66. Hybrid Meetings Survival Guide

Transcript

Automatically transcribed and lightly edited. Timestamps omitted for readability.

Morten: Hi and welcome to another episode of the Getting Things Done podcast from GTD Nordic. I am Stel Morten Røvik, and as always, I'm here with my good friend and colleague Lars Rothschild Henriksen. Terje, Lars.

Lars: Terje, Mr. Ravik, good to see you. And as always, looking forward to recording. Another episode for all the GTDers and GTD-curious listeners and viewers out there. We always start off by reminding everyone of the purpose of the podcast, which is to help you learn GTD or become even better GTDers. So we hope that today's episode supports you in that. If you're new to GTD, we always recommend you go back and listen to episodes 1 through 6 of this podcast to get an introduction to the basics of GTD. And today's episode number is number 66, and the topic of the day we've dubbed Hybrid Meeting Survival Guide.

Morten: Exactly. In this modern age of hybrid meetings, I'm sure a few of you have been in them and felt their shortcomings. So I'm trying to put together the best practices so that you can get effective hybrid meetings. In your company and in your life and reality. So Lars, have you had hybrid meetings yourself? Have you done them?

Lars: When we started talking about doing this topic for today's podcast, the first thing that came to mind was actually an online session that I did as part of my trainer certification. So I did my first test seminar for a company that I was consulting for back in the day, back in 2014, 2015, and the implementation session that we did afterwards, so supporting the S&Ds in getting set up in Outlook. We did that remotely, and it was hybrid in the sense that I was remote and everyone else, I think 12, 15 people, were gathered in a meeting room. So I was, you know, coming through the speaker, the big, you know, conference room phone in the middle of the room. I was on on the big screen and trying to manage that and walk everyone through that. And it was a learning experience, let's put it that way. It really was not a good way to do that. So really, really learned from that. All those different, you know, unique questions that came up around the table and sorry Lars, we're struggling with this part and hey, I need to help you help with this part. And it really was a, it was a long, long session. So learned that that kind of mix was Not very good.

Morten: No.

Lars: So yes, I've tried that.

Morten: Yes, yes, we have. And I've done the same. A client did not tell me that when we are going to do a virtual keynote, they decided that some of them would be remote together and some will be remote single. And that is really where you kind of, you are cut off from the internal humor at the table. You can't see everybody. You know, they're just this little square on your screen where you can see a lot of dots that represents human beings, but you don't see their reactions. So that leads us very gently into which meetings works best or which meeting types works best. And my suggestion to this is that regular in-person meeting is meetings are still best. They work the best. That is, if they have a good agenda that they are thought through so that they can be, you know, our regular— we did an episode on meetings in general, but so this is about the hybrid meetings. But at the same time, it is very important that if you do a, you know, physical meeting or a hybrid meeting, please make sure that you have a good agenda, that you thought through why this meeting is important. And make sure that the meeting becomes the best meeting it can be for the people there. But first, regular meetings in person works the best. Then second best or least good, then I don't know how to say this because we could have called it the worst or something like that. But regular meetings is still the best way of doing things. Digital meetings is number 2 where everyone sits remote and then hybrid meetings meetings where some people are remote, some people are in the room, you know, in a conference room with more than one, one person in that conference room. And I will tell you why we think this is, is so. But it is, if you use your common sense and start looking at meetings with, you know, the eye that we should reduce friction and enhance communication, because a meeting is about Communication and technology can be the friction for that, so it's not efficient meetings. And so if you look at the meetings where you have remote workers working from home office, or on a video conference solution at work where they are in the meeting with the others that are sitting around the table, That becomes— in the pre-show, we were trying to find a way to say this because there is an expression in Norwegian that Lars didn't know existed in Danish, at least not on top of his head. But this, um, it will be a class divider. So you have the first class is the people who are in the room, who are attending, and they are commuting, you're communicating physically to each other. And the second-class passengers are those remote. They are often forgotten, or if not, ignored. Hopefully not ignored and forgotten, but they're not— they don't feel like they are first-class passengers in these meetings. They often go second class. So I'm going to try and give you my notes because I made a lot of notes on this. The more I read about it, the more wise I feel I am a little after reading something. So this is what I found. And what is anyway very important, just a quick recap, what we think is general good meeting rules is to ask yourself if this meeting is strictly necessary before sending out a notice. Summon only those who must be Participants send out an agenda before the meeting if this is relevant. Follow up on issues that the previous meeting decided to do something about. And in the meetings where you are in the driver's seat for that, drive whatever you need forward. Decide on the desired outcomes and next actions. Who's responsible? When should it be finished? And then send out meeting minutes after the meetings, a recap of what you have decided to do. So those are the general meetings, meeting rules as I've written down. Do you have any additions to this, Lars, that comes to mind?

