PART THREE
If you are a meeting leader, you might be feeling overwhelmed at this point. There are so many factors to consider when it comes to effectively facilitating a hybrid session. Even the strategies that we suggested might seem daunting to implement, especially when put within the context of day-in, day-out business metrics to which you are held, not to mention the 8 to 10 meetings you may have every day. So perhaps this next statement will help to at least lighten the weight on your chest: the success of a meeting is a shared responsibility of both the meeting leader and the attendees. That's right, it's not all on the meeting leader! Meeting attendees are responsible for their engaged behavior, or the lack thereof.
You can “sort of” attend a meeting quite easily, whether you are in person or remote. You can walk into the conference room totally ill-prepared, find a chair that puts you out of the eye line of the meeting leader, and open up your own laptop, which allows you to weed out your inbox while the meeting is taking place. When remote, you “sort of” attend a meeting when you join virtually but keep your camera off and your microphone on mute. As long as you don't slip up and turn on your video by accident, no one will know you are doing another kind of weeding … actually pulling stray shoots in your backyard garden.
Making a hybrid meeting work requires engagement by all, and the leader can't do it without the cooperation, support, and participation of attendees. If you don't participate, you not only risk undermining the value of the meeting, but you also risk undermining how you are valued within the organization. In other words, as Joe often says, participate or get lost.
It's a danger that is especially acute for remote attendees whose physical presence doesn't loom as large as their in-person coworkers’. “The onus is largely going to be on the remote worker to be more proactive in communication,” says Lisette Sutherland of Collaboration Superpowers. “Just insert yourself, because the office is a natural place where people hang together.” The meeting environment needs to be conducive for that participation to occur, however, and it requires everyone's buy-in.
In this part, we focus on the attendee's role in creating a hybrid meeting culture that is positive, inclusive, and beneficial for all. In Chapter 8, we will explain how to foster and maintain a “speak-up” culture in hybrid meetings and offer some tips on how attendees can make their presence known. In Chapter 9, we will look at ways to codify that culture by co-creating a team meeting agreement, and we'll offer suggestions on what that should include.
What you will notice is a theme demonstrated throughout this book – hybrid requires a higher level of intentionality, and this section is no different. For attendees, that intention needs to be set on participating as fully as possible, no matter how they are joining the meeting. Perhaps Jay Hyett of Culture Amp puts it best: “Meetings shouldn't be a spectator sport. They should be a team sport. We want everyone contributing. And the spectators? We can give them information later on.”