Focus on Hybrid meetings course

Hybrid meetings - or blended meetings as they are sometimes referred to - are when a meeting consists of one group within the same room, as well as other dialling in remotely. These types of meetings can be highly challenging to manage.

Many people find it impossible to turn them into effective and productive events that really represent them and their organisation. Attendees often experience strong feelings associated with being excluded together with dissatisfaction from a lack of meaningful human connection. Hosts can feel perplexed, powerless and somewhat incompetent.

The dynamics of these meetings can become increasingly complex when:
- delegate numbers are large
- the host is remote or maybe in a second room
- audio, visual and/IT equipment is not up to the job
- the host doesn’t have the skills to manage the environment

If this seems familiar, the first thing you need to do is to recognise that new skills and awareness are required to make these complex meetings work smoothly. A phrase quoted during the pandemic said “we are all on film now” and we need to learn how it works. We would go further and say with hybrid meetings you are on the equivalent of a TV show where the host has to generate two way interactions effectively with the studio audience as well as the viewers at home. 

As a species we have been communicating vocally and visually for hundreds of thousands of years, yet we have only been muddling through these complex meeting, held together often with poor technology, since having to suddenly pivot into these environments during the pandemic. Unfortunately much of what needs to be learned cannot be assimulated ‘on the job’. So the mistakes keep on being repeated, meeting after meeting, leaving hosts feeling powerless , attendees left out and everyone feeling unfulfilled. 

So here are a few tips to help you navigate challenging hybrid events more successfully:

1. Be prompt - arrive on time

2. If  you are hosting the meeting, arrive in the room and logon early.

3. Give yourself time to test the technology, maybe adjust settings, camera and microphone positions.

4. Deal with any unforeseen technical challenges before others arrive so you can start with confidence.

Understand technology
Whatever software and hardware you are using, ensure you practice first and feel confident with how to make it work well.
It is incredibly stressful to be learning how to use the technology when in a meeting
If you are sharing slides use a second screen – this is essential

Interactions
Ensure everyone gets to interact and engage at the start as well as all the way through the meeting.
This is a challenge and you need to meet it on your front foot
Interactions will not just happen!

Commonality
Create commonality whenever possible: “we are all in this meeting together”, “we all work in the same sector” “we all work for the same organisation”

These are a few things that will make a difference. Emailogic have been hosting hybrid and virtual meetings for over 15 years – and teaching others how to do the same. We have worked with global tax experts, senior government accounts, academics, doctors and consultants and top lobbying organisations to help them understand how to make hybrid meetings work effectively in a way that fully represents their organisation.

If you would like to learn how you and your colleagues can improve hybrid meetings in your business  just email: enquiries@emailogic.com and we will be in touch to understand your specific challenges and discuss how we can help.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the latest Edition of Emailogic Insights, our quarterly newsletter which will give you regular updates about what we’ve been up to. We will also aim to highlight workplace trends and insights we are seeing across our work in all sectors which may help inform your L&D planning.

In this edition of Insights you can read about our work in helping companies develop their meta skills, and how we’re supporting people to have effective hybrid meetings. In a world which is getting more ambiguous and challenging by the day, you can see how we’re supporting front-line managers in their efforts to manage complex change.

We hope you enjoy this issue. If you would like to know more about how we can support your learning and development needs, or if you just want to discuss a tricky problem, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.  

The importance of learning from each other

We have been helping a major client to deliver meta skills training over the last 12 months – by ‘meta skills’, we mean competencies which are distinctly human, such as thinking, connecting, and learning.

The most recent course that we have designed and delivered in this series is “Learning from and with colleagues.” This focuses on helping delegates to be effective at sharing knowledge and skills, and to encourage their colleagues to do the same.

As with all Emailogic courses, the session is very practical. Delegates start by identifying what they want to learn to become more effective, and then explore the mind-set and conditions required to learn from and inspire others. The skills of powerful questioning, active listening, and giving and receiving feedback are then covered in detail. Delegates then run through a tightly framed action learning set to tie all the course elements together.

In a world where our ability to creatively retain our uniqueness will often determine our competitive advantage, the ability for your people to share ideas and skills confidently and effectively is increasingly critical.     

It’s all about fostering a collaborative working environment, where staff work across organisational silos, and skill sharing, and continuous improvement becomes the norm. And we can help you to do this with our “Learning from and with colleagues” course.

For more information about Emailogic’s Meta Skills series contact us 0203 154 6611 or email enquiries@emailogic.com.

Contact us to discuss your training plans:

If you’re going through change, we can help

We have been delivering our 90 minute ‘Managing Change’ course for many years, and we’re finding that it’s now more relevant than ever. Many of our clients are going through a transformation of one kind or another, from implementation of new IT systems to structural re-organisations.

In addition, the wider global context is one of high uncertainty and volatility. The acronym VUCA, standing for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous, and first coined in the US military in the late 1980s, has never been more appropriate. These factors all have an impact on the increasing pace of change in our work places, and this change is very difficult to manage.

It’s often left to the front-line managers to deal with communicating and managing the impact of these changes the best way they can. And that’s where our ‘Managing Change’ course comes in. We un-pick the psychology behind the common instinctive reactions to change, help managers to spot these, and give them the techniques and inter-personal skills to manage the whole gamut of individual responses.

We work with contacts to tailor our content to make it relevant to your organisation, most importantly creating scenarios which will resonate with all delegates. We also have a version of our ‘Managing change’ course which is for all staff, and not only for front-line managers.

For more information about Emailogic’s ‘Managing Change’ course contact us 0203 154 6611 or email enquiries@emailogic.com.

Why not book a place on our upcoming discussion forums - see topics below

There will be discussions on various topics where you can learn from others and network with HR and L&D peers