At SWAY, our speciality is working with leaders and managers to create effective flexible work environments. We find that we hear the same struggles at all levels, at all companies, even from tech companies with every tool they could need.
Managers feel under-prepared and under-resourced for the transition to flexible work.
Managers are unsure how to drive culture and measure performance in a world where teams gather sporadically or may go months without meeting eachother in person. With all the collaborative software on the market, they are not confident with leading collaboration in a virtual, flexible environment. The few days they have in the office together aren’t used well. They struggle to consistently align priorities across a hybrid or remote team.
If you’re a manager looking to support flexible work, here are a few shifts you can take to see real improvement in your teams performance.
#1 Writer-First Mindset
To fully support and embrace flexible work, managers need to shift into a Writer-First Mindset. Documenting a process in writing and communicating that to your team is the key to asynchronous work. Being clear, explicit, and intentional in the way a leader communicates with their team in a flexible work environment is one of the most important tactics a leader can develop. Managers must demonstrate to their teams the importance of writing frequently, clearly, and explicitly when documenting, storing, and sharing information.
In a truly flexible work environment, work must be picked up at different points throughout the day. Team members need to see exactly where the others left off when they sit down to work. The writer-first mindset makes that possible.
#2 Human-Centered Model
Companies that claim to be flexible may have a trendy tech stack that allows teams to work at any time, but it actually ends up causing them to work at all times.
Human-centered models rely less on company policies, requirements, and specific platforms. Instead, they start with the humans at the center of work: your team.
At SWAY, we create human-centered models by creating the conditions that allow people to personalize the flow of their work. We start by suggesting each team set the rules for themselves: do they need to meet in person at all? Maybe once a week, instead of the corporate standard of 3 days in-office, is all they need to collaborate effectively.
Maybe chat tools are not working, and important information is getting lost in the feed. Each team should evaluate how they work, discuss their own boundaries, set personal office hours, and communicate those clearly to the rest of the team.
Start with the humans, not the technology.
#3 Effective, Respected Boundaries
In order for teams to bring the best of themselves to their workplace, they need to have time to themselves. Each person needs the space to be creative and pursue their own interests. Instead of forcing an always-on culture, encourage your teams to stick to their set online hours. Lead by example by only working during your set hours and staying offline during vacations.
Remember—this requires clear communication throughout the team and relies on the writer-first mindset to be truly effective.
#4 Trusting, Inclusive Relationships
When we train teams in flexible work environments, the most challenging component for managers is learning to truly trust team members they never see in person. They don’t believe the team is actually working when they’re at home, or they don’t want to micromanage by asking a million questions.
As a flexible team, you need to practice Location Inclusion. This is the coachable positive mental model where you see no difference with respect to place or time in how a person creates value. We are naturally inclined towards Proximity Bias, and we need to actively reject those biases to build trusting relationships with our flexible teammates.
#5 Empowered Mind
Inspired by The Space Between and crafted by Tracy Litt, The Empowered Mind Model is a tangible tool to empower you with how you respond and act in each moment of the day. When managers and team members work from an imprisoned mind, they move from stimulus to reaction immediately, allowing small incidents to impact their feelings of worth or value.
An Empower Mind experiences the stimulus (an event such as a misread email), then take a moment or a space to choose how we want to respond. The Empowered Mind doesn’t bypass emotion but instead allows you to control your circumstances.
We can’t control the world around us, but we can control how we respond.
In a flexible work environment, where we may miss context or body language in our daily interactions, intentional responses become more important than ever before.
An Immediate, Proven Strategy
Employees are demanding flexible work, and managers need to be confident as they approach Hybrid 2.0. For years now, SWAY has been selling this product: we give you the training you need to transform your company into an effective, flexible workplace with happy hybrid teams. Learn more about our product (supported by data) by setting up a consultation.