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 15 minutes. They missed all the good stuff.” And we (Joe and Karin) would argue further that those who actually were in the meeting the entire time likely missed all of the great input that could have been provided by that remote person as well.
With today's video collaboration platforms, getting into the meeting might be easier (or at least the meeting organizer will be visually notified if someone is in the waiting room), but that is only half of the battle. Being seen and heard will not only require virtual attendees to keep the camera on, but will also call for additional effort from all other attendees and leaders of meetings in order to be aware of who is in the room, and to assist in amplifying voices that might otherwise be lost. This chapter is devoted to explaining how to create a more inclusive meeting culture that will set the stage for everyone to feel comfortable and confident adding their voice to the conversation.
In this chapter, we will explore:
Speak‐up culture, in general, refers to a healthy and supportive work environment where employees feel free to share their ideas, concerns, and opinions without worry or fear of retaliation (Finnie 2019). In many cases, this idea of a speak‐up culture is associated with something negative, like feeling comfortable enough to call out a toxic company culture and environment, but it is also associated with simply feeling like it's okay to contribute your ideas in a meaningful way. That type of speak‐up culture means sharing who you are and feeling that what you bring to the table is important, valued, and even encouraged.
Perhaps it's no surprise, given the topic of the book, that one of the best places to witness a speak‐up culture is in workplace meetings. In fact, one could argue that every organization has a certain level of speak‐up culture, but it can have both positive and negative connotations. Some value it to the point that it truly enables a participative work‐meeting environment. Some fall on the opposite end of the spectrum, where speaking up results in retaliatory or penalizing behavior.
In a meeting, when people feel that they can speak up and share their ideas, we describe that behavior as voice behavior. “Voice behavior” in meetings refers to the degree to which the meeting leader and attendees:
While voice behavior involves the manager or meeting leader calling on people, it also involves meeting attendees responding to those efforts by both speaking up themselves and encouraging others to do so as well. Speak‐up culture and voice behavior in meetings can't be dictated by just the leader. It is a shared responsibility between meeting leaders and attendees.
In collecting data for this book, we asked about people's voice behavior and learned something rather fascinating concerning participant behavior in hybrid meetings. The questions focused on the degree to which employees felt as though they were encouraged by the meeting leader to voice their ideas, opinions, and thoughts and to what extent they actually did so. Voice behavior was measured on a 7‐point scale, with 0 being no voice behavior and 7 being extremely high levels of voice behavior in the meeting. Take a look at the data by meeting modality in the following table.
| Voice Behavior in Meetings – June 2021 | |
|---|---|
| Format Style | Voice Behavior |
| Hybrid | 5.54 |
| Face‐to‐Face | 5.16 |
| Video | 5.16 |
| Telephone | 5.03 |
What does the data tell us? First, our survey respondents are doing a pretty good job of encouraging and engaging in voice behaviors. In fact, they're doing better than what we might have expected, scoring above the mid‐point of the scale in all meeting formats. Second, and what we alluded to previously, our early adopters of hybrid are once again setting the stage for success in their meetings by engaging in the highest amount of these behaviors compared to their peers in other meeting modalities. In other words, the meeting leader and attendees are supporting each other and enabling a greater speak‐up meeting culture in the hybrid setting than in the other settings.
Combining what we learned from the data about high levels of participation in hybrid meetings in Chapter 2 with our findings regarding voice behaviors, there's a considerable amount of hope generated by these early signs of effectiveness, which should be an impetus for us to all capitalize on the promise they hold.
Cultivating a speak‐up culture in meetings requires the cultivation of a closely associated scientific underpinning of that environment: psychological safety. According to the originator of the term, Dr. Amy Edmondson of the Harvard Business School, “Psychological safety is a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes” (Impraise 2021; Edmondson 1999). You might be thinking, “Um, Karin and Joe, I don't see much of a difference between this and a speak‐up culture.” You aren't too far off, but there is indeed a key distinction between the two.
Speak‐up culture is a shared value among team members and manifests as behavior. Psychological safety is an individual's belief that it is safe to speak up and allows that behavior to happen. Sure, we use the behavior as an indicator of psychological safety, but that neglects the fact that some people may feel safe to voice their ideas but choose not to do so anyway.
