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, top tips for productive hybrid meetings:

(please adapt the tips to your environment)

#1 ALL participants need to start their video.

-If you’re the leader whose team is meeting (whether you’re attending the meeting or not) you need to make this tip a performance standard, and explain why it is important.

One reason is this.

If I can’t see, you ‘don’t exist’,

and will be ignored. (A caveat: When I conduct meetings, I tell participants it’s ok to take a short face-break time, but to let me know in the chat function that they’re taking that time and for how long. (This idea might be worth considering).

#2 THE chairperson should make sure each virtual participant is heard, as well as hearing from each participant who is physically present.

-Write the names of each person attending the meeting on a piece of paper. Tick each person’s name after they’ve made a contribution. (Call on a person if they don’t volunteer a comment). Make sure by the end of the meeting, that all the names are ticked.

#3 KEEP a tight agenda with timed agenda items, and keep strictly to those time allotments – and finish your meeting before the scheduled end time.

(Appoint a meeting observer to make sure agenda times are adhered to. The meeting observer can also be given license to freely point out things the chairperson might not be aware of. For example, a slide that isn’t displaying or a person who wants to interject etc).

Own the Conversation

Implementation idea:

In the next seven days choose/adapt one of the tips to implement in your hybrid meetings. If the tip makes your meetings more productive, include it in subsequent meetings.

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p.s. Here is a great Washington Post article Virtual work is making you talk like a business robot. Here’s how to ‘circle back’ to being human. The article shares some interesting examples of ‘corporate speak’.

I’d love to hear your favourite corporate-isms, suit speak, management speak examples. Please send them to me.

My favourite management speak example is this:

‘Enhanced branding metrics will drive robust solutions for scaleable monetisation’.

p.p.s. This is my last post for the year.

Thank you – to my regular readers, some-time readers and new readers. I appreciate you taking the time to read the posts. Posts will resume in February next year.

Nothing but the best for an abundance of good things in 2022,

Michael K.