How to lead in a hybrid environment (2): Practical steps and examples
In part one of my hybrid working series, I outlined why many companies are now choosing hybrid working models, and the leadership challenges that come with this. It’s now time to lay out the practical steps you should take to create a highly effective hybrid working environment for your teams.
These steps are based on my own nine years experience building hybrid engineering organisations, alongside insights from 12 engineering leaders such as engineering managers, directors, CEOs, founders, and technical leaders like principal engineers. They work in SaaS and HealthTech companies, ranging from 50 people startups to 5000 employees, to global megacorps with 150k+ employees. You can therefore adapt all examples to what suits your team’s needs best!
Creating a hybrid environment with your team
Hybrid working contains multitudes, it’s not a singular experience. It encompasses at least six different modes of working, from working alone and in an office, to working remotely together in online meetings. This means that employee experiences in hybrid teams differ wildly, so as a leader, you need to create a cohesive experience and environment.
Deeply understand your team’s experience
First, start with educating yourself on your teammates’ experiences. It’s important to understand the limitations of your perspective - that your own lived experiences will differ greatly from your teammates’ - and actively manage your biases.
“Put yourself in the shoes of others. If you're working with a hybrid team, you probably shouldn't be in the office every day because that means you never see what the remote folks see. Be prepared to have "less efficient" experiences in order to understand more clearly what your organisation looks like to those within it.” (Engineering Manager, Global Software Megacorporation, 150K+ employees, flexible hybrid arrangements on a per-employee basis)
Manage your biases
You will have a preference. Don't let it get in your way in how you distribute opportunities to your teammates.
A practical way to do this is to think about it as you’re planning - what needs to get done and who is going to help get it done? Ensure to distribute across remote and in-office teams. Check in with yourself mid-week: is everyone getting the support and resources they need to be successful?
Utilise data to understand and address issues in the hybrid environment
Data can also help you assess your own blind spots:
Get data from HR / your people team on promotion rates, compensation and role distribution across factors like location. Are you paying and promoting people in different locations at the same rate?
Conduct team and organisation-wide surveys - tools like CultureAmp offer the ability to see location based views and will help you get a clearer perspective on your teammates’ experiences.
Build strong relationships for strong teams
Get to know your teammates really well as humans
A pillar of equity is knowing your teammates and their needs, so you can create the environment that they need.
Diverse groups have diverse needs (e.g., work styles, locations, equipment needs). Understand and recognise this so you can address and support more effectively.
Approach them with curiosity and a genuine desire to understand: What are their work experiences like? What’s working? What are they missing?
“For some quieter individuals, I've given them the option of doing our 1:1s by text in Slack. Allowing them the time they need to find and form the words to communicate can be useful to some folks.” (Director of Engineering, SaaS 1200 employees, hybrid with full flexibility)
Help your teammates build relationships
Building strong relationships between your teammates will support productive team cultures.
Aim to promote and maintain the habit of team members talking with one another.
Encourage casual conversations. Use icebreaker questions to open meetings, or set up voluntary social time. I know teams that play Minecraft, online board games, or solve crossword puzzles together — and teams that hate those kinds of activities, so check what works for yours!
Set up deep technical discussions in places where everyone can see them.
“Lean coffee meetings between peers were always useful, but hybrid working made them more popular as slipping in to claim the floor at the end of someone's point is much harder in hybrid spaces.” (Director of Engineering, SaaS 1200 employees, hybrid with full flexibility)
“Create space for non-transactional talk. One thing that happens much less in a hybrid/remote environment is the not super focused talks, which is the glue between us. I have included this both in 1:1s with the leaders, but also in standups, so that there is some time where the team members can chat/share about stuff that is not 100% topic/work related.” (CTO, SaaS, SaaS, 250 employees, hybrid with full flexibility)
Dedicate extra space and time during onboarding
Onboarding a new hybrid team can be extra challenging as it will be harder to form relationships.
Set up discussions and introduction sessions with all team members whenever a new person joins.
Organise team sessions to discuss values, working styles, preferences, and roles across the group.
Assign an onboarding buddy for new team members and get them to meet daily initially.
