Leading a Hybrid Workplace: A Case for the Extreme Importance of Soft Skills
As a leader, at some point in your career you will lead a hybrid in-office and virtual team.(1)
Hybrid work has gone from being rare to being the norm, and employees are demanding greater flexibility in the workplace.(2)
A return to 100% in-office teams is unlikely, with a Microsoft survey of over 20,000 people in 11 countries finding that 73% of respondents feel they need more than company expectations to go to the office.(3) JLL’s Global Research 2020 report supported this, finding that employees are reevaluating their priorities and placing a greater emphasis on quality of life and human connections. For team members, achieving work-life balance now surpasses the importance of securing a comfortable salary. Today, 40% of the workforce works remotely and 98% of workers want the option to work remotely, even if only occasionally.(4)
Leaders who embrace distributed teams early on will reap the benefits, including retaining valuable talent and expert staff.(5) However, many leaders do not understand how to implement hybrid work effectively because traditional approaches to leading teams are no longer valid.(6) Old-school leaders reliant on power and fear will struggle more than others with the transition due to their inability to monitor and micromanage staff working remotely.(7) Leaders of hybrid teams must acquire new skill sets and competencies to succeed.(8)
The Pros of Hybrid Work Are Undeniable, But…
The benefits of hybrid work for workers have been immense. Working from home has been linked to lower blood pressure, an increased intake of fruits, vegetables, and self-made meals, a reduction in stress, and greater flexibility. An analysis of 1,930 studies on remote work revealed that individuals reported higher productivity while working from home.(9) Hybrid work is also saving employees time due to reducing the amount of time commuting. One study found that in the shift to hybrid, employees save about 24 hours a month on commuting time. Though the saved time is not all spent on work, extra time for personal life boosts employee’s well-being, which enhances their productivity.(10)
Teams also benefit from hybrid work. Businesses rely heavily on their people's capabilities, and hybrid teams give leaders the ability to recruit top talent regardless of their location. Additionally, research has found that online brainstorming groups are more effective and creative compared to in-person brainstorming groups.(11)
Workers Need Human Connection More Than Ever
However, hybrid work does have its drawbacks. Hybrid work blurs work-life boundaries, with remote workers taking fewer sick days and putting in longer hours that often extend into evenings and weekends compared to their in-office counterparts.(12) Those who work fully remote fear leaders favoring employees working on-site, offering them more career development and advancement opportunities.(13) Two additional challenges distributed workers face is increased social isolation and lack of organizational belonging.(14) Even in the age of instant connection via technology, workers face loneliness and seclusion. Employees miss the informal interactions that happen in between the meetings, because for so many, those conversations are what made their job enjoyable.(15) Without chances to form bonds with their coworkers, many feel their jobs are “empty, transactional, or even meaningless”(16)
A switch back to a traditional, fully in-office workforce is unlikely. So, leaders who want to embrace the hybrid model but mitigate its drawbacks will need to implement hybrid-friendly work practices and reimagine the possibilities for their leadership style.
A Dual Approach:
Prioritizing Human Connections in Business
Enhanced Leadership
Hybrid worker loneliness is a multifaceted issue that requires a comprehensive approach. Our suggestion is that:
Corporations prioritize human connections in business
Leaders elevate and reimagine their leadership
1. Prioritizing Human Connections in Business
What can corporations do to help their employees who feel so alone? Forcing team members to come back to the office is ill advised; this survey found that employees were more than twice as likely to consider quitting if their management enforced an obligatory return.(17) To combat team member loneliness, we suggest that leaders intentionally facilitate relationship building, that they implement task interdependence, that they create specific workday boundaries, that they pay equal attention to both in-person members and virtual members, and finally that they create a sense of belonging.
Leaders to Facilitate Relationship Building and Trust
In hybrid teams, fostering a “human touch” and establishing strong connections among team members and leaders is crucial. In this study, participants felt that having a personal relationship with their leader would increase their effectiveness and researchers found that “colleague support was the strongest predictor of job satisfaction.”(18)
There are a few great ways to facilitate team relationship building. This study advises managers to temporarily bring all employees together, in person, at the beginning of a project. Not only will those who travel to meet the rest of the team build relationships and trust, but following the colocation will be less likely to have relational rifts with other team members.(19) The gains of a face-to-face meeting outweigh the financial cost. In addition to meeting at least once in person, leaders should also implement a cadence of regular camera-on meetings. These meetings serve as a classroom, where people can learn from one another. They serve as a “social anchor and culture space” to make people feel together. Finally, these meetings can allow for collaboration that drives innovation.(20)
Leaders should also seek to build manager-employee relationships. Managers can no longer have those informal, chance encounters with their virtual staff, so they should schedule 1:1’s with each team member to develop meaningful connections.(21) This personal approach is also an opportunity to recognize their achievements, which goes a long way when fostering positive relationships. By acknowledging and celebrating successes during these meetings, leaders will boost team morale and employee motivation.(22)
Trust between coworkers and leaders is necessary for the success of hybrid teams. Managers who want to build trust with their team members must strike a balance between high leader engagement and micromanagement. This study wrote that “leaders who micromanage lose sight of the big picture and can become ineffective”.(23) The key to avoiding micromanaging is alignment. When the team is aligned, members can have autonomy. And when employees feel trusted by their leaders to complete tasks and have confidence in their abilities, their motivation and well-being improve.(24)
This underlines the importance of leaders promoting relationship-building.
