Top 5 Leadership Mistakes in Hybrid Work Models

We have seen a massive shift in what ‘work’ means since early 2020. Instead of being a place that we go to, it is now something that we do from wherever we can manage to do it. Working this way allowed businesses to stay functional and stay afloat when the lockdowns brought the world to a standstill. However, over the past several months, remote working models have transitioned from being a safety net to becoming a mainstay. In fact, the majority of both C-suite executives (85%) and employees (71%) in the UK believe hybrid working will make their organisation more resilient and better equipped to survive future economic cycles.

Some of the world’s biggest companies have taken notice. At IBM, the frequency in which an employee is required to go into the office will be determined by work deliverables or the need for team collaboration, while Ford’s office workers will need to be on site for certain meetings or projects. Other companies like Uber and Citigroup are requiring a specific number of days in the office, typically two to three per week, rather than a full return to work or totally remote model. A few employers such as Salesforce and TIAA will place workers into categories or tiers based on how they will work, ranging from fully remote to flex to fully in-office. Top tech companies such as Google, Microsoft and Apple are embracing flex as their future and professional services firms such as Deloitte and PWC have empowered employees by providing them with a choice. Deloitte has given it’s 20,000 employees the choice of when and where they work and PwC has introduced what they call ‘the Deal,’ a flexible working solution that enables employees to set their own schedules provided that 40-60% of their time is spent alongside colleagues at its offices or at client sites.

This way of working recasts the corporate HQ as a destination (‘hub’) to which employees will travel for collaboration and creative meetings, rather than the base from which they should work every day. The shift to hybrid work is more than a logistical challenge, and there is no single blueprint for success in these models. Companies need to start thinking about hybrid work as an opportunity for transformation and reinvention and by doing so recognise that a fundamental change in leadership mindsets and  skillsets will be required to continue to provide the best employee and customer experiences and to innovate to new required operating models.

Rialto are working with leaders and their teams to create, maintain and enhance high performance through combined best practices from pre-pandemic leadership and new remote working and hybrid leadership. Our work has identified five key mistakes leaders tend to make when adapting to these models, which ultimately lead to friction, lack of results and engagement and retention challenges. We have outlined these areas of concern below to help guide you through your own transition.

Mistake #1: You aren’t managing collaboration or workflows effectively

From the examples above, it seems as though teamwork and collaboration will be the primary function of the office for many organisations and their staff. This is a smart approach, as it gets everyone in a room together so nothing gets missed and no one feels left out. But not every business will adopt this approach, and teams will likely have to navigate working across locations.

This might mean that those who are not on site feel left out of discussions or miss information that their teammates in the office can easily and casually exchange. It may also mean that work is unevenly distributed with the bulk of the burden landing on either the in-office staff or remote team members.

At first, this may be easy to overlook so long as work is getting done. But over time, it can have negative effects on productivity, effectiveness, and team morale. It is likely to become grating if team members feel excluded or overworked. As a result, leaders should encourage their team to follow meeting etiquette where video calls are prioritised over phone calls and remote workers are given equal opportunity to contribute. Extra care and attention should be paid to making sure that remote staff are kept in the loop when it comes to the casual discussions that happen naturally in face-to-face settings. If something is decided during one of these talks, then a call or message should be sent right after informing the rest of the team of any changes or updates. It may seem tedious, but it ensures everyone has the right information at the right time, regardless of where they may be working from that day.

Another option is to keep the office as a hub for in-person collaboration and allow remote time to be spent on independent work. Save team meetings, strategy sessions, brainstorms, or collaborative activities for the days of the week where everyone will be together in the same place. Use that time as productively as possible to align the team and ensure everyone has clear marching orders to take away and work on while they are remote. Communication will still need to be a major focus here, but it is much easier to navigate this format than constantly trying to loop everyone in.

Leaders also need to take care to ensure that work is being evenly distributed. You should not assign work to people simply because they are in the office that day, or alternatively because they are working remote and you feel they need to be ‘kept busy.’ Hybrid model or not, a good leader should always prioritise the workload based on who has the right skills and capabilities first and foremost. You should not be enacting any sort of preferential treatment for those who came into the office, nor using that as a reason to overload them. As a Leader, you need to take care to ensure that the right work is making its way to the right people in order to ensure the right outcomes are achieved in a timely manner.