Lars: I think that, that, that covers, it covers it pretty well. I mean, we know that these meetings, in order for them to be productive, we, we do need to have those components in place with a good clear purpose, clear agendas, or at least people bringing their agendas, wrapping up the meetings with Good, clear outcomes, next actions, who owns it, when, when are we going to move forward on them. So I think we can refer at least people for those kind of details. We did a more in-depth dive into that in episode 60 called Great Meetings with GTD. So curious about that one and head on back to episode 60.

Morten: Yes. So, and what I've, you know, gathered here are some tips and tricks what I think you should consider doing. And you might, I want to might want to stop and ask you what you think about this, Lars, to give me a comment. But when you are to not have this first and second class passengers in your meeting, make sure that those— if you are considering doing what we call a true hybrid meetings, defined as somebody is remote, somebody is in, in a meeting room— is to ask the— and this is what I call best practices for this is ask people remote for comments before asking people in the room. If you do that as a, you know, as your policy is that you always ask the remote people first and get them, you know, do a round. Hey Lars, what do you think? Hey, what do you think? Hey, Kari, what do you think? And make sure that they are heard first. That means you will erase a little of the second-class feeling because they feel that they are important participants in the meeting. Does that make sense?

Lars: Yeah, very good point. Absolutely. And because what we will often find is that just the tiny latency in the voice and the inability to clearly read people's faces in that exact moment where you speak it, that's a great tip too. To make sure that you check in with them first to at least make it as good a meeting as possible when it's a hybrid one.

Morten: Yeah, and my second tip is if you're going to use a whiteboard or a flipboard to illustrate something, make sure that you are doing that digitally. Both Microsoft and Google have digital whiteboards. It's Microsoft Whiteboard, part of the Office 365 suite. You can use that. Teams, yes. And Google Jamboard also exists that you can use if you're in the Googleverse. So do a digital variant instead of a physical one because it's really difficult to see unless you have a, like, you know, 5K camera or something, you know, really good lighting. And, you know, the way— and these these cameras exist. They're not very often you see them, but they exist, and you can even zoom in on something that you would like to see, take the control of the camera. But that's not very often. Normally we are just at, you know, regular fixed camera. You can't do something. So, so use a whiteboard that everybody can see. My Third tip is that when you are working together or looking at a document, use a shared variant of that, like a shared document in Google Docs or a shared notebook in OneNote, so everybody can see the same thing, so that you can follow what you are sharing. And if you're going to edit that, everybody can see the edits live. That makes a big difference. And the feeling of being, you know, part of this, everybody is on the same on the same page. Any comments? Does that make sense as well?

Lars: No, I am, you know, that, that also echoes how we use it internally. So, so for example, when I have, let's say, meetings with Espen, we have a shared document that we go through with, you know, in the regular monthly status meetings. So we have some common topics that we always walk through. We use the Google Suite internally, which means that we can see when, when people join the document and I don't know if there's some kind of psychological effect or what it is, but it's nice to see that, you know, I click my way in there and I see, oh, there's this button and there's this, you know, cursor or whatever it might be. So you kind of see that collaboration virtually going on, and that's, yeah, I think that works well.

Morten: Yeah, and another thing I like about Google Docs is that you can, and Google Sheets, that you can be warned or notified if somebody changes the document. So if you're part of a meeting, you can't attend, somebody changes, you know, the agenda document, or there's a document where you write down, you know, the meeting notes, then you will be notified by email that that actually changed. And you can set that up to be notified. That's an added bonus.

Lars: Yeah, helpful feature.

Morten: I'm not sure if OneNote has that, but Maybe it's something you can look at if you're interested.

