Chapter 5
The Complex Communication Network Environment

When you hear the words “communication network,” what comes to mind? Maybe you first think of the technology involved – telephone lines, broadcast signals, or perhaps the internet itself. If you're like Karin, you think about people and how they communicate with each other in an organization. For a meeting scientist like Joe, the immediate thoughts are about the channels, patterns, and flows of communication that we will be discussing in this chapter.

When it comes to hybrid meetings, that communication network can look more like a bowl of spaghetti than a series of straight, orderly lines. This thought is echoed by Jared Spataro, CVP at Microsoft 365, who said, “We've figured out how to get things done when everyone is working from home. Now we need to rethink how to handle that messy middle—when some people are together in person, and others are remote” (Microsoft 2021).

The first step in figuring out how to manage the “messy middle” is gaining a better understanding of the elements that make it so, and how the patterns or networks of communication may impact the effectiveness of a team or group. For those leading hybrid meetings, a functional knowledge of communication networks is both instructive and potentially essential for the success of future working in groups and teams. So that's where we'll begin – with a bit of a primer on the changing communication paradigms. Once you are steeped in the science, we will move from theory to practical advice.

In this chapter, we will explore:

• The nature of communication networks in meetings
• Potential communication breakdowns along fault lines when hybrid
• The evolving nature of participation in meetings
• Assessing meeting participation in your own organization

The Nature of Communication Networks in Workplace Meetings

Over the past 40 years, the channels to communicate have evolved and changed in many ways, making the practice of communicating a different experience altogether. In the 1980s, teleconferencing emerged, but video was not a thing. In the 1990s, videoconferencing started to emerge, but only in special rooms in Fortune 100 companies that could afford the bill for its setup. In the 2000s, with the advent of smartphones, video calls and videoconferencing became possible in the hands of every person who bought a phone. Yet, the adoption of new communication strategies lagged behind the technological capabilities until the COVID‐19 pandemic, when videoconferencing became the primary meeting modality and communication pattern. Each emergence of a novel modality introduced new channels of communication, rearranged flows, and impacted patterns of communicating. In other words, communication networks changed in response … and it's happening again. Hybrid work and hybrid meetings introduce a complexity to communication and social networks that most have yet to experience.

To understand the organic nature of communication networks in organizations, scientists developed a new method for studying groups and teams called social network analysis (Borgatti, Mehra, Brass, and Labianca 2009). Broadly defined, social network analysis is a set of theories and methodological tools for analyzing and understanding the structure and relationships within social networks. Researchers who employ social network analysis typically analyze data on the number of people and connections or relationships between these people within a network by means of specific software, which also typically produces pictures that display the patterns of connections between the people of a network (e.g. Borgatti 2002; Borgatti, Everett, and Freeman 2002). It is these patterns of connections that help us understand how people communicate, who has influence upon whom, and why some interactions (i.e. meetings) feel more collaborative than others.

Although we could certainly spend the rest of the chapter talking about communication networks in general and the wonderful nuances of the various theories of social network analysis, the focus here is on how these communication networks emerge and how they are experienced in workplace meetings (Sauer, Meinecke, and Kauffeld 2015). In particular, we want to talk about the complexity shift from the traditional face‐to‐face meeting to the hybrid meeting. We turn our attention to that issue now.

From the Simple Network to the Complex Network

The biggest issue with communication and social networks in meetings is how dynamic they are and the complexity they introduce as you change from medium to medium (i.e. modality to modality). The pre‐pandemic go‐to form of meeting was face‐to‐face, which used an all‐channel network of equivalent medium. What does that mean? Well, it means that everyone is in the same room and is able to talk to each other, through the medium of soundwaves through the air. For a seven‐person group meeting together, it would look something like this:

In this case, everyone can see and hear one another in the same room. The modality and method of communicating is the same and so we depict all the lines as equivalent. Now in all actuality, we acknowledge that when doing social network analysis of a given meeting, the results won't look so uniform. Using social network analysis, we'd use thicker lines to indicate more talking from a given person to another person or to the group, along with representations of other nuances. For example, if a social network analysis were used to depict the meeting with Bob, and Bob is going to be talking more than anyone else, his lines to the group would be thicker and potentially more centralized. However, the point here is that in a face‐to‐face meeting, there's only one modality through which communication occurs across the whole team.