Leaders in particular need to be more visible than ever. The easiest way to ensure you remain accessible is to run regular check-ins. Frequent contact via video technology is an effective way to maintain your visibility, and provides your employees with the opportunity to ask questions and keep the lines of communication open and transparent. Communication will be crucial for the success of these models, and should be a top priority for all.

Teamwork supports connections between colleagues via the opportunity to discuss projects,

share ideas, network, mentor, and coach, for example. Two-thirds of leaders report that

these kinds of collaborations have enabled high performance. As leaders look to maintain high performance, they will need to design and develop the right spaces for these small interactions to take place, and adapt their culture to support it.

Mistake #2: You’re sacrificing culture

It is easier to create and foster team relationships and culture when your entire staff is in the same place as one another day in and day out. The pandemic will have diluted company culture, removing the chance for certain rituals, routines, jokes and valuable ‘water cooler moments.’ Moving to hybrid working is a challenge because it requires acceptance from leaders that the future will be culturally different to what it was. That said, it also creates an opportunity to review what aspects of a culture are important to keep and which no longer serve the organisation well.

To shift to a hybrid or even remote work model does not mean that culture has to die, and many make the mistake of either doing too much or too little to adapt to this change. On one end of the spectrum, we had those organisations who overloaded their staff with Zoom quizzes, virtual happy hours and online activities when the pandemic first broke out, which was nice at first but eventually became a bit annoying for staff. At the other end, there are organisations where staff’s only interaction with one another is for work-related purposes and there is no real sense of community.

Leaders now need to find a happy medium that fosters those bonds between colleagues but does so in a way that feels natural for this type of working model. It might be as small as starting all meetings with having everyone share an anecdote from their week just to get people talking or arranging in-person events periodically just to get everyone together and mingling. What works best will differ based on your organisation, but the important thing is to meet people where they are and do what feels natural. If you aren’t sure what that is for your organisation, then talk to your people. Make them active participants in determining what your new culture will look like. Not only does that help you to find what works, but it also fosters deeper investment into the organisation and a wider sense of community. The best organisations are those that empower their people to be part of the decision making by being truly inclusive to create a winning culture.

Mistake #3: You’re still in panic mode

There has been a lot of uncertainty in the current circumstances, and many leaders have had to scramble to adapt quickly to changing conditions. That has led to a lot of trial and error, which has proved successful in some cases. Experimentation is a good and necessary step to change, but if you are constantly trying something new without learning from it or acting in support of a solid strategy, you are doing it wrong.

Haphazard experimentation worked fine at the start of the pandemic when everyone was just trying to stay above water, but now is the time to be strategic and deliberate. We shared our advice for maximising the value of your people with strategic workforce planning in this blog, but leaders should be focused now on creating long term plans for the business now that the situation is more stable. Whereas remote working started as a means to an end to facilitate business continuing during the pandemic, leaders would be naïve to continue viewing it this way. It is time to see remote and hybrid work for the strategic and human-focused value they can provide to the business moving forward, rather than just serving as a life raft in tough times.

That’s not to say that experimentation should be scrapped; rather, it needs to be intentional. A failed experiment does not mean you need to immediately launch into another. Take the time to learn and assess. What went wrong? Why didn’t it work? What can be improved going forward? How do attitudes need to adjust? We are no longer operating in panic mode, and it is time for boards to continue making strategic decisions about the future of the organisation that go beyond the end of the pandemic period. Begin to lay solid foundations for your bigger picture objectives and future proof for technologies, changes in consumer behaviours, or shifts in the marketplace. That might mean beginning the process of upskilling your staff or deciding what your organisation’s permanent relationship with the office will be.

This is the time to determine and understand best practice in the new normal. Keep your focus on the future and on the steps you can take now in order to meet your objectives for long term success. Take risks, learn from your team, learn from outside your organisation, and formulate a strategy to achieve something that matters.