Lars: I do believe that is the case, that you can get the notifications when things change there as well.

Morten: Yeah. Okay, so something that you might consider, you know, because if you are having the possibility to have an open, if you have an open landscape, where you have smaller meeting rooms, it may be you should consider that everybody, instead of having people physically in the room, is making it a remote meeting instead of hybrid meetings. I know that people love to be together now that corona is lifting, at least here in our region of the world. People want to meet physically, and of course, but then you are then first and second class passengers. So maybe if you have the possibility to do it remote for everybody, that's better for everybody, actually.

Lars: So absolutely. And but one of the challenges is, and I saw that with a large global organization that I worked with earlier this year, is that then you take up, you might end up taking up a meeting room just because you need to attend, but then the 4 other people will sit in separate meeting rooms. So that then starts to maybe challenge the number of meeting rooms that you have available. So, but that is certainly a A good tip, a good way to do it is to really separate out so we all become equal participants in this virtual meeting as opposed to the hybrid version.

Morten: And another best practice is that if you are doing hybrid meetings, to make sure everybody is on the equal footing or as much as possible, maybe consider if you are the caller of the meeting, you are the meeting leader, if I don't know that's called in English, meeting leader, what do you call that?

Lars: Sure.

Morten: Yeah, the leader of the meeting, at least the one who's responsible for the meeting. Maybe you should be remote so that you are second-class passenger, so that when you are doing the meeting, you are being very aware of that, the, you know, the limitations of the remote participants, maybe at a better you know, a higher level of consciousness towards the remote people. What do they see and how? Because you will be very aware of very quickly that you will not be able to follow exactly what goes on in the room. Unless we get some really good camera systems that can do that, you will not. Yeah, okay. So, um, if you are doing a hybrid meeting, I'm suggesting that if you have a round table or an oval table or even a square table, is that you gather people around one corner facing as much as possible the camera. So that if you are 4 people in a room, don't sit around the table, but, you know, try and cluster yourself so everybody can see through the camera. So, because I've seen meetings where people are half turned away from the camera, so you can't see their faces fully. And so make sure that you are turning your face towards the camera and that you're as close as possible to your colleagues so that the camera can zoom in on you if possible, so that we can get, you know, the better— the facial expressions are the first casualty of meetings like this, and you should try and keep the casualty count down so that gets a better meeting. So, yeah, so, and sometimes when you are, and I read about this, and this also makes sense for me, is that when you have remote meetings that, you know, it's not just 15 minutes, it gets tiresome, especially for for, I don't know, and this is not me suggesting this, this science, or at least there's research saying this, that women get more tired than men of hybrid meetings. And I don't know if this is, and I don't know, this is not peer-reviewed research, I think, but it was a claim, let's call it that, that is true. And I hope I don't make all our female listeners angry at me now, but maybe if this is— if I'm going to speculate on if that is true, why, and then I think it might be because women are more conscious of how they look. Men don't care as much as how we look, as long as we are more or less shaven and look okay, it's okay. You have a shirt on, you comb your you're here and voilà, you're ready for a meeting. While a woman getting ready for a meeting, especially if you're in hybrid, it's, you need to put your makeup on, you have to do your hair, you have to put something nice, and you are more conscious on how you look than maybe men are. I don't know if I offended all women, I hope not. But if that is true, and I suggest that you Go, if you feel that you're, if you get tired of seeing yourself, you can hide yourself, the hide self view. Most, both in Teams and in Zoom, you can hide self view, which means that you don't have to look at yourself. Everybody else will see you, but you can hide yourself so you don't have to look at you. So I don't know if this is symptomatic, but I don't see me now. My meeting is on top of, top of me, so I don't see me. So, um, what do you think about this? Am I— is this correct?

Lars: I think it's, um, I, I would maybe— I, I also, I don't know, and I don't know about the study and all that. Um, I think it's maybe more that people tend to— some people tend to be more focused on reading other people's faces, emotions, trying to understand what's going on. And perhaps that trait is more common in women than in men. At least I know that I'll be more blind to that than, for example, my wife. But I do know also from studies in general that, you know, it is very, very, you know, mentally exhausting to see all those people's faces and try to read all of them on the screen at the same time, including your own. So that's certainly an aspect as well.

