I heard from someone yesterday who said they feel more included in meetings, now. Why? Because they are no longer the “odd person out” in meetings.

Have you ever had that happen, where you you call or video conference in to a meeting and all the others are in a conference room? You get left out of the conversation. There’s table chatter you can’t hear. All the voices aren’t clear. People look at each other but not you.

It’s unfortunate that it took our current situation to remind us of this principle, but here is what our standard behavior for meetings should be:

if you have one remote participant, setup the meeting for all to be remote participants

Don’t reserve a conference room. Have each participant join from their desks.

It establishes equity in the meeting, and makes sure that all can be seen, heard, and considered.