Mistake #4: You aren’t taking a people-centric approach

As we plan for the future, we have the many lessons of the pandemic to take along with us. One of the major takeaways of this past year is the importance of people-centric leadership. This past year was a challenging, humbling, and humanising experience for most of us. Not only did the pandemic bring widespread loss and hardship, we saw major social issues come firmly into focus and businesses take public stances.

For example, sustainability has been a hot button issue for many years but became even more prevalent after the pandemic revealed just how much our previous day-to-day activities impact the environment. A study by KPMG showed that 89% of CEOs want to lock in the sustainability and climate-change gains they’ve made during the pandemic. Hybrid working may be the answer to achieving environmental goals, as cutting commutes or switching business trips to online interactions can significantly reduce a company’s carbon footprint. However, organisations must also consider that many large office buildings are more energy efficient than residences, but for workers at organisations where climate change has been cited as a priority, it is going to be harder to justify the five-day-a-week office model as being aligned with carbon goals without a clearer accounting of exactly how that is being measured. It will be a fine balance for leaders to manage the expectations and priorities of their people while continuing to deliver value.

Beyond catering to what their people care about, businesses need to also begin catering to and caring for their people more. The employee wellbeing implications of COVID-19 will be with us for some time. This may require supporting employees experiencing poor mental health, addressing specific concerns and anxieties about the return to the workplace, supporting staff through personal loss, and mitigating the impacts of ‘Long COVID.’ In the longer term, hybrid working may support improved wellbeing through reducing commuting time, providing employees with more autonomy around their schedules, and allowing extra time for health and wellbeing activities. But every pro has its con, and there are also issues of work like balance involved with remote work.

Leaders will need information and guidance on ensuring inclusion and diversity, effective induction, and employee engagement with a distributed team. More importantly, there needs to be an empathetic understanding of the challenges staff face day-to-day.  The way in which managers monitor performance, engage their team, and approach mental wellbeing are all areas which need to be developed for hybrid working. Understand that staff may be dealing with issues that go beyond their work responsibilities, and work to be empathetic and as accommodating as is appropriate. Your team are human beings with needs, emotions, values, fears, and concerns. While the nature of your relationship is to serve the business, that does not mean that you need to remain cold and detached. In fact, the most inspirational leaders are those who show compassion, respect, and vulnerability with their people. The human face of business will need to take shape over the next few years.

Mistake #5: You’re resting on your laurels

One of the worst things you could do as a leader in a time like this is to settle. Although leaders may have developed new skills for managing a remote workforce over the past, hybrid working brings unique challenges that are different from both fully remote and predominantly office-based models. The leadership styles that worked five years ago, a year and a half ago, or even six months ago might not carry over to hybrid work models.

Organisations will need to put enhanced learning and development in place to ensure effective people management. We already touched on the challenges of navigating dispersed teams and appropriately managing workloads. But another area that may require rethinking is assessment and expectations. High performing leaders need to invest time into themselves and their teams to shift behaviours. Some examples of this include honing and improving soft skills such as communication and mentorship. It also requires an honest and potentially harsh examination of both the positive and negative impact your behaviours can bring forth. Avoid micro-managing, set specific metrics for productivity, encourage open and empathetic communication, and provide actionable feedback. Understand that this is a transition for everyone involved, and seek out constrictive criticism so that you can grow and improve.

Performance management is an area worth reassessing for the hybrid environment. Instead of assessing employees based on time in the office or in virtual meetings, managers will need to adjust to assessing performance through outcomes, contribution, and value generation. Managers will not be able to monitor every aspect of an employee’s work when they are working remotely, nor should they try. Instead, create new systems for ensuring that objectives are met and impact is created without sacrificing the autonomy and flexibility of hybrid work models.

While we may no longer be in panic mode, the rise of hybrid is still a new chapter that will take some adjusting to. These mistakes are common, but very easy to correct once you are aware of them. The key is to listen, learn, and adapt. Remain strategic, yet people centric. Above all else, understand that this new phase will likely require you to personally reflect and make changes to your own style and approach.

If you would like additional support in strengthening your capabilities as a leader or aligning your team for the world of hybrid work, get in touch with our team regarding our range of Leadership Development or Culture, Digital and Business Transformation services.

