The pandemic. I still have these occasional, weird, out of body experiences, where I float out of myself and think, ‘did that really happen?’   When the first lock down hit, we had builders working at our place during which time, I lost my entire pipeline of work for the rest of the year.  That was fun.  I remember walking out to see the chaps and telling them I’d have to send them home at the end of the day as I had no idea when, or if, any more work would ever come in.  They were very gracious about it, but slapped me with a massive bill anyway.  But they did leave a heavy duty staple gun behind, so that was a bit of a win.  

Mercifully, the world went, ‘ok, let’s hop on Zoom then’ but the world soon discovered that being the main anchor on your own personal TV show wasn’t as easy as the average teenager on TikTok will tell you it is, and I found myself helping people navigate virtual presence and impact.  That went very well, and aside from Virgin Media occasionally turning off the internet in the middle of the day to ‘improve our customer experience’, and my son interrupting a coaching session to tell me mummy had set fire to the kitchen, I made a fairly successful transition to online. 

Thankfully we are no longer in that place, but we do find ourselves over-using the word ‘hybrid’.  And with good reason.   We are now immersed in a world which straddles time and spaces – which is very exciting if you’re on TV and have a TARDIS, but for the rest of us means we get to do Teams calls in our tracksuit bottoms for three days a week, answer emails at 4am when we have insomnia, avoid tedious commutes and go into the office purely to escape from our families.  Ah hybrid. 

In fairness, there are a lot of benefits.  The freedom to work ‘a-synchronistically’ has given many of us the chance to balance home and work, childcare and career, with greater ease.  But there are drawbacks too.  There’s the obvious stuff like the lack of margin around family time and work – one moment you’re removing an Octonaut from someone’s nose, the next you’re coaching a CEO (or is that just me?).  But then there are the other, more insidious, less obvious bits that creep up on us, then bite us in the arse.  Nurturing new talent when they can’t follow us around and learn by osmosis on the job.  Trying to run hybrid meetings when four of you are in the room but Bryan has insisted on working from home and wants to dial in on Teams.  Managing who’s in, who’s out and co-ordinating the whole show.  Being a hybrid leader can be a massive pain.  

There’s also the fact that hybrid opens the door to other issues.  If you’ve read any of Patrick Lencioni’s work, you’ll probably be very familiar with his 5 Dysfunctions of a Team.  If you’ve not read the book – do – it’s great.  

Lencioni says that various things can potentially go wrong with a team.  He identifies five ‘dysfunctions’ which can really screw things up and presents them as a pyramid.  Here’s my summary: 

The first dysfunction is The Absence of Trust.  Ah we need to trust each other.  Psychological safety within a team means we are free to make mistakes without all hell breaking loose.  Not only that, it’s ok to speak your mind (helpfully) and no-one should be treading on eggshells.  

The great thing about trust is that we can have the difficult conversations, thus avoiding D-2 – The Fear of Conflict.   We need to wade in, to buy in.  We may not agree with the ultimate decision that’s made, but if we’ve ‘said our piece’, chances are we’ll fall in and play nicely.  Most people are the same.  If we’re afraid that speaking our mind will land us in it, things go wrong. 

If we haven’t had our say, we smile sweetly, play nice on the surface but have a positively cavalier Lack of Commitment  when it comes to seeing through the actions.  ‘oh, we were supposed to do that were we? Whatever…’  

If we’re not committed we see an Avoidance of Accountability.  Obviously if we’re all pulling in the same direction, doing our best, but Bryan is slacking off again, we’re going to call him on it.  The boss won’t need to be involved.  The rest of us do it.  But if this dysfunction has taken root, no one holds anyone else to account.  We just do our own thing.

This leads to the final dysfunction – Inattention to Results.  Why does this happen?  I’m so busy not caring about the rest of you, the wider aims or the big picture, I just end up building my own fiefdom and hitting my own targets, thank you very much.  Bonus please!

Not falling into the Dysfunction trap was hard enough in the pre-pandemic world, but now we’re hybrid, things can get super messy and I’m sure it’s obvious how.  

So how can we beat the dysfunctions when we’re not all together, when our time and our spaces are varied?  How can we keep the wheels on the car and make sure Bryan is productive?  How can we attract and retain talent when it’s just all so disjointed?  

Well, don’t ask me.  I’m not an expert in hybrid leadership.  But here’s a few thoughts, which might be helpful: 

TRUST

Building and establishing new relationships online is incredibly difficult.  At the height of the pandemic, bringing onboard new hires and building trust between them, you and the wider team was no easy task.   But now we are hybrid, we can be face to face again and some strong, new ways of ‘norming’ can be built.  Get this right, and teams can be more contented and more functional than ever.  

The starting point, if you haven’t already done it, is to get everyone around the table and thrash out how you all want to operate and what behaviours, as a team, you want to adopt or throw out when it comes to hybrid.  

For example Andy has kids and wants to work from home on a Wednesday, because of football practice after school and early pick up from nursery.   Unfortunately Wednesday has always been team meeting day.  You are then left with a discussion around what to do; do you move the meeting to a different day?  Does Andy dial in?  Could he make one in every four, so he stays connected to the wider team?  