Interestingly, that same picture applies to a situation where everyone is on video or everyone is on telephone. In all of those cases, the communication network contains only one mode of communication and everyone is on a level playing field, as it were, for communicating. For those who are thinking, “But what about the chat function?,” we'll get to that. For now, let's just agree that in these three single‐modality situations with everyone using the same form of communication, the network is relatively simple.

Now, let's mess with the simple network a bit and talk about introducing multiple modes of communication. That is, what would the communication network look like for a group of seven people meeting if three people were together in a room, two were on video, and two were on teleconference? This example would be a hybrid meeting comprised of a combination of the three modalities we've used in all our data analysis and chapters thus far.

Here's the depiction of this group. The people in front of the laptop are joining via videoconference, the people wearing headsets are on the telephone, and the three people in the middle box are in person in the same room.

Notice some differences? First, we depict the face‐to‐face modality with a solid line, the video with a dashed line, and the audio with a dot‐dashed line. Second, you'll notice that depending on who is talking, people are hearing or seeing different things. For example, the video people see the three people in the room sitting at the table while those in the conference room see the video people in individual boxes in the gallery view common to most videoconference platforms. The audio people see no one, but hear everyone. Third, take note of the number of lines here. You might think that there are more of them compared to the diagram on the previous page, but guess what … there aren't. There are actually no more lines on this diagram than there are in the single‐modality meeting situation (i.e. the previous picture). So the overall number of communication lines is not increasing, just the nature of the communication modality.

Given these observations, it's no surprise that hybrid meetings are more complex in terms of the communication network, and with that complexity come challenges like keeping track of everyone across all of the modalities used within a single meeting. To illustrate further, let's add two more people in the room. Here's what that would look like.

Just two more people in the room results in a significant increase in the number of lines of communication. Obviously, the network becomes even more complex, but we show this for another reason as well. The more people who are in the room, the more prone people are to forget those online, particularly those on the phone. The in‐person bias is real and all too common. Those whose physical presence is diminished, especially those who are dialing in, become more anonymous and the “out of sight, out of mind” idea becomes more easily enacted. When you have the in‐person people seen and the remote people not seen, artificial fault lines emerge in the hybrid meeting, which is our next topic.

The Danger of Fault Lines in a Hybrid Meeting

In a hybrid meeting, one of the biggest pitfalls involves something called “fault lines,” which are not unique to hybrid but may take on a greater role. Scientifically speaking, when people break into subgroups within a workplace meeting, we refer to these instances as the emergence of fault lines within the meeting group, which can be characterized as natural or artificial (Straube and Kauffeld 2020). Natural fault lines often break down by subgroups defined by similar individual characteristics such as gender, race, age, and so forth. For example, in a group with three men and two women, a natural fault line that could emerge would be along gender lines. In contrast, artificial fault lines are those that emerge within the meeting due to ideological or technological differences. For the purpose of this discussion, we will focus on the technological fault lines created by communication modality.

Let's use our last picture, the group of nine, as a hypothetical demonstration. The meeting as shown here has two people on video, two on audio, and five in person. This hybrid meeting could easily fracture along the communication modality fault line. What do fault lines do to the communication within a meeting? A number of different possibilities could occur. A common one is the group of five in‐person attendees will simply forget about those on audio entirely. (Sadly, even Joe's done this before as a meeting leader. Sure, it's embarrassing when it happens to a meeting leader, but imagine how much more embarrassing it is when the meeting leader is also a meeting scientist, trying to follow his own research‐defined best practices.) Another possibility, one you may not have even considered, is that the chat function could blow up with side conversations between those who are on video or audio, at the exclusion of the people in person. In other words, instead of one meeting taking place in the picture, three meetings occur.

