Top Tips for Managing a Hybrid team

As we move into a world of working from the office and from home (or soon to be anywhere!), we’ll need to adapt our leadership styles again to a new way of working. I think we’ve all kind of got used to managing our teams virtually but it’s a whole different ball game again as we move to hybrid working.

So, here are my top Do’s and Don’ts:

Do:

• Be inclusive – consider that everyone is working differently so you can´t just talk to the person who happens to be in the office on the same day as you, you need to consider how to engage and involve all members of your team

• Communicate well – easy to say right? But what do I mean by this? Depending on if your team are working in the same timeframe or not you will need to consider when and how it is best to communicate with your team. And it will be different for different purposes. For example if you need to disseminate some information that is one-way, use email. If you need interaction, consider whether a group chat or a group call is the best use of time.

• Be transparent – be open with your team about your own work style. If you prefer to be in the office, that´s ok just make sure that the team know it is not expected of them. Similarly, if you prefer to answer emails late at night or early in the morning because that works for you, either schedule them to go in working hours or again tell your team about your expectations on when they will read and reply. Even better – add your workstyle to your email signature.

• Make virtual meetings the standard, with face to face meetings as and when required.

• Connect with your team individually – get to know them, what makes them tick, what do they like to do outside of work. The best leaders are those who know and care about their people regardless of where they are working so ensure that you build this in, so your interactions are not all about work.

Don’t:

• Hold hybrid meetings with some people in the room and others via video conference or worse still conference phone. Having been in many of these meetings in my career I can tell you that they absolutely are not effective. Those people on the call can’t hear what’s going on in the room and those people in the room forget there are others who aren’t there. Just don’t do it. Trust me.

• Forget the shadow that you cast as a leader. People look to you to demonstrate the right behaviours so as well as shouting about the good behaviours you also need to call out the bad ones within the team.

• Measure hours or time online as a measure of success. Set clear deliverables and measure your team based on their outputs.

And finally remember that hybrid leadership is new to most of us, there will be times (just like when you were in person) when things go wrong. That´s ok. Call it out, learn from it and move on.

If you´d like some help for your leaders in navigating the new world of hybrid and remote working, drop me a message and we can have a coffee and a chat. I used to lead an HR team that was distributed across the world from Brazil to Australia so I know through my own experiences what works well and what doesn´t and I’m happy to share my stories (the good and the bad!)