Hybrid meetings quietly disadvantage the people who are not in the room. Someone walks in and the remote attendees never learn who it is, a person joins a call and says nothing for 10 minutes, a screen gets shared with 40 browser tabs and a 9pt font, and the meeting ends with no record of what was agreed.
None of these are big failures on their own, but together they add up to confusion, repeated conversations, and decisions nobody can find later. A handful of small habits fixes all of them.
When some attendees are physically together and others are remote, the remote people cannot see who is present. Anyone speaking is just a disembodied voice.
Whenever someone joins the physical room, say who they are and why they are there. If a person walks in halfway through, pause and introduce them.
Letting an unnamed voice contribute for 20 minutes while remote attendees try to work out who is talking.
❌ Figure: Bad example - Remote attendees are excluded and are reluctant to disagree with someone they cannot identify
"Just so everyone online knows, Bob has joined us in the room - he owns the payment gateway integration."
✅ Figure: Good example - Everyone knows who is in the conversation and what they are responsible for
Joining silently is immature.
Say hello as soon as you join. If the discussion is mid-flow and interrupting would be rude, drop a quick message in the meeting chat instead, so people know you are there.
The same applies in reverse - let people know before you leave a group call.
Often additional people are added to a call that were not included in the additional meeting and do not have the full context.
When adding these people to a call. It's polite to explain what the meeting is about and why they are there as soon as they arrive.
Scenario: Bob Northwind joins the call…
Bob: Hey guys, Bob here
Dave: Hey Bob, thanks for joining. We're adding you in as you've approved feature X, and we'd like your input on a similar feature Y
✅ Figure: Good example - Giving context to people who join the conversation
The person sharing has full context. Everybody else is seeing the screen for the first time, often on a laptop or a phone.
For more on this, see Do you share screens when working remotely?.
Before you stop sharing, you should always announce to the team beforehand.
This leaves the team enough time to decide whether they need to make final comments before we end the share.
I'm ending the screenshare now.
❌ Figure: Bad example - This doesn't give the team time to react
Hey team, just ending the screenshare. Is that OK? [Pause 1 sec] [End share]
✅ Figure: Good example - The pause gives the team enough time to react
Save the last 2 minutes of the meeting and hit record. Do this before anyone drops off, then record a short verbal summary of what was decided and who is doing what.
Because the summary is spoken while the meeting is still recording, it becomes part of the transcript. AI meeting tools can then turn it into notes, and tools like YakShaver can turn it straight into a Product Backlog Item (PBI) - so the action item exists in the backlog before anyone has left the call.
Ending the meeting with "great, thanks everyone" and relying on people to remember their actions.
❌ Figure: Bad example - Actions are forgotten and the same discussion happens again next week
"To summarize - I'm going to hit record [Pause] we talked about Option A which is simple and Option B which is complicated
We are going with Option B, Bob is raising the PBI for the API change, and Jane is confirming the budget with the client by Friday."*
✅ Figure: Good example - The decision and the owners are captured in the recording and can become PBIs automatically
See Do you use AI for meeting notes? and remember to ask for consent to record.