“I wish I’d thought more earlier about the difference between “going” remote and onboarding/starting remotely with a new team. My personal experience of working remotely was built on long-standing trusting relationships with an existing team. When we added new folks to the team, it took me longer than I’d like to admit to realize how different their experience of acclimating was to my own, and to make appropriate accommodations for them.” (Gillian Jakob Kieser, Director Content Marketing, CircleCI; global SaaS, 500-1000 employees, hybrid with full flexibility)
Level the playing field in big and small interactions
Equity is in big and small actions. Being deliberate about expectation setting, language, and meeting culture goes a long way!
Define team-level norms and operating manuals
Team-level agreements (sometimes called “Team norms,” “Team working agreements,” or “Team operating manuals”) are a set of established expectations for how all members of the team work with one another. The goal is to inspire trust, create clarity, and unlock the performance of teams by being more explicit up front about how the team operates. Examples:
Everything is in writing.
There’s a process for informal meetings - takeaways and context are documented, so that it is visible to others regardless of their location, and miscommunication and gossip is minimised.
Team interactions are defined, e.g., team core collaboration hours where everyone is online, dedicated uninterrupted focus time, or that notifications turned off during non-core collaboration hours or focus time.
Document jargon and inside jokes
It’s important that employees feel part of the team, and a culture of acronyms, emojis and unwritten slack rules can make people feel out of the loop.
In a previous company I worked with, there was a slack emoji for “that motivates me” or “that demotivates me” which was coined by a former employee and heavily used. This was documented in a file that was maintained by everyone and became part of onboarding.
Ensure meeting equity
In order for everyone to have a voice and similar experience, create equal footing:
One dials in, all dial in.
Include different time zones when you find meeting times. Tools like the timeanddate.com meeting planner or worldtimebuddy.com are useful for this!
“For meetings that require participation and have some remote participants, consider banning meeting rooms. Five people in the same room are in a different meeting than the five remote people. This is particularly true if the meeting leader/most senior person is in the room with others.” (Director of Engineering, SaaS 1200 employees, hybrid with full flexibility)
Manage the stressors of this environment
Hybrid environments bring added complexity that leaders need to manage upfront as much as possible.
Manage the stress induced by chat tools
Chat tools can be a stress factor (interruptive noise, expectation of constant availability). Make it okay to not be available, and move stuff to team rooms so that responsibility is shared.
Set manageable defaults. E.g., Slack by default will notify people of everything. Either change via policy or tell people to configure in the onboarding guide.
"One thing I understood way too late is how much Slack (or other chat tools) are a stress factor and not so much a solution but (partly) a problem on their own. My advice would be: Keep an eye on this, it can stress people a lot. Tools that help are really making it OK to be not available, reducing the amount of private chats and moving stuff to Team Rooms so that the responsibility is shared." (CTO, SaaS, 250 employees, hybrid with full flexibility)
Manage energy levels and allow thinking time
Hybrid work can be emotionally exhausting. Thinking is part of your job, so make sure to create space for thinking time in your day.
“Personally I need to monitor and maintain my energy much more actively in a hybrid/distributed environment than I ever needed to before. I don't know if the barista in the local coffee shop knows that they're structural to my ability to feel engaged, but they are.” (Director of Engineering, SaaS 1200 employees, hybrid with full flexibility)
Create meaningful impact and development opportunities for everyone
Mentor and coach your teammates yourself. Provide career coaching that pairs team members with the right mentor, i.e. someone with whom an individual can relate and learn from.
Act as a connector of people and opportunities. Are you hearing about an interesting project that might be great for someone on your team? Or did you meet someone in another department who your teammate should talk to? Connect them! These kinds of connections are much harder to build in a hybrid space, and you can actively support them for your teammates.
Help your teammates advocate for themselves and build networks. A big part of this is on you, but you shouldn’t be the bottleneck. Coach them on how to present their accomplishments (Julia Evans’ “Brag docs” are great for this!), how to manage up effectively, and how to work at the next level. Support them in developing skills that will help them succeed, no matter who their manager is.
Unleash your team’s potential
Clear expectations and feedback are the cornerstones of unleashing teams’ potential and giving teams autonomy.
