Half of our leadership team is in the office while the other half is fully remote, and our weekly hybrid Level 10 Meetings™ feel highly disjointed, with the remote leaders often ignored during fast-paced IDS® debates. How do we structure a hybrid Level 10 Meeting™ so remote participants have equal presence and impact?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Hybrid meetings are notoriously difficult because the physical room naturally dominates the conversation. Side conversations, subtle body language, and immediate physical presence make remote participants feel like second-class observers, which completely breaks the collaborative power of the Level 10 Meeting.

To solve this, you must adopt a remote-first mindset. If even one person is remote, the entire meeting must be treated as a remote meeting. This means that every single person in the physical room must log into the meeting software on their own laptop with their own camera enabled. This places everyone in the same sized digital box on the screen, leveling the playing field for visual cues and eye contact.

The audio in the physical room must be immaculate. Use a high-quality omnidirectional microphone so remote team members can hear every word without straining, and enforce a strict rule of no side-chattering in the room.

The facilitator must also deliberately call on remote participants first during the IDS portion of the agenda. Before making a decision or moving to the next issue, the facilitator should explicitly check in with the remote team members to ensure they have had their say. By structuring the technology and the facilitation to favor the remote experience, you eliminate the physical room bias and keep the entire leadership team operating as a single, cohesive unit.