Best Practices for Leading Effective and Engaging Hybrid Meetings

If you’re navigating the bumpy terrain of leading hybrid meetings and events, you know they can be tricky. You've got your in-person team with their own needs and your remote folks who need to be smoothly integrated. Finding common ground and ensuring everyone stays engaged, no matter where they are, requires thoughtful planning, equal participation, and smart use of technology.

Why hybrid meetings matter (and why they can be challenging)

First things first: hybrid meetings are the future of work. Gartner predicts by 2025, 65% of workers will attend meetings this way. However, they also rank as the least productive meeting format, below in-person or virtual. Only 17% of workers believe hybrid meetings are productive in achieving business goals.

So, what's going wrong? Technical glitches, feelings of disconnection, and distracting behaviors (like team members going off-camera to multitask) can all derail a well-intentioned hybrid meeting. 

When done right, hybrid meetings can perform as well as any other kind. By blending in-person and virtual elements, team members can join from anywhere. With thoughtful planning and clear intentions, managers can make hybrid meetings engaging, inclusive, and productive for everyone.

Hybrid meeting best practices

Based on our work with managers of hybrid workplaces across the globe, we’ve found great hybrid meetings share some common characteristics. To lead a successful hybrid meeting, follow these best practices:

1. Check your tech

Get off to a strong start by testing your meeting tech ahead of time! Make sure your equipment and tech (microphones, screens, virtual meeting platform, etc.) are ready to go to minimize technical difficulties that eat up meeting time and disengage participants.

2. One person, one screen

Gone are the days of the conference room speakerphone. When even one person is remote, use the rule ‘one person, one screen’ – even if everyone else is in the same room. When team members dial in individually, it creates a level playing field, giving everyone a voice and keeping conference room talk from dominating.

3. Cameras on, eye-level angle

Video calls became the norm during the pandemic for a reason – they boost connection. Seeing each other's faces alone helps us build a more positive relationship. It’s called the mere exposure effect. Encourage everyone to keep their cameras on in hybrid meetings for that crucial face-to-face bonding. Plus, it helps folks pick up on nonverbal cues – you know, the "help, I'm lost" look in someone's eyes.

TIP: Position devices with eyes at camera level, not a power play (looking down) or a dismissive glance (looking away). Eye contact increases warmth and competence – two key factors in building trust, according to Harvard social psychologist Amy Cuddy.

4. Appoint a hybrid meeting facilitator, and rotate them 

Appoint a meeting facilitator to guide your meetings and make sure everyone gets a chance to speak. Rotating who leads your meetings (hybrid or not) is a win-win. It distributes the workload and helps everyone develop and improve their facilitation skills. This leads to a more empathetic and productive team dynamic.

5. Include everyone by starting with a round-robin

Get everyone talking from the start in hybrid meetings and events with a quick round of introductions, updates, or even just a friendly "Hey there!" People who speak up early are more likely to stay engaged throughout. 

Fun fact: Researcher Atul Gawande found that surgical teams that introduced themselves before surgery saw a 35% drop in complications and deaths – because everyone felt comfortable speaking up if they saw something wrong!

6. Take brain-friendly breaks

Virtual fatigue is real, folks. Staring at a screen for hours can turn anyone into a glazed donut.

Schedule regular breaks to keep your team energized. Think quick stretches every 25 minutes and longer "bio breaks" every 55 minutes. 

Back-to-back meetings are brutal, so allow some time to unplug between them, too. Research shows short breaks can prevent meeting fatigue – they reduce strain and give your brain a mini-vacation.

7. Engage participants with interactive tools

Need to brainstorm and collaborate in real time? Use screen-sharing and digital whiteboards to create a shared workspace for everyone, no matter where folks are located. Plus, they're way better than those old whiteboards and dried-up markers. Many even have cool features like voting and emoji reactions. 🎉 Most popular meeting platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams have these built in.

The chat function is your friend in hybrid meetings! It's a great way for folks to ask questions and share ideas. You can also use chat for quick polls, brainstorming, or backchannel communication. Just remember: too much chat can be distracting. Set ground rules for when the chat goes quiet so that you can focus.

Here at LifeLabs, we have a fun solution for chat overload. We use the codeword "chatless" and show our hands as a commitment to focused discussion.

8. Normalize stepovers (and cut the apologies)

Virtual communication has a natural lag, so don't get hung up on people talking over each other (and those awkward silences that follow). It happens! Encourage a "get to the point" mentality and keep the conversation moving. 

9. Monitor turn-taking with strong facilitation

Facilitators should keep an eye on who's dominating the conversation, and gently nudge quieter voices to participate. They can use invitation statements to make participation easier, like, "I'd love to hear what Sarah thinks about this." This is especially important for getting diverse perspectives.

We surveyed a bunch of in-person and remote employees about speaking up in meetings, and guess what? Only 35% of remote folks felt comfortable talking all the time, compared to 61% of their in-person counterparts. Yikes! This means leaders need to be extra intentional about creating a space where everyone feels heard.

10. Pull for feedback

Seek feedback from your meeting participants regularly to gauge how your hybrid meetings are going and uncover areas for improvement. Ask what folks like and dislike about your setup and routines. Are the meetings too long? What is a source of distraction? Does the technology you use meet the team's needs?

One-on-one meetings are a great place to ask for feedback, or you can utilize surveys and even polls within your virtual meeting platform.

Hybrid leadership for the modern workplace

Gallup research shows that 6 in 10 employees with remote-capable jobs want a hybrid work arrangement. This setup offers clear advantages, including better work-life balance, less burnout, and higher productivity.

Leaders and managers need to tackle the unique challenges of the hybrid workplace, making sure all team members – remote or in-person – have equal access to resources, feel connected, and stay engaged. As hybrid work becomes the norm, developing the essential skills for managing hybrid teams and leading hybrid meetings is crucial for organizational success.

Want more tips for leading a successful hybrid meeting?