Understanding digital and hybrid meetings
Anne Strebel
In today's working life, digital and hybrid meetings are an essential part of how we communicate and collaborate. These meeting formats combine elements of both physical meetings and video conferencing, offering unique opportunities for participation regardless of geographic location and across digital platforms. However, to maximize the effectiveness of these meetings, it's important to understand their specifics and challenges.
Navigating Challenges with Hybrid Meetings
The biggest challenge with hybrid meetings lies in balancing the attention and engagement between physical and digital participants. To include digital participants in discussions and decision-making, conscious efforts are required from the meeting leader. Technical problems, varying audio and video quality, and lack of visual contact can also be disruptive factors for flow and engagement in the meeting.
Improve your meetings
To create more inclusive and engaging digital and hybrid meetings, preparation, implementation and follow-up are crucial. Here is some advice for each phase:
Before the meeting
- Goals and expectations: Clarify what the meeting will achieve. Is the purpose to share information, generate ideas, or make a decision? This will shape how you prepare and structure the meeting.
- Agenda: Create a detailed agenda and send it out in advance. This helps participants prepare and contributes to a more targeted discussion. Include time estimates for each agenda item to keep the meeting on track.
Technical preparation: Check that the technology is working properly. This includes the video conferencing platform, and participants' microphones, cameras, and internet connection.
- Recording/transcription: Inform about the recording and/or transcription of the meeting if it is intended to be carried out.
During the meeting
- Opening: If the participants do not know each other, it will be natural to have a short round where everyone introduces themselves. This is especially important in hybrid meetings to bridge the gap between the physical and digital participants. If all meeting participants know each other, you can go straight to the agenda. Also give a few minutes for the "informal chat", as you would do in a physical meeting. Remember to include everyone – both physical and digital participants.
Active participation: In addition to using techniques and digital tools to promote participation, active participation is just as much about facial expressions and body language. In order to have good digital meetings, it is important that everyone uses a camera. For hybrid meetings, it may be a good idea for those who participate physically in the room to connect to the meeting on their own laptop with a camera. Here it is important to make sure that the speaker and microphone are run from one device to avoid echoes.
- Communication: Clear and inclusive communication from the meeting leader is necessary to keep engagement up. Be sure to address participants by name and encourage questions and comments throughout the meeting.
- Customization: Be prepared to customize the agenda based on the course of the meeting and the needs of the participants. Flexibility can contribute to more productive and meaningful discussions
After the meeting
- Follow-up: Distribute a meeting minutes that summarize the discussions, decisions made, and follow-up tasks with clear deadlines and responsibilities.
- Evaluation and feedback: Ask for feedback on the meeting format and content to identify areas for improvement. This can be done through a simple digital survey or by direct follow-up.
Essential Tips for Meeting Preparation
Effective and engaging meetings require careful preparation. Here are some tips to ensure your meetings are productive:
Clarify order for case workers: Encourage people who will present or lead parts of the meeting to formulate a clear order or questions they want input on. This contributes to more targeted discussion and better prepared presentations.
Clarification of expectations: Communicate clearly what is expected of the participants before and during the meeting. This includes preparations, participation in discussions, and follow-up tasks after the meeting.
Digital and hybrid meeting management
To succeed with digital and hybrid meeting management, it takes more than just managing the technology. It is about creating a culture of open communication, engagement and inclusion. This includes:
- Active listening and engagement: As the meeting leader, show that you value your participants' contributions through active listening and follow-up questions. This encourages further participation and contributes to a more dynamic meeting.
- Use of digital tools: Leverage available digital tools to foster collaboration and engagement. This can include screen sharing to show presentations or documents, using digital whiteboards for collaborative note-taking and brainstorming, and incorporating interactive elements such as polls or quizzes.
- Facilitation for everyone: Make sure that the meeting is accessible to all participants, regardless of whether they attend physically or digitally. Be aware of different time zones, technological access, and personal preferences for communication.
Read more about Collaborate:
Digital and hybrid meetings can be just as productive and engaging as traditional physical meetings – if not more so – as long as they're led in the right way. By implementing the advice and strategies outlined in this article, the quality of meetings is significantly improved. Continuous evaluation and adaptation will ensure that you keep up with changes in technology and attendee expectations, so that meetings always promote collaboration, inclusion, and productivity.
Do you have questions about digital and hybrid meetings and how they can be adapted to your business?
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