With the COVID 19 vaccine rollout providing hope and early promising results, it seems that we are closer to a return to a new normal than we have been for over a year. This positive outlook means that it is safer for both individuals and businesses alike to start seriously considering and planning for what comes next, what this time has meant for businesses, and what needs to change in order to suit new ways of living and working. One major topic that needs to be covered as part of the discussion is purpose.

This past year has brought out the human side of business. It has led many of us to revaluate what is truly important and presented many organisations with challenges to their purpose statements. But what does purpose truly mean for businesses, leaders, and their people in 2021 and the near future? How do you transfer it from words into a real actionable leadership strategy?

Defining Purpose

Fundamentally, many businesses exist to make a profit, but profit should not be confused with purpose. Purpose is the starting point that led to the founding of the business. Think of it as the the ‘Why’ at the centre of Simon Sinek’s ‘Golden Circle’ model. Purpose looks beyond profits to the long-term impacts you would like to have on your customers, staff, market, community and the environment.

‘Purpose’ and ‘values’ are often misunderstood, due to being used interchangeably or variably in different contexts. Your purpose is why you are in business, and your values are the guiding principles and standards for behaviour. Think of purpose as the big picture roadmap for the direction in which you would like the organisation to progress.  Values are the compass for how to get there. In the Sinek model, values sit in the ‘How’ ring. How do you behave to ensure you are living out your organisation’s purpose? How does the organisation work towards this vision each day?

Why It Matters

Purpose and vision exist on an individual level as well. Just as you have your reasons for pursuing a particular career path and have a set of moral principles that matter to you, so will the people you do business with. Millennials and Generation Z are more socially conscious than previous generations, and as they begin to make up larger portions of the workforce and consumer market, these young people want to buy from and work for companies whose purpose they resonate with and whose values they share.

Think of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. At the top of the triangle after all the basic and security needs are fulfilled, we start to look at topics such as belonging, esteem, and self-actualisation. Purpose provides unification, motivation, inspiration, and helps individuals tap into these higher level needs to get more out of their role.

Employees turn to purpose as a way of bringing meaning to their work and to understand the contribution they are making to the organisation and the world around them. Research has found that these employees who find meaning in their day-to-day work feel much more satisfied and engaged. Employees who feel connected to their organisation’s purpose have a deeper sense of belonging and are therefore more motivated in their roles and are easier to retain.

The intrinsic motivation which purpose can provide to staff has become incredibly valuable during the hardships of the past year. The changing business landscape has forced many businesses to rethink how they can incentivise their employees, especially in situations where financial rewards are not practical or possible. In some cases, the fulfilment of doing meaningful work and contributing to the bigger mission and vision may be enough to encourage staff to remain with the organisation.

Walking the Talk

For this to have any affect at all, businesses and their leaders need to ‘walk the talk.’ Your purpose is mere words on a page until there is action behind it. For example, a business can say that its purpose is to create a fairer world for all, but this means very little if its board comprises only one predominant demographic, and if its female staff are not paid the same as their male counterparts. Clearly, a lack of diversity at a senior level and unfair compensation practices are in direct conflict with the organisation’s mission of fairness.

This is a very serious and big picture example, but infractions against a company’s values and purpose can occur daily in smaller instances. Authenticity matters. If a leader is to serve as a champion for the organisation’s mission and purpose, they need to ensure that their words match their actions. If your company has outlined its values, you need to ensure that both you and your team are meeting those standards of behaviour. If you state that you value inclusion, you must ensure that you give every member of the team a voice. If you value respect, it’s important that you are respecting your team’s boundaries and opinions, and that they are showing the same respect to one another.

This sends a clear message to your team that the company is serious about what it stands for, and thereby helps to build their faith in the organisation. Staff will find it easier to buy into a purpose if they see it being lived out every day. Leading by example is critically important to build this type of trust and to reap the productivity, motivation, and retention benefits that ensue.

Putting this into practice post-COVID will be challenging for many leaders. Reinforcing purpose on an individual level and creating that sense of alignment and unity is more difficult whilst staff continue to work remotely.

While it is essential for staff to have a clear idea of where the organisation and its leadership stands in terms of values and purpose, it is equally important that each individual team member understands the role they play in that. This understanding of individual impact will help staff find their place within that bigger picture.

