Suddenly Hybrid

Chapter 8Being Seen and Heard in Hybrid Meetings

Nothing is more important to the success of employees and people in organizations than being seen and heard – to have their ideas, opinions, and thoughts listened to, validated, and potentially even followed. And where might someone have the opportunity to be seen and heard? In their meetings.

In our virtual world, being seen and heard became more challenging not only because of the physical distancing from colleagues and customers, but because of the seductive allure of being able to multitask while hiding behind the anonymity of the black box labeled with just our name. We could be officially in attendance, but not really present.

In our ever‐changing and complex hybrid world, being just a black box with a name puts remote attendees in real danger. By not turning video on, a remote attendee's “presence” is significantly diminished or perhaps even forgotten.

This happened all too often during what we used to consider hybrid meetings in pre‐pandemic days when video was not as readily available or accessible. Consider this story from Eric Taylor, a collaboration technology evangelist whose career has taken him from SAS Institute, to Lenovo, to Logitech: “I remember in the early days of this when we were using the Polycom, the star phone, on the table. You know, we would go 15 or 20 minutes into a meeting before we would remember, ‘Oh, somebody was going to dial in.’ That person would have been sitting there in limbo for 10 or ...