During the meeting: 4 facilitation strategies
As long as you’ve prepped well, you should feel calm and collected before starting your meeting. You’re ready to create harmony!
Now, it’s time to put some facilitation strategies into action.
Before we dive in, there’s one game-changing mindset shift that applies to all of these strategies: Reframe meetings as experiences.
“For remote employees, those meetings might be the only time for them to experience any type of “macro culture” that your team, department or company is trying to create. So it’s not just a meeting—it’s an experience.”
—Ellen Thompson, director of learning, development, and inclusion, Lucid
While this is especially relevant for hybrid teams, it’s a powerful mindset that can change the intention behind every meeting.
Without further ado, let’s jump into four strategies you can lean on during your meeting to make it as inclusive as possible:
Strategy #1: Create a safe and respectful environment
As the facilitator, you’re in a unique position to set the tone as the meeting begins. Work to foster an environment of psychological safety from the start. This is a crucial step!
Consider the participants' familiarity with each other. Is this a team that works together daily, or have they never met before? This information should shape the way you set up the meeting.
From there, try starting out with some time for personal connections. It’s much easier to feel comfortable sharing input in the meeting when participants have had a chance to speak upfront. That might mean facilitating casual introductions, check-ins, or even a short icebreaker to help create connections in the team.
Hybrid teams may struggle with this because the in-person team members will often catch up and chat before they even start the virtual component of the meeting. When we do so, teams entirely exclude virtual team members.
“Organizations can fall into the trap of treating those outside their headquarters as less-than. When teams keep the mics muted until it’s time to get to business, it creates an inequitable and discouraging environment.”
–Bryan Stallings, chief evangelist, Lucid
Another thing that could help when facilitating hybrid meetings is ensuring you have the right focus on both audiences.
“I’ve personally found that in order to execute a stellar hybrid experience, you typically need at least one person responsible for each audience’s experience—one team member focused on the virtual participants, and the other on the people in person, plus a potential facilitator or presenter.”
—Ellen Thompson, director of learning, development, and inclusion, Lucid
Here are a few more actions you can take to set up an equitable environment at the start of your meeting:
- Start your hybrid meetings on time to ensure remote attendees don’t miss anything.
- Assign someone in person to watch the chat for remote attendees during hybrid meetings.
- Demonstrate (or even call out the importance of) active listening, empathy, and open-mindedness.
- Encourage participants to express their thoughts and opinions. Make it clear to them that not only do you welcome their input, but you’re enthusiastic about their participation.
- Address conflict quickly and sensitively to maintain the integrity of the meeting space.
Strategy #2: Balance participation
Power dynamics can disrupt and distract participants, regardless of the type of meeting. Those dynamics might include in-person vs. remote team members, those in varying levels of seniority, those with more extroverted collaboration styles, and more.
Remember these dynamics during the meeting, and ensure all participants can contribute equally to the discussion.
Pro tip: Pay attention to who is speaking often and who is staying silent. Encourage quieter team members to share their perspectives by explicitly inviting them to do so. Then, validate their input. Consider adding a “parking lot” to your meeting agenda or space. This will lessen tangents and ensure everyone has a voice.
Though it may take extra time, making space for everyone in attendance leads to better collaboration. It makes team members feel heard and valued. Plus, actively inviting diverse perspectives from your team members will make for a more productive and engaging meeting overall.
Strategy #3: Use inclusive tools and techniques
In an increasingly digital world, many teams rely on at least some technology to facilitate their meetings, especially if you’re working on a hybrid team! So, learn to leverage those tools to create a more inclusive and productive environment.
One tip you can implement is to break up a large group into smaller breakout groups before bringing everyone into discussion. Smaller groups can be less intimidating and give participants an environment of greater safety to discuss their ideas first. Giving individuals the opportunity to validate their inputs can increase their confidence, making them more likely to bring their thoughts to the larger group since they’ve already been validated.
You can do this in your virtual meeting software. And if you’re using Lucid, you can use the Breakout Boards capability to give these sub-teams their own ideation or note-taking space.
