Improving Team Dynamics in Hybrid Workspaces

Hybrid Meetings ≠ Inclusive Meetings. I’ve lived it - and here’s 5 practical tips to ensure everyone has a voice, regardless of location. I spent more than 10,000 hours in hybrid meetings while as a remote leader for The Clorox Company. I was often the 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 remote attendee - while the rest of the group sat together in a conference room at HQ. Here’s what I learned the hard way: 𝗠𝗲𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝗱𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱, 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗲 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗰𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲... ...by showing who gets heard, who feels seen, and who gets left out. If you're leading a distributed or hybrid team, how you structure your meetings sends a loud message about what (and who) matters. 𝟱 𝘁𝗶𝗽𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗱𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗲𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗹𝘂𝘀𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗵𝘆𝗯𝗿𝗶𝗱 𝗺𝗲𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀: 1️⃣ 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗮 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗮𝗰𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿 – who will actively combat distance bias and invite input from all meeting members 2️⃣ 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗮 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗲𝗿 – to monitor the chat and the raised hands, to launch polls and to free up the facilitator to focus on the flow 3️⃣ 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗹𝗼𝗴 𝗶𝗻 - so that there is equal access to the chat, polls, and reactions 4️⃣ 𝗕𝘂𝗱𝗱𝘆 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 – pair remote team members with in-room allies to help make space in the conversation and ensure they can see and hear everything 5️⃣ 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝗽 𝗮 𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸𝘂𝗽 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻 – be ready with a Plan B for audio, video, or connectivity issues in the room 𝘞𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘧𝘶𝘳𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳? 𝗧𝗿𝘆 𝗮 𝗗𝗶𝗴𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹-𝗙𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗺𝗲𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴. If even one person is remote, have everyone log in from their own device from their own workspace to create a level playing field. 🔗 𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗶𝗽𝘀 for creating location-inclusive distributed teams in this Nano Tool I wrote for Wharton Executive Education: https://lnkd.in/eUKdrDVn #LIPostingDayApril

We recently overhauled how we collaborate at Stytch. Everyone canceled all their meetings and rebuilt their calendars. As a hybrid team, it's easy to default to death by a thousand 1-1s. While 1-1s certainly have their place, we found that people's days were overwhelmed with meetings and many of those were siloed conversations resulting in inefficient use of time. We wanted to create more time in everyone’s day for heads down time, impromptu meetings or huddles to get alignment in order to improve the efficiency and speed with which we’re making decisions. While we’ve always had a really strong culture of docs, we’ve been much weaker on async quick collaboration, namely our usage of Slack. For context, “Slack [the company] sends 70% [of messages] in public channels, 28% in private channels and just 2% in direct messages.” At Stytch our stats before this were: 17% in public channels, 6% in private channels, and a whopping 76% in direct messages!! Here's the tldr of what we're doing: • Default monthly for manager/direct report 1-1s, adjustable as needed • Managers should have 2-4 hours of unscheduled time per day for ad hoc conversations and async collaboration • If a meeting doesn’t have an agenda the night before, cancel it • Prefer group meetings over 1-1s to prevent having to play telephone or have the same conversation repeatedly • Move to more frequent, shorter meetings, like a biweekly stand up instead of a weekly hour long meeting to allow for more timely decision making • Move more conversations to Slack, especially public channels • Slack isn’t always the right tool, if your thread looks like a CVS receipt, either move to a 1 pager or ad hoc sync Instead of 8+ hours of back to back meetings everyday, now I have down time to post more on linkedin!!! JK I timed this and it took me 10 mins. But it is remarkable how much my days have changed, I can give much more timely feedback and dig into things more in depth. We’re just two weeks but excited to see how this experiment goes over the next couple months!

It’s exponentially more challenging to foster healthy and productive teamwork in a hybrid remote/office setup. Why? In my experience, the single most important characteristic of a high-functioning team is that every individual has *equal and inclusive access to on-demand ad hoc co-presence*. In remote setups, this means having a default common space (chat room or voice comms) where everyone “sits” while they’re not in a meeting. It’s the virtual equivalent of having a desk that’s positioned nearby to all your teammates’ desks. Simply being at your “desk” is an implicit way to publicly communicate that all-important in-between status: “I’m busy right now but I’m also available if you really need me”. Moreover, because it’s a public area, when one person strikes up an ad hoc discussion with another person, it’s a signal to other teammates that they’re welcome to self-select into the conversation if they have something to contribute (at which point the ad hoc cohort might spin off into a private room to avoid disturbing others). Don’t get me wrong, everything described above is a delicate balance in both 100% remote and 100% co-located teams. But the degree of difficulty is ratcheted up 10x for hybrids because it creates a “collective action problem”. If even a single member of the team *doesn’t* share the same default “common space”, problems abound. Rather than ad hoc “hallway” discussions, everything has to become a meeting in order to avoid people feeling excluded. Rather than assuming you’re always welcome to self-select into ad hoc discussions, the thought starts to creep into your mind that if you weren’t invited to a meeting, maybe you weren’t wanted or appreciated. Rather than the beautiful collaborative-overlap that comes with real-time co-presence (“oh totally!”, “what if we also”, “this reminds me of”), the standard mode of communication shifts to asynchronous comments; where tone of voice or body language get muted away, and the potential for misinterpretations of intent get amplified. So perhaps instead of debating how many office days a week is best or whether in-person vs. remote promotes greater productivity, perhaps we should be talking about more inclusive and accessible forms of ad hoc co-presence.