Lead with results, not meetings
Another great tool to promote equity is leading with results: Focusing on clear objectives set for your team.
Set clear expectations and goals based on results
Create development plans for everyone on your team to get a deep understanding of their growth interests.
Set quarterly goals for your teams, as well as for each individual.
With any goal setting-related conversations, integrate this into weekly check-ins during 1:1s - don’t surprise people!
Evaluate success based on metrics
Review success based on goals, numbers and progress instead of ideas or gut feeling.
Adjust incentives accordingly
Check in with yourself regularly about what you’re rewarding. Who gets praise and callouts, promoted, shiny new projects, or all the interesting work?
For example, a previous hybrid company I world with had a #gratitude channel in Slack - everyone was encouraged to post callouts for everyone.
Another example: “values champions” - a shoutout during a department meeting for living up to our company values where anyone could nominate.
These are great ways to make work visible that wouldn’t always be otherwise.
Be a dolphin: Communicate frequently
Dolphins can only take in a small amount of air, and as a result, have to surface frequently to breathe every 15-20 minutes. Whales can take in large amounts of air, and therefore stay submerged for up to 90 minutes.
This is an example that David Feeny, Emeritus Professor of Information Management at Oxford, used to illustrate best practices in communication, and it’s highly relevant for hybrid teams too. It’s better to pop your head up frequently to talk about a little change, rather than trying to make a big splash all at once, and then disappearing back into the depths.
Communicate context on a cadence
Communicating on a cadence will give your teams structure by making it easy to know what information they can expect when and where:
Use a communication cadence like this one from a Series C startup:
Company news and big announcements: every two weeks in an all-company meetings.
Department news: every two weeks in department meetings.
Team news: weekly email from the team manager every Friday.
Another example of great context setting, a principal engineer in an organisation I worked with was leading a group of very senior engineers. They noticed that the most senior engineers didn’t seem to have a strong understanding of higher-level business needs and challenges. They started sending a weekly email with business contexts to bridge this gap in understanding.
Tailor your content to your audience
Whenever you communicate, consider your recipients’ needs
The first question people will always ask is: “What does this mean for me?” Address this, always.
It’s helpful for people to see and hear this type of information, so they can adjust and align their work.
Apply the “Rule of 7”
The Marketing Rule of 7 is a marketing maxim developed by the movie industry in the 1930s. It states that someone needs to “hear” an advertiser's message at least 7 times before they'll take action to buy that product or service.
The takeaway? Over communicate. Especially with vision, mission and strategy related context.
Always assume: if you feel tired of saying it, people still won’t all have heard it.
“Zoom meetings are not a replacement for in-person collaboration, and it's often hard to see clearly how people are responding to a message or a discussion in a Zoom meeting. Particularly if there's something difficult happening, it's ok to do some of the work 1:1 and some of the work in more formal communications (written or announced).” (Engineering Manager, global Software Megacorporation, 150K+ employees, flexible hybrid arrangements on a per-employee basis)
“Choose communication methods for their strengths: face to face/video for ambiguous decisions with subtle intrinsic knowledge share and differences of opinions. Face to face for fun bonding. Async text based for high detail facts.” (Maia Grotepass, Android Principal, Luno; 700 employees, hybrid, in-office work optional)
Give regular, timely feedback
To paraphrase from Radical Candour, nice is a waste of time, kind is structurally important. Early, direct, kind feedback will keep us pulling together for longer.
Set up open door policies or office hours
These are great for getting timely feedback from the team, or for having more in-depth conversations about what’s on your teams’ minds
Ask for feedback with everything you do
Sent a document? Ask for feedback. Ran a meeting? Ask for feedback. Make it a habit!
Don’t wait to give feedback
Hybrid leaders are often more hesitant to give feedback because they don’t feel they have the full picture. Give feedback early and acknowledge unknowns.
“With the loss of the social lubricant of lunch, coffee, or even the visual cue of 'you look wrecked' it's more important than ever to try and over communicate. If you don't like how I'm running a meeting, or how you're always five mins late, it's even more important to address it earlier.” (Director of Engineering, SaaS 1200 employees, hybrid with full flexibility)
Create scalable systems that work for you and your team, in any location
Emphasise written collaboration
Lots of meetings can be documents.