If these modality fault lines go unchecked, it can completely derail the meeting. A meeting leader now has essentially three side conversations going on. These conversations may or may not be about the meeting. They may even not be heard (e.g. chat) or accessible to the leader (e.g. they are in‐person and not on chat). In this way, the communication flow that should be or had previously been collaborative becomes fragmented. What should have been a meeting where a final decision was to be made becomes a meeting that winds down with little or no decision occurring.

Getting out of these fault‐line‐created dynamics requires deliberate behaviors on the part of the meeting leader and/or attendees. For example, one could try to rein in the communication by saying something like, “Hey all, we really need to discuss the key issue here together.” Such statements reseal the faults and enable collaboration once more. We will talk more about specific strategies to combat the eruption of fault lines and other common hybrid meeting challenges in the next chapter.

For now, though, our goal is to enlighten you to this reality: the complexity of the hybrid meeting communication network introduces new challenges that are simply not present in the single‐modality situation. No wonder even seasoned facilitators tend to advise against even attempting the hybrid meeting, suggesting to instead make everyone come into the office or make everyone get on video in their office (or wherever they are).

As you've no doubt gathered, we politely disagree with this advice. Given what we've already shared about the potential for hybrid as shown by early adopters, leaders will want to rise to the challenge of running an effective hybrid meeting, which our data shows can be more inclusive and participatory than other meeting modalities. But where to start? It begins with a shift in mindset on the part of leaders and attendees, but it's the former who can set the tone for all by managing the conversation in a more proactive way.

Responding to the Changing Face of Participation in Hybrid Meetings

As very young children, we learned how to participate in the classroom: raise your hand and the teacher will call on you. The process was simple and overt with little nuance. In a business meeting pre‐COVID‐19, participation was almost as simple and usually involved speaking up: letting your voice be heard with or without hand‐raising, depending on how formal the meeting was. In a hybrid meeting, participation isn't quite as straightforward. It can and should take on new forms as we seek to capitalize on the different ways to provide input, to enter our ideas into the discourse, and to probe with questions that others may have overlooked. For the meeting leader of today, that multifaceted mélange of participation requires proactive facilitation beyond what may have felt necessary or even appropriate before.

Summit Leadership Partners founder Dan Hawkins has seen some executives demonstrate this first‐hand: “I've seen some CEOs who are very good at saying, ‘Let's hear from those on Zoom first,’ or after a decision is made, they'll go around the table and ask, ‘Can everyone live with this decision?’ and make sure that the people dialing or Zooming in have their voices heard.”

That level of awareness of who is in the room, virtually and physically, is a critical component to successful facilitation, and cultivating robust and even participation is imperative for meeting success (Yoerger, Crowe, and Allen 2015). However, a highly participatory meeting has benefits beyond just better meeting satisfaction and effectiveness. In one study, Joe and his team found that participation in meetings actually enhanced employee engagement, a particularly hot topic as businesses struggle especially to keep their remote workers from feeling isolated (Yoerger, Crowe, and Allen 2015). The science is clear: an engaged workforce is a high‐performing workforce (Mackay, Allen, and Landis 2017). So if the path to higher employee engagement runs through meetings that involve high levels of participation, then focusing on ways to encourage that seems like a wise use of time and resources.

A Quick Data Dive into Participation across Modalities

But what role does participation play in how attendees feel about the meeting itself, and does it make a difference whether they are showing up on video, by phone, or in person? Joe and his team decided to find out by asking those questions of the same people he has tracked over the past few years (2019–2021), and whose data we started reporting in Chapter 2. He wanted to know how important participation is across modalities for both meeting satisfaction and meeting effectiveness.

What constitutes participation can mean different things to different people, so before we share the data, let's offer a little clarification. Some might consider showing up and leaving the camera on while checking email counts as participation. Others might argue that participation requires saying something or sending a chat to everyone in the meeting.

