In the fourth newsletter regarding the “Future of Work Redesigned” we are going to continue to explore the leadership point on the compass.

There are six points on my Future of Work Redesigned compass. These are the six directions in which you must head if you are going to redesign the future of work in your organisation.

Culture – improve the culture in the organisation so the benefits of hybrid working can be realised

Strategy – co-create a hybrid working strategy

Leadership – leadership requires an uplift in skills and competencies to lead high performing hybrid teams

Technology – optimise hybrid working now and into the future by using the best technologies available to you

Empowerment – employees need empowerment and autonomy over where, when, and how they work and there must be trust

Wellbeing – provide every employee with a holistic and contextual platform for mental wellbeing and increased resilience

The future of work redesigned compass

Leadership Competencies

Last week we looked at the leadership challenge and the response starting with defining ‘good leadership’ in your organisation. This positions you for hiring and promoting good leaders. I have classified the leadership capabilities into capacities and competencies.

We explored the seven capacities I believe good leaders possess:

• Empowerment, autonomy, and trust

• Equity and inclusivity

• Available, accessible, and visible

• Mindful communication and collaboration

• Empathy

• Positive culture

• Growth mindset

This week we will explore the seven competencies. As mentioned last week, I am currently finalising two books for publishing house Bookboon on the capacities and competencies needed to lead high performing hybrid teams. Therefore, there is far more content than I can compress into this newsletter. So, in interest of brevity, I will summarise the seven competencies. 

Objectives and performance measurement

Objectives should motivate. They must be aligned with the overall goals of the organisation so there is a sense of purpose.  Objectives should be communicated with clarity. The need for clarification of understanding of an objective is amplified when your employees are working remotely.

You must be certain that you and each employee are absolutely clear about your expectations.  What is it they are to deliver? What are the outcomes needed? What is the timeframe? Do they have budgetary constraints? What will be the progress reporting format and frequency?

Performance is not measured by the hours spent at a desk or key board strokes. Bosses (note my deliberate avoidance of the term ‘leader’) who want to continue to believe that productivity can be measured by the hours someone sits at a desk and that the best ways to get results is through surveillance, are on the verge of extinction.

The bosses who have resorted to employee surveillance software in the belief that it helps them determine performance are being met with covert behavior by employees. They are placing heavy weights on keyboards, a mouse on an analog watch or clock, and putting paper clips into the insert key, all to replicate keyboard strokes being made and avoid the red status light that says “Away from desk” turning on.

If these misdirected bosses do not have a fundamental mindset shift regarding measuring performance, they will be the demise of the organization.

Clear expectations and accountability

As the leader of the hybrid team, you are accountable for setting clear expectations and ensuring understanding. When you empower your employees, provide autonomy and delegate tasks, accountability still stays with you.

Leading a hybrid team means you must work twice as hard to ensure there is understanding. The indicators that someone is unsure, unclear, or confused can be hidden when you are leading employees working remotely. Setting clear expectations is foundational to the successful hybrid team. You can empower and provide autonomy, but without clarity your efforts will be wasted. Without clarity, trust will be diminished.

As Brené Brown said “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.” We need to remember this when we delegate to our empowered and autonomous employees. If we are not clear it can be disastrous. Not being absolutely clear about your expectations and then holding your employee accountable for delivery is unfair. If you did not provide clarity, you cannot blame them when they do not deliver. That would be unkind.

Psychological safety

“Psychological safety is a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes."

Psychological safety takes time to create and effort to maintain. The foundation of psychological safety is trust which as the saying goes is hard to build but easy to lose.

Psychological safety is demonstrated through mutual respect, shared values, interpersonal skills, inclusivity, and equity,

As a leader it is much easier to observe these behaviours when everyone is co-located, and to positively reinforce the behaviours you want to see more of and actively discourage the behaviours that diminish psychological safety.

When your team is distributed these behaviours are less visible. There needs to be acknowledgement that creating an environment of psychological safety will take longer in a hybrid environment and require more effort to maintain.

