How to Run an Effective Hybrid Meeting

Remember the olden days when meetings happened in a room? With people and snacks and tables? And then remember when, overnight, meetings suddenly went entirely virtual, and your pants and shoes took a hiatus?

 

And just when we thought things couldn’t get messier, we’ve put it all in a blender and we’re working now in this clunky, hybrid middle-place. With some team members back in the office while others are connecting from home, so many people are wondering how to run a great meeting—one that leaves everyone feeling included, engaged, and equally able to contribute.

 

Let’s talk today about some simple, tactical strategies you can use to ensure your hybrid meetings are delivering both great experiences and outcomes.

It begins with the prep

A great hybrid meeting requires some thorough planning and consideration. It won’t happen by accident. So before you show up in the room (physical or virtual) give these factors some pre-consideration.

Purpose

Begin with a clear sense of what you want this meeting to deliver. Do you need a decision to be made? A set of ideas to be generated? Challenge yourself to really think this through. Providing this clarity to your participants upfront will enable them to show up prepared to engage in the right conversation. 

 

Note that certain purposes—like providing an update or reviewing a client deliverable—may not even require a meeting. In some cases, an email or a series of individual calls will do. The least effective hybrid meetings are the ones that just didn’t need to be meetings.

Attendees

Clarity of purpose allows you to be intentional about whom you invite to the table. Hybrid meetings require you to pay more attention to each person’s experience, so minimizing the number of participants can be helpful. 

 

Don’t be exclusive. But do be thoughtful about each attendee’s role in the discussion. Who truly needs to be present, and who can you update after the fact? Fewer participants will help dial your impact up.

Tech

Engaging a blend of participants requires some extra creativity. So, think ahead about where you want to engage your participants—collecting ideas, opinions, or individual sentiment—and prepare ahead by setting up some polls or whiteboards ahead of time.

 

This advanced set up will leave you, the host, looking prepared and polished, while keeping your meeting running smoothly and allowing all participants able to engage on equal footing.

Rules of engagement

Decide what “ground rules” you’d like to establish and send these...

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