The science of meetings defines participation as someone speaking up and sharing their ideas, opinions, and thoughts that are relevant to the meeting. Furthermore, this definition breaks participation into two types. The first type is participation that is induced or encouraged by the meeting leader – we call this “meeting participation.” The second type is participation that is self‐motivated by individual attendees – we refer to this as “individual participation.”

In general, all evidence suggests that more participation of both types is good for meetings and helps improve the overall feelings of satisfaction with and effectiveness of the meeting. However, we wanted to know which kind appeared to matter most across the different modalities. To do this, we correlated meeting participation and individual participation with both meeting satisfaction and effectiveness. In this case, we expected them to be positively related across the board. This means that if people engaged in more participation, they would also be happier with the meeting and the meeting would be more effective. These positive correlations are on a scale from 0 to 1, with higher scores indicating a stronger relationship. Here's what we saw:

Participation and Meeting Satisfaction Across Format
Format Style	Correlation of MP with MS	Correlation of IP with MS
Video	.47	.61
Face‐to‐Face	.47	.50
Hybrid	.22	.56
Telephone	.37	.32

Note: MS = meeting satisfaction, MP = meeting participation, IP = individual participation

Participation and Meeting Effectiveness Across Format
Format Style	Correlation of MP with ME	Correlation of IP with ME
Video	.38	.64
Face‐to‐Face	.70	.58
Hybrid	.38	.73
Telephone	.68	.63

Note: ME = meeting effectiveness, MP = meeting participation, IP = individual participation

From these correlations, we garnered some fascinating implications concerning participation in meetings, both overall and more specific to hybrid meetings.

Correlation Implication 1: Participation Plays a Huge Role in Meeting Satisfaction and Effectiveness across All Modalities

In all cases, across all formats, how much participation was encouraged by the leader as well as how much an attendee actually did participate were related to both meeting satisfaction and effectiveness. Participation is essential in every format and enables both the feeling of a good meeting (meeting satisfaction) and the logically driven actual good meeting (meeting effectiveness). So, both encourage others to participate and be sure to speak up yourself!

Correlation Implication 2: Individual Participation Is Even More Important in Hybrid Meetings in Terms of Meeting Satisfaction and Effectiveness versus Other Meeting Modalities

Individual participation appears to have a stronger relationship with both meeting satisfaction and effectiveness for hybrid meetings. In other words, self‐motivated speaking up has a greater impact than the meeting leader encouraging individuals to speak up. This actually is consistent with the notion that people in hybrid meetings are desperate to be included and to be seen. However, if they are able to make that happen for themselves, it appears to have more meaning for the outcomes of the meeting than if it is induced by their supervisor. Basically, if Joe makes it a point to speak up and share his ideas in the meeting, he's going to be more satisfied and feel the meeting was more effective than if he waited for his boss to call on him.

Correlation Implication 3: The Path to Satisfaction and Effectiveness for a Hybrid Meeting Starts with the Leader But Passes through the Individual Attendees

You may have noticed that in hybrid meetings, there appears to be a pretty small correlation between leader‐initiated participation and the key outcomes, but how much an individual participates – their self‐motivated efforts to speak up – has a much stronger correlation. Does this mean that the leader should give up because their encouragement doesn't matter to the key outcomes anyway?

Not at all. Looking a little deeper into the data, we uncovered an interesting finding. As leader‐initiated meeting participation increases, individual participation increases at a substantial rate. In other words, the pattern suggests that there may be an order in which this takes place in hybrid meetings. An effective hybrid meeting leader will first encourage participation, creating an environment in which attendees feel safe to speak up and do so. The end result? Attendees will believe the meeting was both satisfying and effective. If we were to illustrate this concept, it would look something like this:

What this shows is that higher individual participation leads to better meeting satisfaction and effectiveness, but the way to get higher individual participation is through the meeting leader, who sets the stage.

In order to achieve a satisfying and effective meeting, the leader must initiate the participation pathway by encouraging participation. The individual attendees reciprocate by participating and the meeting itself becomes more satisfying and more effective. Conversely, if the meeting leader doesn't encourage participation, individuals are left to their own volition to take part in the discussion. The likelihood that they will engage is drastically reduced – and the meeting outcomes themselves will suffer.