For example, introverts may not offer up their ideas as openly as some of their more extroverted colleagues. They may want to test their ideas, think about them more, see them alive in the world, and then point people to them. That's typical introverted behavior. It doesn't mean that an introvert feels like they are going to get punished for not speaking up – quite the opposite. It often means that they simply prefer to take more time to contemplate their own ideas before sharing them with others. They are less impulsive and more contemplative in their voice behaviors. As this illustrates, seeing voice behaviors and witnessing a speak‐up culture does not necessarily equate to a psychologically safe work environment – it is more nuanced than that.
As Dr. Edmondson would argue, psychological safety is a team sport. Although psychological safety is an individual belief, it takes cooperation, collaboration, and intentional behaviors on the part of leaders and peers. For example, for someone to feel psychologically safe, they probably have to see their leader talk about the importance of speaking up, witness them calling on people on their team during a meeting, and see them listen to ideas without dismissing them out of hand. For a person to feel psychologically safe, they probably also need to see their peers support each other as they share ideas, no matter the quality or originality of the ideas raised. To shore up this ethos even more, this openness to new ideas without judgment needs to be seen both inside and outside workplace meetings. Therefore, attendees can help the team develop and maintain psychological safety by engaging in an intentional approach that involves actions taken before, during, and after a meeting. We dive into these behaviors in the next section.
If meetings are a team sport, all attendees need to step up their game to be seen and heard. Many of the behaviors we suggest attendees display have value in any meeting, but they become even more necessary, and their absence more glaring, the more remote the meeting and the more complex the communication environment. However, here we will focus on some best practices for attendees to adopt before, during, and after a hybrid meeting.
If a meeting leader has followed best practices, an agenda has been created and socialized to all attendees, but all of that work is pointless if the attendees ignore the information. That agenda allows attendees to prepare for what will be discussed. (Leaders get extra points if they have actually sent out the agenda to attendees well in advance and asked for input on what is or should be included.) While a quick glance at the agenda is perhaps the minimum effort required, attendees may find they need to do one or more of the following:
The key here is that unprepared attendees are less able to participate and feel more put on the spot when called upon. The richness of the discussion is lessened by their lack of legwork beforehand, so it is important to take this pre‐work seriously.
Once the meeting is underway, attendees have significant influence over how much participation takes place and by whom. After all, while the meeting is taking place, speak‐up culture, voice behaviors, and psychological safety can all be displayed to promote participation. Allow us to highlight some specific strategies attendees can use to enhance their own participation as well as enable the participation of others.
Now that you are familiar with some tried‐and‐true behaviors for enabling participation, it's time to evaluate how well you have displayed them. Think about your last meeting and answer the questions in the following checklist or online at the website (www.wiley.com\go\reed-allen\hybrid).
Checklist of Attendee Behaviors for Enabling Others
| Voice and Encouraging Behavior | Yes or No |
|---|---|
| 1.Did an attendee use a procedural statement? | [ ] Yes [ ] No |
| 2.Did an attendee ask for honest feedback from others? | [ ] Yes [ ] No |
| 3.Did an attendee share an observation? | [ ] Yes [ ] No |
| 4.Did an attendee praise a colleague and invite their input? | [ ] Yes [ ] No |
| 5.Did an attendee prompt a colleague to share an idea? | [ ] Yes [ ] No |
| 6.Did an attendee use the chat to ask a question? | [ ] Yes [ ] No |
| 7.Did an attendee build upon another person’s idea? | [ ] Yes [ ] No |
| 8.Did an attendee identify their assigned tasks and those of others? | [ ] Yes [ ] No |
| 9.Did an attendee ask a question of other attendees? | [ ] Yes [ ] No |
| 10.Did an attendee use supporting statements following another attendee’s participation? | [ ] Yes [ ] No |
| TOTAL YES | ___________ |
This checklist includes actions that the science of meetings has shown to empower inclusive participation in meetings. You may not have indicated “yes” for all of them for the last meeting you attended or led, but that's okay. The key here is to get you and others thinking about how to ensure that an inclusive environment exists. So, take this checklist as a starting point of known effective behaviors, and then keep adding to it as you discover new ones occurring in your own hybrid meetings.
