5 tips on how to lead a hybrid team
The future of collaborative work will invariably be hybrid. The advantages for employees and companies are obvious: high flexibility for employees with increasing productivity in the company. Leadership trainer Mario Müller gives 5 tips on how you can promote good collaboration in a hybrid team.
The new coronavirus normality has changed our working world. Some employees are working from home, while others are in the office. Depending on the project, tasks and distance of the team, the ratio of on-site and remote collaboration can vary.
Leading these so-called hybrid teams is a new challenge for managers.
Why hybrid working?
There will be no return to traditional face-to-face work, says the latest Microsoft Work Trend Index (5). This is because the benefits of mobile or virtual collaboration for employees and productivity are too great to give up. On average, Germans worked 24 days longer per year during the coronavirus crisis - namely in addition to the time they would otherwise have spent commuting on the road (6). However, direct interpersonal contact is also essential for building trust and loyalty to the company. This is why the future of collaborative work will invariably be hybrid.
The question of the right ratio of mobile and office work cannot be answered with an off-the-cuff "50:50" or "60:40" without causing new problems. The proportion must be flexible and depend on individual preferences, the field of activity and the team. At the same time, it must be adaptable to changing requirements.
5 tips on how to lead hybrid teams
To help you make this adjustment and skip key mistakes, here are our five most important tips for hybrid collaboration:
1. increase the networking density
The bonding forces that prevent your employees from leaving at the first attractive offer from the competition are created through contacts and informal exchanges. To prevent people in mobile or home offices from being left behind and becoming emotionally disconnected, they need regular video calls and conferences where they can see and hear each other.
Also set up online team events where private topics are also discussed. A private bond with the company can only develop if people there are also interested in private people and their lives and not just their work. Set up a virtual coffee break in the weekly schedule where employees from the office and home office can meet regularly and exchange ideas informally so that there is no rift between those present and those absent.
2. ensure a good flow of information
When all employees were working from home, the information channels were clear because everything took place virtually. Now, office grapevine, coffee-table conversations and information from video calls and (virtual) team meetings are mixed together. The risk of important information being assumed but never reaching its destination is now particularly high. Introduce a status round in your meetings in which key information is repeated and recorded so that nothing gets lost.
Be inspired by the Spotify method. Here, people are not only networked by team, but also by project, expertise, skills and interests. This allows experts to exchange ideas and keep each other up to date, prevents silos from forming and strengthens the sense of unity.
3. reflect on your management style
Managers who rely on control, direct management and micromanagement have had a particularly difficult time during the crisis - and they will find it increasingly difficult in the future to assert their personal need for control against the interests of employees and the company. Why is this the case? Relevant companies solve problems that are too big, unmanageable and complex for individual people. That's why there are teams that pool their expertise. In a good culture, this creates synergy and emergence effects that allow the team to perform beyond what the members could have achieved by working side by side (7). The performance is provided by the teams.
In addition to their own work as a specialist, the manager is only responsible for enabling the team to be as autonomous and self-determined as possible. The team members need the competence to make decisions quickly, independently and informally, because control slows down the process incredibly and interrupts the team's dynamic. In any case, a lack of trust and micromanagement mainly lead to work to rule, internal resignation or the departure of people who want to make a difference.
So if you haven't already done so, transfer as many skills as possible to your team(s), overcome your individual fears and ego, and see how other leaders inspire their teams to peak performance in an energy-saving way.
Relationship-oriented leadership and autonomy promote team cohesion
In a study published in the Journal of Service Management, Dr. Silke Bartsch and Ariana Huber, together with colleagues, examined leadership behavior and its effects on employees in service companies in times of the corona crisis (8). The survey showed that task-oriented, but especially relationship-oriented leadership behavior maintains employee performance and that individual autonomy in the workplace and team cohesion have a mediating effect in this context.
The trend is also continuing in post-corona times: The understanding of leadership is increasingly understood as "cooperation-promoting action" that focuses on balance and, above all, creates a framework for productive cooperation. Trust your employees to be willing and motivated to achieve common goals. Because experience shows that this is the case. Talented, motivated people do not leave companies because too much is demanded of them, but because they are not allowed to contribute enough.
4. create shared values
Does your company also have such a board with values and guiding principles in the entrance area? How many of your employees have read through this board? Have you? Why should they - it would be a waste of time. Within a very short time, every newcomer will realize how the company really works. Yes, a cornerstone of team cohesion, whether hybrid or not, is shared values. But these cannot be dictated or simulated. Honest respect, appreciation, active listening, constructive collaboration on the ideas of others and standing up together when mistakes are made strengthen cohesion.
But they are the result of actions, not lip service or dusty badges. And these actions only happen where they are relevant if they are based on an attitude. Behavior comes from attitude. Values as decoration are immediately exposed in a crisis - in other words, when it counts. Managers are often said to be role models. This is a false concept. Managers are role models. What they exemplify is what others look at and draw their conclusions from.
Reflection: Am I a good role model?
Teams that are no longer cohesive due to remote working and digitalization most likely already had problems before working from home. Collaboration consisted of working through tasks independently; there was no real teamwork. Managers need to find ways to reinvent and develop the team. How to do this is easy to explain and difficult to implement.
When building culture, the most important rule is: look at yourself! Do I deliver what I demand? Do I demand something from myself or from others? Do I also question myself or only others? What is my true opinion of others? How do I talk to people and how do I listen to them? Attitude is a very worthwhile investment, like brushing your teeth every day.
5. introduce the retrospective
Many managers are now very open to change. As a manager, you can boldly take new steps with your team and find out together what impact certain measures have. Make use of the creative freedom you have. Experiments show that agile islands and value-based leadership can be established even in huge, sluggish hierarchical structures. Go into retrospective mode with your team at short intervals, for example every month, to look back together on the past few weeks.
It is also important to ask what needs individual employees have for personal exchange and contact, and to balance the form of cooperation accordingly.
Go into the retrospective with the following questions:
- How have we experienced the past few weeks of our collaboration?
- What has proved successful? What do we keep?
- What do we let go of?
- What are we adding?
Summary
In the inevitable future of hybrid work and global competition, culture and the strategic shaping of interpersonal factors are of existential importance for companies. Relationships must be actively built, trust must be earned through attitude-based, consistent behavior, employees must be given autonomy and participation in shaping - for productivity, and because otherwise they will leave.
Exemplify values, invest persistently, give people opportunities to form relationships and influence content and ways of working together. In modern companies, everything is flexible and agile - only relationships and cohesion remain and make companies crisis-proof and efficient.
Mario Müller is a leadership trainer, author and conference facilitator specializing in neurology and systemic improvisation. He has taught between Chicago and Taipei and works with small and large companies.
Sources:
(1) https://www.wired.co.uk/article/burnout-moment
(2) https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2021/07/PD21_343_12.html
(3) Work Trend Index Annual Report 2021, Edelman Data x Intelligence
(4) Trendence Professional Barometer 2021
(5) Work Trend Index: What we can learn from the past year for the working world of the future (as at 25.8.2021), Microsoft Work Lab: Work Trend Index 2021
(6) Germans are slightly below average when it comes to commuting times and costs, Markt und Mittelstand (as of 25.8.2021), marktundmittelstand.de
(7) Cloud training (Mario Müller, 2014)
(8) Leadership matters in crisis-induced digital transformation: how to lead service employees effectively during the COVID-19 pandemic, Silke Bartsch (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München), Ellen Weber and Marion Büttgen (Universität Hohenheim) and Ariana Huber (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München), bwl.uni-muenchen.de
