How to Become an Awesome Hybrid Leader
For many organizations, hybrid work is not going away any time soon—if ever.
Hybrid can come in all kinds of configurations. Two team members might work from their house while three will work from offices…and all in different cities.
This means most leaders have become remote leaders even if they still maintain the corner office at company headquarters.
Hoping people don’t leave the company, don’t disengage, and don’t multi-task while on virtual meetings…it’s all futile unless you’re becoming an awesome hybrid leader.
I’ve read several well-researched articles on this subject. I’ve coached hundreds of leaders to adapt to hybrid. And I’ve talked with several well-respected leaders about their points of view.
Everything I’ve learned on the topic can be best applied through two perspectives suggested by my friend Jamie Thingelstad, whom I’ve written about before:
Meetings = Podcasts and 1-1s = Friendships
People complain all the time about team members multi-tasking, not being on video, or not engaging in virtual meetings.
Perhaps that’s because we’re still trying to run meetings online the way we ran them in person. When we’re in person, we’re all visible, accountable, and can feel the power dynamics in the room. Often one person is at the head of the table, at the computer, or standing so everyone knows where to focus. Not anymore! Virtual meetings have democratized participation in meetings.
In fact, as Jamie says, “Talking about virtual meetings with many leaders is like shadow boxing. You’re not really punching at the true concerns, which often have to do with loss of power and ego leaders experience in a virtual setting.”
His recommendation: Instead of trying to run an in-person format online, “run your virtual meeting like it’s a podcast.”
In other words, if you were running a weekly podcast, your number one goal for each episode would be to engage your listeners. How do you do that? Make it as difficult as possible for them to stop paying attention. Start with a compelling open and preview of the episode, be brief and keep things moving, engage multiple voices, make it provocative, ensure people have clear takeaways, thank everyone who contributed to the show, and reference show notes with links for people to go deeper on topics.
I’ve written extensively in other articles about how to make virtual meetings more engaging, and I recommend Patrick Lencioni’s book Death by Meeting. In these resources you can find several strategies that can apply to most team and organizational environments. But it all boils down to this:
Don’t run your virtual meetings like an in-person meeting. Engage people the way you would in a podcast, or a video game, or a movie, or a radio program. That’s the standard.
Group interactions aren’t the only ones that need leveling up the world of hybrid work, though. A lot of engagement in a hybrid environment now flows through the relationship people have with their leader. Gallup recently reported that “it takes more than a 20% pay increase to lure most employees away from a manager who engages them, and next to nothing to poach most disengaged workers.”
It’s the text, email, phone, Zoom, Slack, and in-person connections that people have with their direct leader that make the biggest impact on whether they really care and feel important at work.
What do awesome hybrid leaders do with this?
Do they use these 1-1 interactions to tick through tasks, knock down problems, get status updates, and dispense sage advice?
Not so much.
They ask questions like the one that Jamie coaches all his leaders to regularly ask their directs: What’s changed in your priorities over the past year?
If they say, “Not much,” ask them again in a month and keep asking until you get a thoughtful response—because everyone’s priorities have shifted over the past 18 months.
Already discussed that question? How about:
What’s weighing on you right now?
How are you doing on a personal level?
What are you proud of?
What are you looking forward to?
What’s resonating with you about our organizational mission?
Hybrid requires these more intimate conversations. Even if you don’t like getting “personal” with your teammates, even if you’re hesitant that people will feel a bit uncomfortable, even if you’re busy, even if you manage 20 people, even if you think you’ve already checked this box, remember that a hybrid leader asks thoughtful questions on a regular basis.
Most of us have become remote leaders. Hybrid is here to stay.
How will you become awesome at it?
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