Creating psychological safety must be intentional and you must get buy-in from all your team. The leader is often tasked with the responsibility of creating an inclusive environment and building psychological safety within the team, but it cannot be up to the leader alone. Especially in a hybrid team, everyone needs to be held responsible for recognising the right behaviours and calling out those that contradict the team values. Your team must be your eyes and ears in a hybrid environment.

Positive reinforcement

Leaders can apply positive reinforcement when they observe or hear a member of their team displaying a behavior they would like to see more of. This could be supporting a team member, innovating, problem solving, using initiative, providing great customer service, or showing leadership capabilities. Positive reinforcement both acknowledges a desired behavior and encourages more of that behavior.

It is easier for you as a leader to observe positive behaviours when physically co-located with your team. It is often easier to provide positive reinforcement. You can reach out and pat someone on the back and say “Well done. That was a great presentation you delivered to the executive this morning.”

Those abilities, to observe and to recognise, are more difficult in a hybrid environment.

You may not see the extra lengths a member of your team went to satisfy a customer. You might not hear the praise a colleague gave one of your employees for their support and guidance of a new team member. Whilst you may also miss this when co-located, the situation is exacerbated in the hybrid team.

Make positive reinforcement of colleagues a shared team value. Make provision of positive reinforcement everyone’s business.

Provide clear guidelines about the sort of behaviours that should be positively reinforced and those that should not.

Employee wellbeing

All leaders must have employee mental wellbeing as the priority. Not one of many priorities but the priority. Leaders of hybrid teams must be cognisant of the mental health and wellbeing of all their team members as well as their own wellbeing.

A mental wellbeing platform should be holistic and contextual. This is the time to stop kidding yourself that the sweat patch that tells employee they are stressed; the happy or sad wrist band; the gym membership; the mindfulness and meditation classes; the Friday yoga sessions; the gratitude app; will take care of employee mental wellbeing. It won’t.

Whilst all these things have value, on their own they are just point solutions. A couple of colleagues and I, passionate about this topic, put together this 3-minute animation in early 2021 to raise awareness of the situation.

The mental wellbeing platform must address the needs of everyone in the organization (holistic) and meet the needs of employees at a point in time (contextual). Employees need specific tools and resources that will help them address the challenges or adversities they face at a given point in time. As an industry colleague, Paula Davis, once said, “You cannot yoga your way out of burnout.”

Capability visibility

Capability visibility is the term used to describe the situation where employees’ skills, capabilities, competencies, experience, specialised training, and certifications are visible and known to everyone.

If skills and capabilities are invisible it can result in an employee being given a task that they are ill-equipped for, or their useful skills not fully utilised. Whilst this invisibility can exist when everyone is co-located it can be exacerbated when the team is hybrid and working across multiple locations.

Leaders and every member of a team should know what skills, capabilities, and competencies exist so that they can be leveraged for the optimum performance of the individual, team, and organization. It is easier to determine a co-worker’s abilities when co-located as you can overhear conversations about the work they have done in the past, are currently doing, or are planning on doing.

Technology -savvy

When many workers had to work from home for the first time, there was a mad scramble to acquire and utilise technology that would allow everyone to continue to connect, communicate, and collaborate across various locations. Organizations now need a secure, long-term solution, that can support any number of teams in any location, whilst providing a single source of truth from a unified platform. Leaders should be investing in technology that helps, not hinders. Leaders need to be technology-savvy and enable their hybrid team.

Organisations must unify and centralise. Everyone in the organization needs to work as one. Decentralised collaboration, communication, and reporting, leads to miscommunication, loss of valuable data, and a decrease in productivity. This not only has an impact on the bottom line, but also impacts employee engagement, burnout, and performance. As employee efficiency decreases, so does organizational revenue and customer satisfaction.

Summary 

Every organisation must invest in leadership development and capability uplift if they are to retain and attract the talent they need for success. Employees are speaking up and making their expectations clear. They deserve good leadership. 

Next week I will be exploring the Empowerment point on the “Future of Work Redesigned” compass.