Morten: Yeah, exactly. But what I alluded to is, of course, that you see yourself. If you're tired to see you. You're focusing on, oh, how does my hair look? Do I look okay when I smile? How does everybody— how did I come across? Self-awareness on how you look. So not what everybody else looks like. But of course, everything is more difficult through a camera. It's easier to read a facial expression or a body language, you know, a movement in the chair if you can see the whole body in 3D and not in 2D and, you know, just the head. So that is more or less what I had on my meetings notes for, you know, make a, let's call it, hybrid meetings can suck less. So that's our survival guide as such. Anything to add, Loris, that you've you know, so, oh, why didn't he mention this?

Lars: No, I think just overall the key takeaway, of course, the specific suggestions that you made and overall the thinking is to be very aware of these and to be very disciplined when it comes to hybrid meetings. So see if you can avoid them. If you can't avoid them, see if you can somehow make them better with the tips that you came up with. So no, I think that's it, but I would As always, ask our listeners as well. So, you know, these are the thoughts from Morten and myself, but what are your experiences when it comes to good meetings? Can they be hybrid? If that's the case, how do you then manage them? Any other tips that we could add? And we'll follow up on that in a future episode.

Morten: Yeah, send us an email at podcast@gtdnordic.dk. What are your best tips for how can a hybrid meeting suck less? So that's what we are asking now, aren't we?

Lars: So that would be great to learn from you guys.

Morten: Yeah, indeed. So, um, are we ready to say it's a little shorter episode? We are around 22 minutes, but, um, good. It's short and sweet, but, um, to the point. Uh, take us out, Lars.

Lars: Yeah, um, and when Morten says that, he refers to me saying that we always wrap up up these episodes with a quick reminder to head on over to gtdnordic.com to have a look around, because on that site you will find the links to the country websites for each of the Nordic countries. And on each of those, you can find articles about GTD, links to the newsletters, groups on social media, and of course, all of the different offerings regarding speeches, coaching, and seminars, both the virtual and the physical ones. If you are outside the Nordics, gettingthingsdone.com is the place to go to find your local partner. And also just a quick reminder to have a look at gtdsummercamp.com. So this is a place to go to learn more about the nonprofit summer camp that we have for GTDers in the Nordics and in the world in general. It'll take place in the Nordics, more specifically in Denmark in June. Morten and I will be there. We have participants now from 8 different countries as far as I'm up to date. It'll be a lot of fun. It'll certainly level up your GTD game. So, so have a look at that. And yeah, we hope to see you there.

Morten: Yeah, indeed. Hold that thought. I just want to make a short comment there because I really enjoyed last year. We did it last year as well. And what I enjoyed a lot was the diversity of people coming. There were people who are just fresh to GTD, somebody who's been doing it for years after years, decades. And just coming together for a short weekend and to discuss what we, you know, love and feel is helping us. And you will up your game, you will hang out with like-minded people, and it is as cheap as possible. We all work for free. I travel there, Lars travel there for free. We don't, you know, not for free, but I wish we could travel for free, but we are doing it for our own machine and our own wallet, and we give our time away. So if you want to hang with us, hang out with us, and learn from me and Lars, but also all the other people who are going to do stuff there, please consider coming. I would love to see you all. And if you are outside the Nordics, or the summer camp is in Denmark. Go outside. We have people for— what's— what do you know on top of your head what nations we are seeing people from? Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland.

Lars: Yeah, exactly.

Morten: Iceland.

Lars: Yeah, Norway. Yeah, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, Netherlands, Germany, and the US, I think, is the list right now. Cool. Even across the, across the pond.

Morten: As it is. So if you consider that, go to gtdsummercamp.com, gtdsummercamp.com, and sign up. It's going to be a blast. So now Lars, back to you.

Lars: Now I will say my last line, which is that we really hope that you find these episodes valuable. If this episode or GTD in general has made a difference in your life, then please consider helping us spreading the message to more people by giving the podcast a rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen. It really helps the discoverability of the podcast. More people will learn GTD, and that's why we're here. So thanks.

Morten: Well, until next time, people, stay safe and stay productive. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.