A colleague recently asked me this question:
How do I manage a quick check in during a Zoom meeting when some people are co-located in one (physical) room, some are in their offices, and some are on the phone? And I have a paper list of names, but not sure who’s actually attending? We’ve met everyone and they all know each other, but I want their voices in the virtual room.
Blended meetings are tough. It’s a lot easier to pay attention to someone right next to you than to a voice on the phone. Setting the tone with an inclusive check in is a great way to bring the remote people into the room—or bring the in-room people into the virtual setting, depending on your point of view.
Photo by Benjamin Child on Unsplash
Check In Ideas
- Ahead of time, ask an in-room partner to bring in a bunch of interesting, small objects. Have each in-room person select an object. Ask each remote person to look around their space and select an interesting object. For the check-in, each person shows their object to the camera or describes it aloud and says why it connects with them at this moment.
- Have each person describe the local weather where they are and then share their internal weather state (stormy, calm, sunny, frozen…). The in-room group only needs to describe the outside weather once for everyone there, and then each person can share their individual internal state.
- Ask each person to use a marker to draw a circle on a scrap of paper, then fill it in with eyes, nose, and mouth to create a simple drawing of their mood. Under the circle, have them write their name. Each person holds up the drawing to the camera, says who they are, and says something brief about their mood drawing.
Beyond the Check In
It’s also essential to make sure that the remote folks are never overlooked throughout the course of the meeting, so anything you can do to give the in-room people a way to imagine something real about the remote people’s surroundings will help.
This is one of my favorite ways to bring remote people into a room where several others are gathered. I’m assuming that the facilitator is in the room with some participants and other people are connected from their individual locations, but this works if the facilitator is remote and has an in-room partner, too.
- Bring a stack of table tent cards to the meeting and set them out for the in-room people to write their names on.
- Recruit an assistant in the room to be your virtual liaison. As people are getting settled, have your assistant get the remote people’s names on additional cards. Make sure that each remote person is represented on a separate tent card.
- Set the remote people’s tent cards in a ring in the center of the table, or place them between other people’s chairs, so they are present at the table.
- When you go around for check ins or other round-robin responses, include the remote people by reading their names from the cards.
- For groups that meet this way routinely, you could assign a remote card to each in-room person and have them be accountability buddies with their remote counterpart. Buddies are responsible for ensuring their remote person gets copies of documents during or after the meeting (texting images of visual captures at critical points or getting the remote buddy’s ideas onto sticky notes, for example).
If I’m remote and there are a bunch of remote individuals plus a room full of people attending the meeting, I might rename the ‘room’ in my list of participants to include the names of everyone present there. For example:
‘Meeting Room 101’ shows up in my software’s participant list. Bob, Doris, Sara, and Michael are present in the room. I rename the ‘participant’ to ‘Bob, Doris, Sara, Michael’ instead of ‘Meeting Room 101.’
Obviously, this has limitations if the number of co-located people is large. In that case, I try to get someone in the room to tell me who is there and keep me informed as people arrive and leave, and I use an old-fashioned list on paper.
What are your favorite ways to be inclusive in blended meetings?