Assessing Meeting Participation in Your Own Organization

To help you with evaluating your own meetings, answer the questions in the checklist we provide here (or online at www.wiley.com\go\reed-allen\hybrid) as a way to diagnose if your recent meeting included adequate encouragement and personal participation.

Meeting Participation Checklist

Responsible Target	Criteria	Yes or No
Leader Behavior	There were adequate opportunities for attendees to speak during the meeting discussion.	[ ] Yes [ ] No
Leader Behavior	All meeting attendees were given a chance to participate in the meeting conversation.	[ ] Yes [ ] No
Leader Behavior	Attendees were frequently provided with moments in which they could contribute, if desired.	[ ] Yes [ ] No
Individual Behavior	I contributed to the meeting.	[ ] Yes [ ] No
Individual Behavior	I spoke up during the meeting.	[ ] Yes [ ] No
Individual Behavior	I provided at least one valuable insight in the meeting.	[ ] Yes [ ] No
TOTAL YES		___________

Now, as you fill this out and reflect on your meeting, don't feel too bad if you do not say “yes” to all of them. In fact, based on our data, meetings that are often rated as “good” usually only have four of these behaviors present. However, the key is that they have both leader and individual attendee behaviors present. So, aim to do all six, but definitely strive to get a mix.

Conclusion

This chapter has been a bit heavy on the science, but that was for good reason because the context should help shape your actions and approach as you navigate the hybrid meeting challenge. Now that you understand the theory, it's time to discuss more specific strategies you can employ to tease out participation from all, regardless of how they attend. Chapter 6 is chock‐full of tips and tricks that were culled from those who have had success in the hybrid meeting modality – strategies that you can apply in your own organization.

Chapter Takeaways

• Hybrid meetings introduce new complex communication networks with unique channels, flows, and patterns as people join using different modalities.
• While leading a hybrid meeting can be challenging, learning how to do it well is a worthwhile venture considering the high levels of meeting satisfaction and effectiveness hybrid meetings receive.
• The more people are encouraged to participate and the more attendees actually do directly impacts how satisfied people are with the meeting and how effective they consider the meeting to be.
• If someone in a hybrid meeting speaks up on their own, without being forced to do so, it leads to even better meeting outcomes.

References

1. Borgatti, S. P., A. Mehra, D. J. Brass, and G. Labianca. 2009. “Network analysis in the social sciences.” Science 323 (5916): 892–895.
2. Borgatti, S. P., M. G. Everett, and L. C. Freeman. 2002. UCINET 6 version 6.232: Software for social network analysis. Natick, MA: Analytic Technologies.
3. Borgatti, E. 2002. FREEMAN: UCINET VI for Windows. Software for Social Network Analysis. User's Guide.
4. Mackay, M. M., J. A. Allen, and R. S. Landis. 2017. “Investigating the incremental validity of employee engagement in the prediction of employee effectiveness: A meta‐analytic path analysis.” Human Resource Management Review 27 (1): 108–120.
5. Microsoft. 2021. 2021 Work Trend Index: Annual Report – The next great disruption is hybrid work – are we ready? Retrieved from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/hybrid-work
6. Sauer, N. C., A. L. Meinecke, and S. Kauffeld. 2015. “Networks in meetings: How do people connect?” In J. A. Allen, N. Lehmann‐Willenbrock, and S. G. Rogelberg (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Meeting Science, 357–380. New York: Cambridge University Press.
7. Straube, J., and S. Kauffeld. 2020. “Faultlines during meeting interactions: The role of intersubgroup communication.” In A. L. Meinecke, J. A. Allen, and N. Lehmann‐Willenbrock (Eds.), Managing Meetings in Organizations, 163–183. Emerald Publishing.
8. Yoerger, M., J. Crowe, and J. A. Allen. 2015. “Participate or else!: The effect of participation in decision‐making in meetings on employee engagement.” Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research 67 (1): 65.