The pandemic has changed work forever. Organizations around the world are adopting hybrid work practices, advancing “work from anywhere” policies, or asking employees to return to the office full-time and, consequently, losing their workforce. We need to reimagine everything from meetings to performance management as well as who is doing what work when and, most importantly, why a task is being carried out in the first place. Adopting a hybrid mindset is essential for leaders who are shaping the emerging reality of work.
What is a hybrid mindset?
Like many folks around the world, I have spent the last year leading remote teams – over the past few weeks I have needed to shift my thinking in order to flexibly connect in-office and remote teams working across mostly asynchronous schedules. For me, building a hybrid mindset means getting comfortable with being uncomfortable as the world of work changes – folks in possession of a hybrid mindset can shift seamlessly across modes of work as well as connect authentically with different cultures, styles, and preferences. While Tim Rettig’s Medium article focuses on intercultural understanding, as opposed to the broader discussion of hybrid work, he nicely captures how folks with a hybrid mindset work differently:
They are capable of switching back and forth between the common behaviors of each culture instantly. They are not stuck in one way of thinking, and are able to appreciate the world’s diversity of thought. They have the ability to integrate seemingly paradoxical ways of thinking and thus create new ways of thinking and behaving.
If hybrid work means incorporating a mixture of in-office and remote work in an employee’s schedule (and empowering employees to pick and choose when, where, and how they work), then a hybrid mindset means possessing the thinking and behaviours that make navigating in-office and remote work easy, engaging, and high-performing for everyone.
Here’s how to make it happen for your community.
Start with trust
Trust a cornerstone of every positive relationship. Teams with high trust outperform all others, as psychological safety, advanced by trust and vulnerability amongst teammates, enables team dynamics that are more efficient, productive, and engaged.
Having a hybrid mindset means trusting that your colleagues will complete the tasks they are assigned. If you are a manager, it means trusting that folks are working even if they are not sitting outside your office (one of the lowest performing employees I ever managed was in the office all the time). According to Adam Grant, trust is earned between colleagues. Folks can “choose to act trustworthy by demonstrating your integrity, benevolence, and reliability.” Grant notes that “it’s up to others to grant you trust—and it’s up to you to keep earning it”, so be thoughtful of how you are communicating with words and actions that you trust each other.
Learn how to learn (and unlearn)
The most important skill for individuals and organizations to build is the ability to learn. Activities that cultivate a growth mindset and enable continuous learning help individuals and organizations adapt amidst disruption while building new skills quickly (not to mention letting go of old ones).
Thriving in hybrid work models will require leaders to let go of past practices, such as in-person meetings and earning a corner office, and adopting new ones, such as mitigating distance bias during hybrid meetings or maximizing the chat function in Teams or Zoom. Most importantly, learning how to learn recognizes that we can develop and improve our basic abilities with the right amount of time and effort, which jives nicely with the ever-evolving requirements of hybrid work.
Develop digital dexterity
I think that the idea of digital dexterity is best captured by how folks participate in hybrid meetings, which are meetings where a part of the audience joins from the office and another part joins remote, enabled by audio and video conferencing technology with a strong focus on content sharing. Early in 2020, I oversaw the organizational training of Microsoft Teams for hundreds of employees who built careers on awesome in-person client meetings. During the same time my oldest son transitioned to Kindergarten learning that included Microsoft Teams. My observations were that the kids more intuitively grasps the digital dexterity required to navigate new technology (they definitely used the mute button more effectively), whether the “meeting” was fully remote or blended remote and in-person learners.
From an organizational perspective, digital dexterity means building the workforce capability of using multiple digital tools to get things done. For this to happen, it is critical that IT departments ensure that all equipment works properly and that leaders provide opportunities for team members to play with new platforms and apps.
For people leaders, it is important to be clear with employees that they must take ownership of their own digital proficiency as an essential ingredient in effective remote and hybrid work. Managers should consider the implications of coordinating a variety of unique humans with different tasks to accomplish across virtual teams by clarifying the technical and human skills required to make such coordination digitally dexterous.
Design with equity and inclusion
When organizations design experiences for historically marginalized stakeholders, everybody benefits. According to Fast Company’s Melissa Dreuth, we are not only reacting to the emerging reality of hybrid work models, but doing so amidst a once-in-a-century global pandemic:
The truth is, we’re all still trying to figure out the best way forward. We’ve been through an unparalleled and difficult event together, and part of creating an effective hybrid workplace will be responding with empathy. Managers should remember that employees are still reacting to and experiencing the effects of the pandemic—they will need to keep checking in on employees in the months ahead.
Leaders must recognize and promote folks who are rarely (or never) in the office. We should ensure that workspaces and work tools enable multiple modes of work, such as focus, collaboration, learning, socializing, and rejuvenation, and that they are easy to find and use regardless of ability. Leveraging asynchronous communication tools and introvert-delighting chat functions (or .GIFs) can help to engage people in meetings, as opposed to just talking … and talking … and talking … into screens all day.
Mostly, be compassionate about where folks are at these days and do whatever is possible to personalize the hybrid experience for them – doing so will require leaders to hold multiple perspectives and diverse cultures and styles simultaneously, which is an exciting challenge.
Encourage accountability
A recent Gartner study found that “truly hybrid workforce models enable employees to flow through various work sites — from remote solo locations and microsites of small populations to traditional facilities like offices and factories.” The study’s author, Jackie Wiles, suggests that “work gets done where and when is optimal to drive the highest levels of productivity and engagement”, which requires leaders who are comfortable holding people accountable for choosing how who does what work, where it happens, when it happens, and how it gets done.
These two examples from Wiles highlight how empowering employees to take control of their schedules and performance drives performance through accountability:
Allow team members to set their own work hours and workplace — as long as they fully participate in team activities and maintain appropriate work outputs. For example, team members can specify specific times for collaboration vs. individual work, but may need to prioritize overlapping time zones for collaborative work.
Let the team collectively determine response times with various collaboration modalities. For example, agree to respond within two hours to voice or chat but up to one business day for nonurgent emails. Agree that team members need not respond to nonemergency work matters outside of published working hours.
Holding employees accountable for their performance means focusing less on how much people get done (their productivity) and more on the quality and consistency of the desired outcomes they produce. This means tracking employee performance in relation to business objectives, evaluating collaboration across teams, or demonstrating behaviours aligned with a culture of trust and wellness.
Hybrid work is challenging. Adopting hybrid work models during a pandemic is really, really hard. Evolving how we think about work will give communities around the world a healthy chance of blending peoples worklife in ways that cultivate safety, connection, and joy.