the research of Harvard University, Nalini Ambady who coined the term thin slicing.

Own the Conversation

Implementation suggestion: Choose an upcoming presentation and put extra effort into planning it. Note the result.