Five Essential Strategies for Successful Hybrid Leadership

• When it comes to transitioning to hybrid work and managing hybrid teams, managers often attempt to fit their familiar office-centric management approaches into a hybrid work model, leading to burnout when outcomes fall short of expectations. 
• To thrive in the transition to hybrid work and in leading hybrid teams, managers must incorporate the five strategies for successful hybrid leadership: Intentionality over automaticity; Trust over suspicion; Autonomy over micromanagement; Connection over presence; Accountability over facetime. 
• Abandoning office-centric methods necessitates accepting that we’ll never return to the past. 

The ability to work from anywhere has enhanced job satisfaction for 82% of respondents, according to a recent VMware survey of 5,300 HR, IT, and business decision makers and employees. Among these participants, 56% report increased creativity, and 55% noted improved collaboration since the start of the pandemic. Consequently, 74% of U.S. companies are adopting a permanent hybrid model, as per Zippia research.  

However, middle managers are bearing the brunt. A Future Forum survey reveals that 43% of middle managers are experiencing burnout, which is more than any other worker group. This heightened stress level, primarily, comes from the task of implementing company policies on hybrid work and the return to office. The typical scenario, based on my experience of assisting 21 companies transition to hybrid work, is that executives set the policies and leave it to middle managers to enforce them. 

This strategy is effective when dealing with clear, straightforward policies that managers can competently implement, drawing from previous experience. But when it comes to transitioning to hybrid work and managing hybrid teams, managers often fall short because of their lack of experience. They attempt to fit their familiar office-centric management approaches into a hybrid work model, leading to burnout when outcomes fall short of expectations. 

To thrive in the transition to hybrid work and in leading hybrid teams, managers must incorporate the five strategies for successful hybrid leadership, which significantly differ from office-centric management. These strategies are: Intentionality over automaticity; Trust over suspicion; Autonomy over micromanagement; Connection over presence; Accountability over facetime.  

The First Strategy for Successful Hybrid Leadership: Choose Intentionality Over Automaticity  

The tendency of managers to default to their standard practices is understandable. After all, if it has worked before, why change it? 

While this conservative approach generally works, it falls short when the context changes, such as the shift to hybrid work. 

The shift in context requires a move from automaticity to intentionality. Managers need to acknowledge the necessity of deliberately altering their management style to suit the new context, instead of sticking to familiar practices.  

Our brains, unfortunately, are not naturally inclined towards such intentional changes due to cognitive biases that lead to suboptimal decision-making. 

The status quo bias, a desire to return to or maintain a comfortable and familiar situation, is a significant hurdle for effective hybrid management. This bias explains why managers attempt to revert to the pre-pandemic state when they felt comfortable and in control.  

Another related cognitive bias that complicates hybrid work management is functional fixedness. This bias results in ignoring alternative methods that might be more suitable for the changed context because we are locked into our established ways of functioning. This is why managers try to fit office-centric methods into hybrid work despite the evident issues.  

Addressing these challenges involves middle managers recognizing the change in context and transitioning from automaticity to intentionality. They must determine the best methods to manage in this new environment, accepting that there will be a level of discomfort and uncertainty in the process. Having assisted 21 organizations transition to hybrid work, I can confirm that this discomfort, which stems from a loss of control and confidence in their abilities, is the greatest obstacle for middle managers in effective hybrid management. 

The Second Strategy for Successful Hybrid Leadership: Foster Trust, Not Paranoia  

A new study by Microsoft reveals that 85% of leaders find the shift to hybrid work has challenged their confidence in employee productivity. This lack of trust has led to what Microsoft researchers describe as productivity paranoia, where leaders suspect productivity loss due to employees not working, despite increased work hours, meetings, and other activity metrics. 

This distrust contradicts the evidence. Comprehensive research shows that employees are 5-10% more productive working remotely, particularly when performing individual tasks. Considering hybrid work, employees can carry out their collaborative tasks in the office, which is the most suitable use for it.  

However, middle managers often struggle with trusting unseen employees to be productive. Such a focus on office visibility reflects a highly traditional leadership mindset, rooted in the illusion of control. This cognitive bias leads us to overestimate the extent of control we have over external events. This belief is particularly strong among executives who prefer to micromanage their employees. They believe that physical presence in the office guarantees productivity. 

In reality, even productive, high-performing employees do not work for the full eight-hour day. Studies show that they spend only 36% to 39% of their time working. The remainder is spent on non-work activities like checking social media, browsing news websites, chatting with colleagues about non-work topics, making personal calls, and even job hunting. 

