5 ways to build hybrid team trust

With some people in the office, some working from home, some working from hubs or other locations, the leadership juggle of a hybrid team is real. 

It’s bringing plenty of new challenges for leaders, and many of them aren’t obvious or visible challenges. 

Take psychological safety and trust. 

🥏 How do you know you have it with your hybrid team? 
🥏 How would you know if it was fractured? 
🥏 What can you do to repair, build or remedy trust and safety in a hybrid team? 

These five tips from this article in Forbes magazine can help: 

1. Relaunch with a kickoff 
2. Level the field for all
3. Over communicate 
4. Understand preferred working styles 
5. Establish new rituals and norms. 

You’ll need to do something - it won’t just happen automatically. 

These tips give some scope, ideas and tactics to make hybrid work for all ... no matter where we all are. 

Leading change ... remotely

For leaders in these times of remote and hybrid work, change still has to happen. 

Guiding, leading and inspiring change can require some new and different techniques.

There’s still a requirement to have:

⏺ Engagement for change 
and 
⏺ Capability for change. 

This week I’m working with a leadership team to prepare them to better engage their team for change. 

We’ll be focusing on how to have better, more engaging conversations about change ... remotely. Handling tough questions, raising challenging topics, building greater human connection... online. 

Then it’s onto the skills the entire organization needs - to ensure teams have the capabilities to embark on the changes planned. 

This includes being able to work in a hybrid environment - where some people are onsite and some are working remotely. We’ll build problem-solving, sensemaking and decision-making skills. 

Whatever you’re changing, think about 
- engagement... for the leadership team,
and 
- capability... for the wider organisation. 

Tackle both for more successful remote, hybrid change. 

The complex culture of the meeting

They’re groaned at, suffered through and widely reported to be up to as much as 50% a waste of our time. 

Meetings. 

Every meeting you’re in is a complex construction and reflection of the culture in which it exists. 

Online or not, there are elements and behaviours in meetings that 
- include and exclude people
- accelerate and slow the pace of progress
- make the workplace more or less safe
- generate and ideate ... or stagnate and eliminate. 

This article from the World Economic Forum asks us a series of questions about what we do and how we lead in meetings. 

Do we any just accept the toll that poorly led meetings inflict on people and culture? Even when better is possible?

For your own meeting effectiveness and for those you meet with, check through the questions here and take a cultural look at what’s going on when we meet. 

Are you slicing too thickly

At the bakery today they asked me if I wanted the loaf of bread sliced for sandwiches (thinner) or toast (thicker) ... OR a new thickness, ‘cafe style’. 

It’s big, chunky, super thick slices!

We may think in a maximising super-sizing more-is-better way, that thicker is indeed better. 

But when it comes to work, almost none of us are slicing thinly enough. 

We carve off huge thick slices of work... chunky, lumpy cafe-style slices. 

It’s why our to do lists are overwhelming, our minds are full and we end up distracting ourselves, losing focus and giving up. It becomes too hard and unachievable. 

Big chunks of work take us sooooooo long to work through and complete, we lose our way, lose momentum and motivation. 

So, set the slicer to ’thinner’. 

Slice off thinner pieces of work. That is, smaller steps and more easily achievable tasks. 

It’s not a competition for who can take on the biggest or who can eat the most work all at once. 

You won’t miss out. In fact you’ll get more done, sooner. 

Thinner slices of work are better. 

12 insights on how workplaces are changing

Traditional workplaces are changing. And we have to change with the change! 

Check out these 12 insights from Harvard Business School faculty members like Amy Edmondson, Tsedal Neeley, Raffaella Sadun and more. 

Whether you agree with them all or not, they show the scope and extent of how workplaces are changing. 

Here’s the 12 :

1 Prioritise face time at the office
2 Have honest conversations with employees
3 Weigh the risks of loneliness
4 Consider a flexible hybrid approach
5 Be honest about the company’s needs
6 Keep talking about caregiving obligations
7 Show compassion amid the stress
8 Be sensitive to trauma and burn out
9 Lead with empathy
10 Prove that your building is healthy
11 Reject virtual work at your company’s peril
12 Be fair when deciding who works remotely

And .... 
13 make work inspiring at the office or not. 

Each one opens up a range of questions for conversation and consideration. 

Which of them are ringing bells for you? 

Read the full article or bookmark it for a later read. It’s a beauty!