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What Skills Do Your Leaders Need to Succeed in a Hybrid Working World?

 

As we head into the third year of the pandemic, clients tell us that they’re grappling with policies and plans to return employees to the office. Not surprisingly, this effort isn’t without its challenges. Many workers are accustomed to, and very comfortable working from home, while others can’t wait to return to the office.

Pew Research Center Report 2022: COVID-19 Pandemic Continues To Reshape Work in America

  • 36% of employees said they would rather visit a dentist once a month than work in an office five days a week. (Hubspot’s 2022 Hybrid Work Report)

  • 64% of those who are now working from home at least some of the time say it’s easier now to balance work and personal life. However, 60% say they feel less connected to their co-workers now (Pew Research Center)

  • 60% of workers with jobs that can be done from home say they’d like to work from home all or most of the time post-pandemic. This is up from 54% who said the same in 2020. (Pew Research Center)

Burnout and stress created by the pandemic have taken their toll and caused many workers to rethink what’s important, as witnessed by the “great resignation”. In a tight labor market, organizations that rethink future work arrangements and make accommodations stand to attract and retain talent.

How are organizations responding?

Forbes recently noted (with data supplied by LinkedIn), that since the start of the pandemic, there’s been a 60% increase in job titles related to the future of work and a 304% spike in titles that reference “hybrid work”. Clearly, the pandemic has reshaped work, perhaps forever.

“One key learning over the past year is that caring and listening are table stakes. The companies who will be successful in 2022 and beyond will match that listening with action, setting bold strategies for the new future of work. For us at HubSpot, that’s focusing on making sure our commitment to flexibility scales with our company in a way that is fair, inclusive, and friction-free, no matter where you choose to work from.”
— Katie Burke, HubSpot's Chief People Officer

A recent HR Exchange article cites examples of how some organizations are implementing their 'return to office' policies offering flexible options with a mix of WFH and in-office choices. If we assume that virtual/remote and hybrid working are here to stay, how should organizations be responding and what skills do virtual leaders need to develop?

How Do We Create Exceptional Virtual and Hybrid Work Environments?

As Newman and Ford have pointed out, although organizations had no time to prepare for the pandemic, we can look to 20+ years of research on virtual team working. In their excellent paper, Five Steps to Leading Your Team in the Virtual COVID-19 Workplace, the authors recommend steps organizations have successfully adopted to navigate the challenges of virtual working:

  1. Establish and explain the new reality

  2. Sustain the corporate culture and reinforce the perception of leader trustworthiness

  3. Upgrade leadership communication tools and techniques to better inform virtual employees

  4. Encourage shared leadership among team members

  5. Create and periodically perform alignment audits to ensure virtual employees are aligned with the organization’s cultural values and mission

Newman and Ford offer a “Team Alignment Audit” with suggested activities for leaders to sustain the culture and align the virtual work environment to the organization., as well as strategies and activities for leaders to maintain a psychologically safe and trusted working environment.

Leader conducting an online meeting via video conference with her team

What Skills Do Virtual Leaders Need?

Many commentators suggest that virtual leaders need to possess empathy, fairness, and transparency, and to be accessible, empowering, and emotionally intelligent. However, we might argue these are skills all leaders need, irrespective of leadership mode.

In an effort to identify the skills that leaders need to be successful in the virtual world, we took a look at some of the recent virtual leadership research. The literature consistently points to the need for different leadership skills when managing remote teams. In fact, one recent pre-pandemic study found that “remote leaders were doers, who tended towards planning, connecting teammates with help and resources, keeping an eye on upcoming tasks and, most importantly, getting things done. These leaders were goal-focused, productive, dependable, and helpful.”

Several studies emphasized these three skills:

  • Communication skills, including superior listening competency is perhaps the most critical skill virtual leadership skill. Leaders need to focus on direct communication with team members, as well as communication between team members. They know how to adapt to each team member’s communication style and encourage feedback. They set clear and realistic expectations for themselves and their teams to ensure goals are understood and accomplished.

  • Ability to build and foster trusting relationships. Virtual leaders need to overcome the barriers created by physical distance and lack of face-to-face interaction. Research shows a strong relationship between trust and virtual team performance. High-trust teams are characterized by greater openness, risk-taking, and a willingness of team members to help and support each other. Citrin offers 6 tips for building trust on virtual teams.

  • Digital literacy competency. Bizilj and his research team found that leadership efficacy scores were significantly higher in leaders whose digital communication skills were assessed as excellent. Virtual leaders have a variety of tools available to them (instant messaging, email, document-sharing, collaboration, project management, video conferencing, and phone) and they use each one appropriately and effectively.

“The only shot that hybrid has of working is if people invest in dedicated leadership to do it.”
— Darren Murph, head of remote, GitLab

It’s clear that the pandemic has forever changed not only our way of working but also our attitudes towards it. Organizations need to recognize the new reality - the desires of many of today’s workers to telecommute some or all of the time - and to ensure that remote and hybrid team leaders are selected and developed with the skills necessary for success in the emerging virtual workplace.

Reading & References

The Background

The Research

The Resources

 
LeadershipPam Grosickileadership, Remote working, Teleworking, Remote teams, Virtual leaders