Middle managers need to abandon the unfounded belief that employees will slack off when unsupervised. People generally live up to your expectations: if you expect them to perform and demonstrate trust in them, they will generally meet your expectations. Additionally, research shows that they perform better when working from home on individual tasks.  

The Third Strategy for Successful Hybrid Leadership: Encourage Autonomy, Not Micromanagement  

 The desire for control among many middle managers is not only unrealistic but also counterproductive. It opposes a principle that is critical for productivity, engagement, and innovation among office-based workers: the desire for autonomy.  

Research indicates that we produce our best work when intrinsically motivated, with autonomy and control over our work as primary drivers of effectiveness. Employees are most engaged, happy, and productive when they have autonomy. A study of 307 companies found that greater worker autonomy resulted in more innovation. A recent Metis survey revealed that 80% of respondents either prefer independence with moderate oversight (45%) or require a high level of independence at work (34.5%). 

For middle managers, a key aspect of post-pandemic autonomy involves allowing workers the flexibility and control to decide where and when they work, instead of forcing them back into the pre-pandemic “normal”. The best approach involves offering flexibility to the entire team, allowing them to determine their own approach. A recent Gallup survey found that 46% of employees reported being engaged when their team sets their own policy for office visits. In contrast, only 41% are satisfied making the decision individually, and just 35% reported being engaged if the leadership decides the policy for everyone. 

The Fourth Strategy for Successful Hybrid Leadership: Strengthen Connection, Not Presence  

A significant challenge for remote work is dealing with weakening connections among staff members. However, only specific types of connections have become weaker. In fact, a recent Covve survey reveals that 67% reported stronger overall relationships with colleagues. 

Further examination shows that connections between team members become stronger when teams work remotely either part-time or full-time, as Microsoft research discovered. The issue arises from the decrease in cross-functional connections between teams, which weaken with remote work. These “weak ties” are valuable for cross-disciplinary innovation that can drive growth, which could be hampered by remote work according to an MIT study.  

In office-centric roles, such weak ties form naturally from people on different teams being present in the same office. However, in hybrid settings, effective middle managers need to intentionally cultivate these weak ties. 

Managers can foster weak bonds by organizing in-person events that bring together members from different teams. These events can range from social gatherings like happy hours, trust-building escape room activities, group volunteering to in-person training that deliberately involves interaction between members of different teams. They can also consider remote social activities like video game sessions or virtual escape rooms.  

Another effective approach is pairing junior staff with different senior staff as mentors, which has been found to be very effective in expanding the network and building the weak ties of junior staff. An additional advantage is that such pairings assist junior staff in gaining on-the-job training and becoming integrated into the organization. 

The Fifth Strategy for Successful Hybrid Leadership: Prioritize Accountability, Not Facetime   

Traditional methods of evaluating staff and holding them accountable rely on facetime, which involves managers seeing and talking to their subordinates throughout the year and providing an annual review. In the hybrid work environment, this facetime approach is vulnerable to proximity bias, which is the fear that managers will value those subordinates they see more often more highly.  

Indeed, a Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) survey of over 800 supervisors found that 42% admitted they sometimes forget about remote workers when assigning tasks. This might explain why remote workers get promoted less often than their peers, despite being 15% more productive on average. 

However, equating facetime to accountability is not only unsuitable for hybrid work, but it also didn’t work well in the in-person environment, given that office-centric employees only spent 36% to 39% of their time working. Effective hybrid managers should focus on meaningful goals and outcomes that advance their team’s business objectives, rather than the amount of time someone spent working. 

This can be achieved by incorporating a performance evaluation element into the weekly one-on-ones that many middle managers already schedule with their employees. At each weekly meeting, the manager and employee would agree on three to five key goals for the employee to achieve. Then, at the next meeting, the employee would report to the manager on how they did on the goals. The manager can coach the employee on solving any problems encountered and provide a weekly performance evaluation. This way, all team members would know where they stand and any areas they need to improve. The meeting would end with the manager and employee agreeing on the three to five goals for the next week. 

Conclusion  

The five strategies of intentionality, trust, autonomy, connection, and accountability are crucial for transforming a traditional office-centric manager into a successful hybrid leader. Abandoning office-centric methods necessitates accepting that we’ll never return to the past. The pandemic has accelerated the existing trends towards hybrid work, and with ever-improving technology, the future will involve more remote work, not less. While the office remains a valuable place for gathering, collaboration, and socialization, hybrid leaders must learn to manage their teams effectively in both the work office and the home office. By understanding which activities are best performed where and adopting management methods well-suited to hybrid work, modern managers will help their teams thrive in the increasingly disrupted future of work.