Operationally, this links back to the standards set by management. Leaders need to continue holding their team to those same behavioural principles even when outside of the office. Examples would include allowing everyone a chance to speak on video calls or monitoring team correspondence to ensure that teams maintain respectful for one another.

At Rialto, we work closely with teams to help staff gain an understanding of the impact they make on the organisation, and to understand where they can improve. Often, issues can be swiftly resolved through better communication from leadership. Managers need to have conversations with their staff about the purpose of the organisation, the contributions each team member makes towards furthering that purpose, and the values and standards of behaviour that every person in the organisation is held to.

One of the clearest indications of walking the talk is a company’s willingness to invest in its own people. Taking the time to ensure that everyone is aligned, on board, and motivated is the best way of ensuring that a company is living out its own purpose. Leaders should ensure that they are authentic in their words and actions and are leading by example. Hold staff to the right standards, but make sure they each understand what contributions they can be valued for, how to make those impacts, and how this all fits into the greater purpose of the organisation. That way, you build a team that truly believes in the work that they do, and who are willing to stand by the organisation, its customers, and its wider stakeholders.

Growth is the number one priority of CEOS in 2018 and 2019 and, to help achieve it, they are shifting their focus to embrace digital business, according to a recent study.

The Gartner 2018 CEO and Senior Business Executive Survey found that as simple, implemental growth becomes harder to achieve, CEOs are concentrating on changing and upgrading the structure of their companies. This also includes forming a deeper understanding of digital business.

In total, 460 business leaders in organisations with more than $50m in annual revenue were qualified and surveyed.

The findings show IT remains a high priority, coming in at third position, with CEOs highlighting digital transformation, in particular. Workforce has risen rapidly to become the fourth-biggest priority, up from seventh in 2017.

The number of CEOs mentioning workforce in their top three priorities rose from 16 per cent to 28 per cent. When asked about the most significant internal constraints to growth, employee and talent issues were at the top.

CEOs cited lack of talent and workforce capability as the biggest inhibitor of digital business progress.

“Although growth remains the CEO’s biggest priority, there was a significant fall in simple mentions of it this year, from 58 per cent in 2017 to just 40 per cent in 2018. This does not mean CEOs are less focused on growth, instead it shows that they are shifting perspective on how to obtain it,” said Mark Raskino, vice president and Gartner fellow.

“The ‘corporate’ category, which includes actions such as new strategy, corporate partnerships and mergers and acquisitions, has risen significantly to become the second-biggest priority.”

Survey respondents were also asked whether they have a management initiative or transformation programme to make their business more digital. The majority (62 per cent) said they did. Of those organisations, 54 per cent said that their digital business objective is transformational while 46 per cent said the objective of the initiative is optimisation.

In the background, Gartner reports, CEOs’ use of the word ‘digital’ has been steadily rising. When asked to describe their top five business priorities, the number of respondents mentioning the word digital at least once has risen from 2.1 per cent in the 2012 survey to 13.4 per cent in 2018.

This positive attitude toward digital business is backed up by CEOs’ continuing intent to invest in IT. Three-fifths (61 per cent) of respondents intend to increase spending on IT in 2018, while one third (32 per cent) plan to make no changes to spending and only seven per cent foresee spending cuts.

The 2018 CEO survey showed that the percentage of respondents who think their company is an innovation pioneer has reached a high of 41 per cent (up from 27 percent in 2013), with ‘fast followers’ not far behind at 37 per cent.

“CIOs should leverage this bullish sentiment by encouraging their business leaders into making ‘no way back’ commitments to digital business change,” added Raskino.

“However, superficial digital change can be a dangerous form of self-deceit. The CEO’s commitment must be grounded in deep fundamentals, such as genuine customer value, a real business model concept and disciplined economics.”

Research finds that four-fifths of workplaces don’t have a culture of experimentation

Innovation is the lifeblood of business and in the era of digital disruption it is also critical to survival for some organisations. Many leaders may vaunt it as one of their values and genuinely believe they promote it but new research suggests otherwise.

