The votes have been cast and the results are in; hybrid work is here to stay. “Flexibility is the expectation, and increasingly the norm, for knowledge workers”, according to the Future Forum. In data released by the group, 78% of respondents want flexibility in where they work, and 95% want flexibility in when they work.
As a result, senior leadership in many leading companies are embracing hybrid work models in an effort to strengthen their talent strategy and in a bid to win productivity gains. These leaders are clear on “what” they want to do, but are less clear on “how” to do it. The art and practice of demystifying the “how” of hybrid is increasingly being pushed down to the managerial line level. This layer of management is often ill equipped to deal with the nuances of driving performance in a hybrid workplace.
In this blog post, we take a deep dive into SWAY’s newly redesigned “Leading Hybrid Teams” workshop, designed to empower managers to drive performance in their hybrid teams.
Hybrid is NOT Traditional Work, Virtualized
When the corporate world transitioned to a forced-remote model, we simply moved the traditional way of working over to Zoom, and companies started to think of how they would control their now-scattered workforce.
But hybrid work is not just a 9-5 from your home office (although that may be what works for many employees): it’s personalized, intentional, and built on trust.
Empathy-based trust
In the SWAY “Leading Hybrid Teams” playbook, we offer 1:1 questions to ask to gauge empathy and belonging on a team. Without empathy, your team will not be able to discuss their challenges or bring problems to their leaders openly. Instead, they’ll feel they need to keep their personal lives secret because their manager expects them to be available 24/7.
When a leader demonstrates empathy-based trust, they know their team members are able to finish a task by a deadline and also take their dog for a walk in the afternoon. The workers take ownership of their roles and find fulfillment because they are allowed to take the time they need for their interests or personal responsibilities.
Intentional Collaboration
If your team decides on a few in-person days per week or month, you need to maximize the collaboration work done on those days. These are projects or tasks that can only be done in a conference room with the team in one place.
When you are working co-located, but your team continually completes their work alone, at their own desks, you should reconsider the need for on-site work. Your team may actually work well as a remote-only team.
Personalized Work Experience
In a truly hybrid work environment, the team members choose when and where they work. In our sessions, we’ll walk through the unique needs of each teammate, whether they work better in a coffee shop or their home office and what tasks are best for those locations.
As a team, you can decide the best time for check-ins throughout the week and block your work time based on your responsibilities.
We’re personalizing their hybrid experience, so each person can discover how to sway between the different needs of work and personal life.
Practical, Resilient Leadership
Our training seminars help each team build a personalized playbook for their hybrid work environment. But how can you become a better hybrid leader today? Start with these few elements:
Asynchronous vs. Synchronous Work
One component of our Hybrid Team Training is learning the difference between asynchronous and synchronous work: asynchronous work is done best alone, without real-time feedback from teammates, while synchronous work is completed faster together. These are not necessarily related to location, but synchronous work would mean remote teams are online at the same time.
If the traditional office system (or hybrid 1.0) is your preferred method, you might think that all work is synchronous because everyone should be bouncing ideas off each other and getting inspired while they walk to the break room for coffee.
But we’re building a different system, where employees are fulfilled and inspired by their personal lives, not just their work lives. Those unique settings bring out truly unique ideas.
Watch for Proximity Bias
Sometimes nature works against us when leading a hybrid team: we are predisposed to trust the people we see often and in-person. As we’ve mentioned before, proximity bias served us well in a tribe setting, but it’s doing nothing for you in the workplace.
As a manager, you need to actively combat this way of thinking and choose location inclusion day after day. One way to shift your mindset is by becoming outcomes-focused instead of time-focused. When reviewing performance, always step back and look at their overall results: don’t evaluate someone’s performance based purely on your instincts, because you might be influenced by the perceived hours they worked in the office or their active status on Slack.
Build Your Single Source of Truth (SSoT)
Hybrid is more than a policy for a set number of days in the office: your specific team needs to decide the best way to establish a single source of truth. For example, you may choose a project management software with clear assignments and due dates, or your team needs Slack channels for daily check-ins or particular project updates.
Whatever you choose, your team needs to communicate fully on that platform so remote teams are not left out of the conversation. For example, if brainstorming or problem-solving happens in-person, offline, one article in Forbes suggests summarizing the conversation in the team channel, so no remote team member is out of the loop.
Communication Builds Trust
At SWAY, we teach teams to be “writers first” because communication is the only way to build trust on a hybrid team. With flexible schedules and a mix of on-site and off-site employees, teammates need to explain their process clearly in writing to the rest of the team.
Sometimes this can feel like too much communication, or you might feel like you’re micromanaging, but this strong start builds the foundation of trust and better work. No one wonders where the others are in the process or if their tasks take longer than they should. When teams communicate often, they are more likely to ask for help earlier instead of waiting until they have an even bigger problem.
Train Resilient Managers
If your company wants to do hybrid work better, get in touch with SWAY to schedule a training seminar for your managers. Learn how to create the future of work today while developing fulfilled workers bringing their best every day.