Ask anyone working in a satellite office or working overseas how it feels to dial in to a conference room filled with colleagues and they’ll tell you it sucks. Dialing into a conference room, even with video, is intimidating because 1) you can’t see individual body language of people in the room and 2) you CAN see when people are not listening to you or having side conversations. Calling into a conference room immediately creates an US vs THEM scenario and this leads to distrust, siloed communication, and time-consuming office politics. In other words, it is a path to the dark side (happy May 4th).

Here is what to do instead. If you have some people in an office and some people working remotely, host your conference calls as distributed calls. Do not use the conference room. (You could use a room as long as everyone dials in from their computers.)

One new norm of Hybrid Working: Not every interaction should be hybrid.

Kyle Hegarty is a global business growth specialist based in Singapore who works with companies on growing their sales and expanding into new markets. His book, The Accidental Business Nomad: A Survival Guide for Working Across a Shrinking planet won the 2021 Axiom Business award and explores the good, bad and ugly lessons learned from global entrepreneurs.

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