According to a study carried out by RADA in Business, four-fifths (81 per cent) of workplaces don’t have a culture of experimentation. Moreover, while one quarter (24 per cent) reckon their workplaces are desperately in need of new ideas and fresh thinking to overcome current problems, only one fifth (21 per cent) of employees believed anyone was interested in listening to their ideas.

Worse still, 16 per cent of workers said that any new idea would actually be treated with suspicion and criticism, while 15 per cent believed their business leaders actively discouraged innovation. It is far removed from the vision espoused by many leaders of their workplaces enjoying a collaborative and open communication culture where innovation is championed.

In response to this so-called “innovation gap”, RADA in Business, the commercial subsidiary of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art which provides communication skills training for corporate individuals, has been working with leading UK companies to transfer dramatic techniques, such as play and improvisation, from a theatrical setting to a business environment.

Kevin Chapman, director of RADA in Business, is concerned to see how many employees feel that creativity and innovation aren’t encouraged in their role “especially when there are simple techniques available to help companies to support and tap into the power of imagination for solving problems or developing new ways of working as a team,” he says.

Chapman recommends that businesses need to create space for people to play with new ideas “without being overly critical”. “Adopting an attitude of enthusiastic curiosity towards every idea that you come up with defies your critical voice and may lead the way to new innovations,’’ he continues.

The research found that government and local government workplaces are the settings where people find it hardest to think creatively (21 per cent). It also reveals that those working in IT (29 per cent) and financial services (26 per cent) find it hardest to make their voices heard, with companies often dominated by a few “loud voices”.

Interestingly, the workers who feel most able to think creatively are those working in teaching and professional trades (such as builders and plumbers), who are four times less likely to struggle with innovation than those in governmental jobs.

Whatever the sector though, it is essential that all leaders create time and space for innovation and put mechanisms in place for ideas to spring forth. Even if they don’t appear to be game-changing initially, they could provide the spark of inspiration for someone else. Adopt the mantra that all ideas are worth hearing about.

A true culture of innovation demands leaders to be more risk-taking, experimental and collaborative but above all, they must recognise the crucial part innovation plays in their organisations’ future rather than merely paying lip service to it. The research also stands as evidence of companies still not listening to their people, which has an extremely detrimental effect on motivation and ultimately recruitment and retention.

And with the most creative and innovative brands of the 21st Century also among the most successful – Apple, Amazon, Google, Tesla, Netflix et al – how much more tangible evidence do business leaders need before they elevate a culture of innovation to the top of their corporate agenda?

As the global economic crisis rumbles on with continuing uncertainty and no light at the end of the tunnel, many employees are weary, worn down, battered and bruised.

They may no longer be inspired by their job but trapped by the economic environment, creating mixed feelings towards their employer resulting in them operating below their potential.

The motivation they feel is negative – pushing themselves out of a fear of what might happen, terrified of losing their job if they do not achieve targets and results. This type of motivation is unsustainable and leads to under performance, burnout and eventually the loss of skilled workers.

The challenge facing leaders is how not only how to engage workforces and get the best out but how to keep them focused, motivated and, ultimately, in the right mindset.

Organisations are constantly seeking new ways to ensure their management and employees are more productive and their businesses are more profitable.

Many companies have created rigorous strategic plans that don’t come close to delivering the required outcomes. According to research, the average team achieves only 63% of the objectives of their strategic plans.(Source: Harvard Business Review 2005).

The key issues of a high performance team include, how well the team communicates, aligns itself around top initiatives, creates short term/long-term plans and holds themselves accountable to deliver the required results.

Rialto approaches team development and effectiveness in the context of an organisations vision, mission and business goals. We build leadership and management capability at all levels of the organisation ensuring that unique team attributes and skills are aligned towards achieving desired business results.

We utilise models and practices that successfully address teamwork, emotional intelligence, networking, influencing others, improving team performance and managing difficult conversations through effective coaching  and talent assessment techniques.

It is understandable that many UK leaders will have started the year with a sense of trepidation. The impact of Brexit looms large and will come more sharply into focus when Article 50 is triggered. But business leaders cannot afford for 2017 to be just about planning to leave the EU. There are too many other factors to take into consideration if leaders are to future-proof their organisations and ensure their work-forces remain motivated and productive and able to compete on a world stage.