Tips For Leading Hybrid Meetings

Step One: Should You Hold a Hybrid Meeting?

There is a lot of anxiety around leading hybrid teams in meetings, where some participants are in-room and others are joining remotely via a digital platform like MS Teams or Zoom. I am not going to sugarcoat it; facilitating hybrid meetings are much more challenging than “all in-one-room” or “all-remote” meetings. If the goal is to provide an equitable, inclusive experience for all participants, there are technical, participatory and collaboration challenges that need to be carefully planned and facilitated.

In our Facilitating Inclusive Hybrid Meetings workshop, we recognize the additional challenge that hybrid meetings present and ask that meeting leaders first decide whether you should hold a hybrid meeting. We share the decision path we suggest as a tool to determine if you need to hold a Hybrid Meeting. In the algorithm below, notice that the first question is whether you need a meeting at all as we can fall into the trap of meeting because “that’s what we do”. When a meeting is warranted a good decision path will help you narrow in on the right type of meeting.

Use a Decision Path

At Facilitation First we use the decision path below to clarify why – or IF – we need to hold a Hybrid Meeting. Alternatives to hybrid meetings include:

• Exploring other options for information exchange or collaboration – team bulletin boards, emails, collaboration software
• Holding a standard remote meeting for all participants – even those who are co-located

To learn more about strategies to prepare for and lead great hybrid meetings, check out our Foundational Workshops as well as our half day Facilitating Inclusive Hybrid Meetings, delivered January 18^th from 1:00 – 4:30 EST