Six people sit around the table in the office. Five more join on video, small faces on a screen at the end of the room. You are running the meeting, and you already know how it usually goes. The people in the room talk to each other, someone makes a joke nobody remote can hear, and the people on the screen give up and start answering email.
This is not because anyone is rude. It is because a room naturally favours whoever is in it. If you are chairing, balancing that is your job.
Start with the sound. Before the meeting, join from your own laptop in another room and listen. Can you hear the far end of the table? If not, move the microphone or ask people to move closer. People forgive a fuzzy picture far more easily than voices they cannot make out.
Put the agenda and any document you will discuss in the meeting chat, and share it on screen rather than holding it up or pointing at a whiteboard. Anything only visible in the room might as well not exist for half your audience.
Go to the remote people first. When you open a topic, ask someone on the screen for their view before the room starts. In a discussion, the room fills every gap within a second, and someone on a slight delay never finds a moment to speak. Asking them by name gives them one.
Watch the chat as if it were a raised hand. Read questions out loud, credit them to whoever asked, and answer them.
Say decisions out loud and write them down where everybody can see. Side conversations at the table often contain the real decision, and remote people find out about it a week later.
Some teams solve this by having everyone join from their own laptop, even those in the office, so everyone has the same small square. It feels strange at first. It is usually fairer.
At the end, ask the remote people one question. Did you get to say everything you wanted to? Their answer will tell you how well you ran it.
– Asael Shinder
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