Task Interdependence to Increase Organizational Identification
The Oxford review defines organizational identification as: “the degree to which employees define themselves as a member of the organization and to what extent they experience a sense of oneness with it, its values, brand, methods etc.” Studies have underscored the fact that working from home not only increases employee social isolation but also negatively impacts their organizational identification. This study found that when leaders implemented task interdependence, when workers depend on one another to accomplish tasks, their team felt more connected to the organization.
Employees with the most interwoven tasks felt the least isolated. Because they are interacting with other team members more regularly, they have more opportunities to have informal conversations that allow them to feel more connected to the team as a whole.
For teams spread across time zones, having a few overlapping working hours will allow more task interdependence. Burnout is less likely if team members can meet for long-term projects.
Create Specific Workday Boundaries
Hybrid work created a vague end of the workday. Before work from home became the norm, employees had a clear distinction between times when they were expected to be available and
times when they were not because they were off work. Hybrid work in addition to technology has blurred the work/home boundary. We now live in a world where we can be reached 24/7.
Leaders must be proactive in facilitating a culture that encourages all employees to have strong work life boundaries. Managers who prioritize healthy work-life balance will be seen as the employers of choice.
Equal Attention for Hybrid and In-Person Workers
Many work from home employees are worried that employers favor the in-person staff, which is also known as proximity bias. The Harvard Business Review states:
Proximity bias “describes how people in positions of power tend to treat workers who are physically closer to them more favorably, and stems from the antiquated assumption that those who work remotely are less productive than those who work from the office”
It’s a valid fear, with this study finding that even though hybrid workers are 15% more productive they get promoted less often than their peers. As a leader managing a hybrid team, it’s important that you provide equal opportunities to all workers. Show your hybrid workers that you care about them just as much as the on-location workers.
Create a Sense of Belonging
Finally, here are some easy things you can implement to make people feel a part of a community:
Organize Team Events: Plan deliberate in-person and virtual team events throughout the year to deepen the sense of belonging and encourage networking among remote and hybrid teams.
Celebrate Special Occasions: Acknowledge birthdays, baby showers, or project successes even for remote employees by sending small gifts or tokens of appreciation.
Encourage Video and Phone Calls: Encourage your team members to connect individually through video or phone calls.
In-Person Meetups: Suggest that remote employees living near each other meet for lunch to build relationships and community.
Send Physical Items: Mail books, handwritten notes, or other items to remind remote staff that they are part of a team.
2. Enhanced Leadership - Soft Skills
"The term soft skills has been used almost in a negative way or a less important way for so long, that when people talk about technical skills, they almost put it in a less-than category. Occasionally I'll use the word “interpersonal”. or connectivity, trust building, chemistry and dynamics - and really all those are different ways of saying soft skills. JDev training focuses on those aspects of leadership"
- JW Rayhons
In the hybrid world, building trusting relationships with employees is an indispensable trait. Leaders who can facilitate a trusting culture will be rewarded - researchers found that those in a trusting environment were up to “76% more engaged than other organizations that had lower levels of trust”. However, the curriculum of many leadership programs includes the emphasis on hard skills with minimal focus on soft skills development such as learning how to build trust. While “codified” knowledge allows for leaders to manage the functional aspects of their role, it does not enable them to handle the loneliness hybrid workers face, the disconnect between in-office and remote team members, and employee disengagement.
Due to the lack of emphasis on soft skills, critics argue that management schools are failing to adequately equip leaders for the demands of hybrid leadership. These institutions, often rooted in traditional models that emphasize the importance of power and control, leave leaders with skill sets ill-suited for navigating complexities of the hybrid work environment. Hybrid workers’ desire for human connection is greater than ever, so interpersonal skills are essential competencies for leaders to cultivate.
HERE’S OUR SUGGESTION:
Leaders who want to be prepared to fulfill the needs of their hybrid workforce must utilize soft skills as the foundation of their leadership. Soft-skill based leadership “strengthens relationships at work, fosters the resilience of people and organizations, and provides psychological safety”. Rather than implementing total managerial power and control over “subordinates”, this style emphasizes teamwork, human connection, accountability, and community achievement. This style of leadership helps teams build strong relationships.
At Joshua Development, our training programs emphasize building connections and interpersonal skills. Research shows that conventional training often leaves a gap in leadership skills, so we address this by teaching leaders to lead through trust, relationship building, and team dynamics.
The Road Ahead for Hybrid Leaders
Hybrid work has changed the future of working. It comes with its pros and cons but ultimately is here to stay. Knowing this, managers must learn how to lead distributed teams, because it’s not a question of if you will have one but when you will have one. For leaders of previously all in-office employees, hybrid work will be a practice in letting go of control, building communication skills, and acting as a role model. It will be a chance to refine those interpersonal, soft skills.
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Citations:
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