By Carmel Silverosa, Develop People.
As we come out of the latest lockdown on the back of the vaccination process, there is hope life can finally return, albeit to a “new” normal. I find my clients are now talking about how they can best navigate the return, whilst recognising many of their employees are now in very different situations and mindsets.
Clients have described how some of their employees have expressed a desire to continue working from home, particularly if they have health issues or limited childcare, others are desperately keen to get out of the house and back to their desks, and for others a mix of both home and office working is preferred. After a very challenging year for everyone, most clients are seeking to consult with their employees, rather than enforce a blanket approach to the return.
However, having teams working in a “hybrid” environment will create new challenges, which could be even more demanding than the last year of remote working during the pandemic. This time around the feeling is that many employees will be demanding more from their employers and managers, as life has changed during the pandemic leading to searching questions about life purpose, work/life balance, stress-related issues, childcare matters etc, so returning to the way things were done in the past will not be a viable option.
So, I am wondering what do managers need to do to become effective hybrid leaders in the new normal? Many schools of thought are emerging, and I have selected 3 tips as a starting point for introducing hybrid leadership into the new normal workplace:
1) Show you care
In the Harvard Business Review book Coronavirus: Leadership and Recovery, the authors state that in times of crisis, the most important job for a leader is to take care of your team. They believe effective leaders will seek to understand their team’s individual circumstances and distractions and find ways to engage and motivate them.
The authors also describe the importance of connecting with individual team members by reaching out daily for a “pulse check” either at the office or on 1:1 video calls and suggest managers encourage people to share their concerns along with work issues. Managers can also use this 1:1 time to pay attention to how the team member is behaving, in order to pick up any sign of stress or burnout.
In these stressful times, people want to feel they are being cared for and managers need the ability to lead with compassion by listening to concerns, offering support and showing they are committed to trying to create the best situation work for everyone.
2) Develop new practices
Professor Linda Hill, author of Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader, highlights the need to talk openly to the team about new work practices. Hill’s advice is “have an explicit discussion about how and when you are going to communicate, who has access to what information, who needs to be in which meetings, and who needs to be in on which decisions” and she describes this as “an agreement on norms for communicating”.
Hill also suggests managers talk to their team about working hours, on the basis some individuals will prefer flexibility in their hours, whilst others will want more structure with set times for the start and finish for the day. Many employees have reported working longer hours during the pandemic and getting “zoom-fatigued”, so ensuring regular breaks is also an essential part of that team discussion.
Over the last year, the pandemic has demanded new working practices and many people will want to continue working in different ways, so employers and managers need to remain open-minded and be prepared to discuss the approach to work in this new environment.
3) Ensure fairness
In a hybrid workplace, managers need to work hard to ensure fairness and equitable practices, in order to avoid a natural bias towards those who work in close proximity. Liane Davey the author of You First: Inspire your team to grow up, get along and get stuff done, suggests establishing the basic ground rule that all team meetings take place using video call technology – even though some people may be together in the office, to ensure everyone is on the same level.
Pre-pandemic, those working from home often reported feeling like second class employees, but more equality will have been established with remote working as the norm for office workers over the last year. However, those who are in the office need to be aware of who they spend their time with and notice if it is with others who they work alongside, as it is so easy to fall into old work patterns. Managers can simply remind themselves and their team members to ask, “Who needs to be involved in this issue?” before holding a discussion.
The hybrid workplace will clearly be a challenge, but it can also be seen as a positive opportunity to create new more flexible ways of working, that can better support the business and its employees in a rapidly changing world.
References:
Coronavirus: Leadership and Recovery by Harvard Business Review
Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader by Linda Hill
Inspire your team to grow up, get along and get stuff done by Liane Davey