In your round table, you gain understanding around the individuals needs and preferences and can build your hybrid solutions which meet the team’s needs.   As a result of this, you have a happier team, which is good for retention, and a great culture, which is good for attracting talent. 

You may well have done something like that in the past, but it’s always good to repeat the exercise, especially as there may be new team members or circumstances may have changed. 

Your willingness to listen, hear different view points and make the best solution possible, within reason, will help establish trust.

CONFLICT

It’s never easy to have a good old row on Zoom – especially if one of you is in an open-plan office.   As a result of that, we become masters of the passive-aggressive.  Eye-rollling on Teams, behind the scenes bitching on Slack.  Moaning in Vapers’ Alley.  The ‘I feel disrespected’ email, which falls in your inbox at 4.55pm on a Friday afternoon.  Thanks Bryan. 

The face-to-face solution is always best, and dealing with this, as ever, comes back to communication.  Regular ‘how’s it going?’ catch ups over coffee, will go a long way.   Making it very clear that all ideas are appreciated, even if they aren’t ultimately accepted.  Deliberately asking even the most junior of people what they think and do they agree, all builds a culture of healthy conflict.  

It’s very easy to positively discriminate in favour of those in the room.  Presentee-ism can be a real issue for hybrid teams.  We love the ones we’re with.  In a hybrid call, make sure all voices are heard, especially those dialling in.  

Conflict is good.  It gets everything out in the open.  We can all have our say, then move on. 

COMMITMENT

The hybrid world can lead to ambiguity around actions.  Who’s doing what again?  Has it been done? We were all in the meeting, but did we all hear what was agreed? 

The key thing around commitment, is the summary.  ‘So here’s what I think we agreed….. Am I right?’  Then hear the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ from everyone.  

Written lists of actions are imperative.  Make sure everyone knows what’s agreed.   It sounds simple (and it is) but we’re all busy, with a lot on our minds, and stuff can slip if we’re not got a single song sheet which we can all see and respond to.  Consider a shared document, online, with the actions, which can be annotated as ACTIONED when completed.  That way everyone knows what’s been done, and what hasn’t.  At that point, your team members will all start nudging each other and you can step back…

ACCOUNTABILITY

So if you nail the commitment issue, the theory is everyone becomes accountable to everyone else and call each other on what needs doing, when it isn’t done.  

Now that works in a seamless and harmonious way in the room, but across digital channels can feel judgemental and abrupt.  And let’s face it, people, frankly, take offence far too easily these days.  

As a result of this, we can pull back and not say anything which might potentially upset someone else.  Let’s face it, we did it once but someone took umbrage, it all kicked off, and we got hurt.   Ugh.  Never again.  I’ll just stay quiet.  

Thus the dysfunction takes root.  

But the culture is strong when we all rise together.   How good are we at celebrating success?  In many tech companies, they’re pretty good at ‘ringing the bell’.  When the team performs, they celebrate and call out the success.   Many people responds extremely well to words of affirmation – so need to hear this stuff.  Equally, when they don’t get it, they become demotivated and feel under appreciated.  

In business we don’t say ‘well done’, ‘thank you’, ‘you did well’, ‘good work’, ‘I really appreciated what you did there’ anywhere near enough.  It is especially important to do this with teams dislocated across different spaces, working a-synchronistically.  Here’s the thing; when we do that a lot, people will also be happy to be called up on the stuff that they need to do better.  They embrace the notion of accountability. 

RESULTS 

Lencioni writes about the need for score cards.   A visible means of capturing group goals and success.  In other words, everyone can see the results.  Visible, whole team targets are vital to keep everyone pulling in the right direction.   If we are only worried about our own results and our own success, the ‘I’m alright, Jack’ approach kicks in and no-one helps anyone else. 

The theory of reciprocity basically says, ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’.  We’re simple folk, us humans – we are wired for survival and part of that is an innate instinct to work together to achieve common goals – grow food, kill food, build shelter, sacrifice Bryan to the gods so we are blessed with a full and bountiful harvest, and so on.  

Because of that, we will always function well when we’re helping each other.  Silo working, individual sales targets, lack of incentives for collaboration, all work against this instinct.  The more you can do to pull down these barriers and encourage reciprocity,  the better it will be for everyone.  

I love a good bring and share session.  How about this – 

Person A brings a challenge that they just can’t solve.  The rest of the group then ask questions to fully understand the issue.  The instinct will be to offer advice, but they mustn’t.  Yet.  

They then tell Person A, all they admire about how they’ve handles the issue to date.  At last, they each get to offer one piece of advice to Person A and Person A just says ‘thank you’ to each new idea.  Person A then says what they will do, in light of this solution session.  Then the group moves to the next person to solve their issue.. and so on.   This builds collaboration skills, a sense of reciprocity, good will, and team bonding.  And guess what?  It helps the results too.

* * *

In summary, hybrid has given us both blessing and battles.   The positives, if embraced, can make a world of difference to our ways of working.  Equally, when we are in a-synchronistic working patterns, the ‘little foxes’ can make a real mess of things, if we don’t get stuck in and clear them out.  My suggestion is that whatever we do regarding hybrid, it needs to be intentional.  

Peter Drucker agrees, “Only three things happen naturally in organisations:  friction, confusion, and underperformance.  Everything else requires leadership.”

Leadership, eh?  I guess that’s where you come in…