Often the end of a meeting is the beginning of a series of actions that need to be taken by individual attendees. For example, the assigning of to‐do's helps to build psychological safety, because it sets clear expectations of what needs to happen next. Good attendees will remember to do the action items assigned to them. The best attendees will also help others remember. In fact, in the case of interdependent tasks, the best attendees will get their work done so others can build upon it. Doing so leads to mutual trust within the group, and people will begin to feel seen, heard, and validated.
Ultimately, building trust among hybrid attendees is critical in the hybrid work environment. The physical disconnect between team members because of the lack of colocation can lead to feeling greater distance psychologically, resulting in overall lower team cohesion. However, when people follow through on assigned tasks, other members of the team notice, and this helps bridge the physical gap when team members see work being done regardless of location. In other words, doing what you say you're going to do to support the success of the team helps the hybrid team even more than one might expect.
Even if your team has fully embraced a speak‐up culture and has made it come alive in a hybrid meeting, there is another barrier that stands in the way of everyone's voice being heard: a fear of public speaking. It doesn't have to be a formal presentation that paralyzes someone. It can simply be saying something in front of any group of people. In fact, research indicates that people fear public speaking more than they fear even death (Burgess 2013).
Meetings are not typically public speaking situations, but they still can strike fear into the hearts of many who would rather do anything other than raise their hand to verbalize their thoughts to add to the discussion. The hybrid or virtual meeting can heighten that anxiety, according to Matt Abrahams, the author of the best‐selling Speaking Up without Freaking Out: “I do think it's more difficult for people to speak up during virtual or hybrid meetings because we just have fewer specific, nonverbal cues. It's harder to know when to speak, how long to speak, or if people are following along.”
Consequently, even with the best of efforts being made by the leader and other attendees to encourage participation by all, some may never feel comfortable sharing their input, which is to their own detriment as well as that of the group. “People might perceive that person who doesn't speak up as nervous, unknowing, or unprepared,” says Abrahams. “Fundamentally, we miss out on different ideas and opinions. If diversity and inclusion are the goals, then we need people to feel comfortable speaking up.”
Two structural meeting factors can influence how intimidating the environment might seem: size and distance. In this context, “size” means how many people are in the meeting. Often a meeting involving more than 10 people is less collaboration‐based and more presentation‐oriented, which is likely to feel more like a fear‐inducing, public speaking event. The larger a meeting gets, the greater the public speaking fear that can paralyze people from speaking up. The other contributing structural meeting factor, “distance,” refers to the relationships existing within the group. It's often harder to speak to a crowd of strangers than to people you know who already value you and your opinions. That gives you a buffer to their immediate reactions. When you are speaking to strangers, it's harder to read how they are responding to you because you don't have a backlog of previous experiences with them. It's also more difficult for them to read you for the same reason.
So, what can be done to ease public speaking anxiety in a hybrid setting? First, we recommend a practice called cognitive reframing or a “shift in mindset” (Besieux, Edmondson, and de Vries 2021). Cognitive reframing is the practice of simply thinking about the situation that's causing stress or fear and considering what is the most likely worst outcome. Typically, you realize that the worst‐case scenario is one that you can live with and likely will not happen anyway.
But let's get more specific with respect to meetings. In an article in the Harvard Business Review (2021), Tijs Bisieux, Amy Edmondson, and Femke de Vries suggest three shifts in mindset related to speaking up. Allow us to share them in brief:
While these cognitive reframing concepts can enable meaningful collaboration in any meeting modality, they can be especially valuable in hybrid or virtual meetings when public speaking anxiety can be magnified. Here are a few additional strategies suggested by Matt Abrahams, an expert in this area:
The bottom line is that the best solutions and ideas are often an amalgam of all of the opinions and comments offered by the group. Attendees have a duty to their coworkers to add their points of view to benefit the team as a whole.
Understanding the importance of creating an inclusive meeting environment where everyone's input is valued sometimes doesn't go far enough. Often, it requires a codifying of the practices, processes, and ideals that the team agrees to adhere to in their meetings. In the next chapter, we will walk you through the creation of a team meeting agreement and share the key ingredients that make it actionable.