Look at any hybrid working poll on LinkedIn, and you will notice how many employees appreciate the benefits hybrid working can bring.
The good news is many employers agree with this sentiment, as we can see from the uptake of the hybrid working model.
In a recent McKinsey survey, 90% of organisations said they want to combine remote and on-site working as part of their long-term plans.
The hybrid working model has advantages for everyone, including increasing employee satisfaction and productivity and reducing company costs.
All good, though, this way of working will require both managers and leaders to adapt their style, because hybrid working does change workplace relationships.
Hybrid means many more conversations that involve team members in a meeting room and others joining via a video call. This leads to a very different experience for the participants.
Remote workers are left wondering about what conversations are happening before and after the on-site meeting; they feel there might be things they miss, or they don’t feel part of.
Data from the Office for National Statistics support fears among employees that remote working means they’re more likely to be ignored regarding bigger projects and promotions.
Overworking is more of a risk. A study by Robert Walters found that 53% of business professionals working remotely felt overworked, 39% ‘exhausted’.
Office dynamics have never been easy, no matter where your team reside, full-time in the office, remote or hybrid.
How the best employers have dealt with the inevitable, and in many ways just healthy, day-to-day conflicts have been first to build a culture of trust.
Especially relevant in our virtual world.
When employees conduct most of their communication through a screen, words and their intended meaning can easily be lost in translation.
Add into this Carl Jung’s psychology about an individual’s style and strength filtered through lack of in-person contact, and you can understand why more attention needs to be given to how you lead your hybrid or fully remote team.
Earlier this year, I wrote a series of articles giving context to Patrick Lencioni’s work on a team’s five dysfunctions, providing insight into how to focus your development as a leader.
He starts with the first issue being a lack of trust, leading to increased conflict. You can read both posts on conflict here and trust here.
Let’s start by refocusing on trust.
How To Focus on Building Trust
Trust can be built in many ways, and a series of straightforward exercises will work.
A ‘getting to know you exercise’ is simple and easy to achieve as a first step. Create a list of easy-to-answer questions that cause curiosity rather than embarrassment.
This can be made fun online too.
For example, these could include where they were born, some of the unique challenges they have faced, their favourite hobbies or sports team, their first job and their worst job.
Their favourite holiday destination, the number of siblings they have, their favourite type of food, and something they are proud of achieving.
An uncomplicated process like this opens the conversation every time.
You can move on from this to understanding team members’ different profiles. One recognised method that does this well is Insights Discovery Team Development.
Based on the psychology of Carl Jung, Insights® Discovery starts with a simple and memorable four-colour model to help your team understand:
- their style
- their strengths and critically when it comes to trust,
- the value they each bring to the team.
The team at Zestfor are trained facilitators in this process, and when our clients come to us with the challenge of a team where trust is missing, this is the first intervention we recommend.
Leading on from this, experiential team exercises, strengths identification, and 360 feedback are foundational ways to develop and improve trust.
Build trust, and you will be surprised how this improves underlying conflict in your team. Though what if there is an underlying conflict that has been developing over time? What are your options?
Navigating Through Conflict
Conflict can be cut off at the pass. It often occurs as a sign that good leadership practice hasn’t happened before.
Follow a logical leadership process, and you might be surprised how conflict disappears.
For example, a team vision and ‘this is the way we work’, feedback and coaching with regular review meetings are necessary. You can’t expect someone to follow the company road map if they haven’t been given one or aren’t reminded what it is and how it works.
Especially if there has been no official communication about the move to hybrid working, how and why it is now part of the company vision, and what this now means for them and their career progression.
It is easy to assume this has been communicated clearly, though how is this being reinforced and revisited consistently?
Our employees need clarity and guidance, particularly in our uncertain times. You might be surprised how the current rise in inflation and fuel costs is putting some of your team into a stress cycle which can also spill over into creating conflict in a workplace setting.
As a leader, it is important to be super vigilant about your team’s ‘temperature’, which is easy to spot in a virtual setting.
Lateness, lack of attention to detail, strange intermittent internet connections and camera breakdowns.
In other words, our energy, words, and action give away that something isn’t quite right in our world.
Move into coaching mode as a priority to understand the situation rather than moving into performance management when it might not be appropriate.
How We Can Help Develop Your Leadership Skills
Our range of leadership development programmes focuses on supporting you to improve your leadership capability and productivity, especially in our current turbulent environment. This will lead to better relationships and staff retention, which is particularly critical, as I alluded to in this post.
Click here to find out more or call one of our team on 0845 548 0833.
Until next time,
Julia
About Zestfor
Zestfor specialises in developing leadership Training programmes and resources scientifically tailored for technical markets – including Pharmaceutical, I.T., and Life Sciences.
Our blend of in-classroom, online, and virtual live-stream delivery methods will engage and assure even the most introverted team members from the first meeting – whether face-to-face or virtually. So, to have a brief chat, call us on 0845 548 0833.