Or, meetings can be improved by preparing documents in advance.
E.g., a team strategy meeting - prepare an outline of your thoughts, feedback, questions, and areas for everyone to think about beforehand.
Create collective knowledge
Set up knowledge sharing rounds. These are super important in a hybrid/remote environment.
E.g., frontend and backend round - let’s talk engineering for all-engineering discussions
“I found knowledge sharing rounds much more important in a hybrid/remote environment. They require someone who owns them, so organizes them, assembles an agenda, encourages people. But once you have this running, you create a lot of aha-moments for all employees and new topics to connect.” (CTO, SaaS, SaaS, 250 employees, hybrid with full flexibility)
Ensure visibility for everyone’s work
So, you’re putting in the work to create a positive, equitable hybrid environment with your team, and your team has clear expectations and knows exactly what to do. What next? Let’s make sure others not only know what your team does, but also see their impact.
This can be a bit more challenging in hybrid environments, since not everyone can be everywhere at once at all times and see everything.
Push communication
In a previous hybrid role, I sent a weekly update to my boss every Monday, which included my teams’ progress on goals, risks, their well-being, and my focus areas. This was especially useful to support alignment, create visibility, and advocate for important topics on my teams’ behalf. Find out more about how to do this here.
Literally make sure your team is seen and heard
Let your team represent their good work! E.g., in department or company meetings, let them talk about it, and stay out of the spotlight. They’ve done the work, they should get the visibility for it (flip side: if things go wrong, you should be the one coming forth to take responsibility).
“An effective leader lets their team talk about and represent their own good work (in department meetings, company meetings, etc.). The leader is who stays out of the spotlight (when we’re talking about accolades) to let their team take it instead. When fault is involved, I expect to see the opposite behavior.” (Gillian Jakob Kieser, Director Content Marketing, CircleCI; global SaaS, 500-1000 employees, hybrid with full flexibility)
Find and create highly visible work for your team
Secure bigger impact projects, something that moves the needle, e.g., a big feature launches, or a big reliability improvement.
Work with key stakeholders, e.g., your Head of Finance who’s really keen on seeing developer productivity improvements.
Praise in public, not to embarrass, but to set an example
“Whenever I praised in public I would explain that I wasn’t doing so because the person wanted public praise, but so that everybody could learn from what had happened. Something like, “Not because I want to embarrass Jane, but to make sure all of you learn from what she did, I’m going to tell you what she just accomplished, and how she did it.” (Kim Scott, Radical Candour)
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Change your organisation for the better
Our job as leaders is to navigate this new hybrid world as-is, but also use our impact to change the organisational systems around us for the better.
Support change in your organisation’s reward systems
Support your Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) in advocating for themselves
Based on MLT (Management Leadership for Tomorrow) alumni data, 65% of respondents reported that Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) have been helpful in a hybrid environment.
Your ERGs help your diverse groups of employees build their network and support system - support them based on their needs.
Advocate for equity in your organisation
Always focus on impact!
Reward and give visibility to less visible work, making it visible to bosses, HR, etc (Promo packets etc)
Push for better policies by providing clarity on guidelines and principles on hybrid work. E.g., by limiting the number of days per week that executives spend in the office, or setting a meeting policy that if “one dials in, all dial in.”
Support the organisation’s learning
Share your learnings on what’s worked for you in setting up effective hybrid working environments with other leaders and teams.
Share team’s experiences as feedback with your boss (in aggregate and with consent).
Consider the team website: How are we representing our remote employees?
Company-wide meetings: Can we change the timing of this meeting to be accessible for everyone? E.g. all hands changed to accomodate three different time zones.
When hiring, design the interview process to reduce assessments for culturally specific traits.
Remember, hybrid is still a relatively new way of working. A lot of our hybrid world today is the result of happenstance: due to world events and born out of reactive decisions, not necessarily deliberate, intentional choices and actions. That means we need to keep adjusting and checking and avoid assumptions, because perfect solutions today may be broken tomorrow.
