There is no “simply going back” to how we used to work in an office after two years of us first being forced to, and then getting used to working remote. People rightfully want to keep having the advantages of the added flexibility and better work/life balance a remote or hybrid work style offers to them. And at least in Tech, if you are not the one enabling that flexibility for your teams, your employees might simply switch to an employer who will.
Recruiters have already picked up on that and jokingly share that if a company announces they’ll force their staff back into the office, all they need to do is pick up the phone and the candidate pipeline just built itself. One of the more high profile examples of this might be how Apple just lots their Director of Machine learning over attempting to force him back into a hybrid work style that did not work for him and his team. This comes only weeks after AirBNB publicly announced their new “design to live and work anywhere” policy. They strike a decent balance between the flexibility people got used to, and AirBnB’s need to have teams interact in person for some types of work. Building strong, resilient, successful remote teams is not as simple as merely sending people a laptop and starting to do all meetings as video conference calls. AirBnB recognizes the value of in person interactions (making a quarterly in person meeting part of their new work style design) while also trusting their team members to deliver great work in remote setups.
So what are some of those elements that actually make remote teams work well?
Meeting facilitation needs to adjust to enable remote participation
Simply switching an in person meeting agenda to a remote meeting format without making any adjustments to the meeting facilitation often does not work very well. People get tired of too many video calls in a day, especially those where they are expected to just show up and listen. There is a reason “zoom fatigue” became a term coined in this Pandemic: A lot of us have experienced how a packed meeting schedule with back to back video conference calls is draining our mental capacities and makes us feel tired and stressed. To facilitate successful remote meetings, there should be an element of collaboration and co-creation in them. Whoever invited to the meeting can and should design a meeting experience that gives all participants a voice and a way to engage. Working with virtual whiteboards (e.g. mural) is a great way to do this, using polls and chats and breakout room experiences are other tricks in the toolbox of great remote facilitation. Making sure that there are enough breaks (and that people actually use them to rest and don’t feel the need to get emails or other work done in the “break”) are further elements to this.
Not all meaningful interaction happens in formal meetings – Time to be together as a team of humans
Besides different needs for facilitation, there is something that can easily get lost and ends up being missed in an exclusively scheduled approach to interaction: We’re lacking the chance encounter at the coffee machine, the banter at the water cooler, the spontaneous problem solving over lunch, when one person tells the other about their current challenges, and the cross-pollination of ideas (aka innovation) that happens when people from different parts of the organization happen to meet by chance around the office. The birthday celebrations, the physical high-five for a job well done and the hug for the colleague who is currently going through rough times (and with that some of the major ways to build trust into the team) are also missing. Building something akin to that back into your ways of working is important and not something you can simply ignore (here is what usually happens if you do). A while ago I also wrote about ideas of how you might intentionally create a better remote team spirit. I have seen teams leapfrog after our bi-annual team weeks, a joint team time that was intentionally designed as a blend of social bonding, strategy and collaboration experiences. We’ve done them in person before the pandemic forced us to do them remote (both works, the real life version is much easier to organize). If you have the budget for it, doing these in real life, once per quarter (as the new AirBnB policy proposes), is even better.
It beats the one or two mandatory days per week in the office setup, where agreeing on what day of the week and how to use the days wisely is an almost impossible setup to get right, when you try to do justice to all members of the team. If you force an entire team into a co-located day of the week, you better make sure that the way that day is structured is actually making this worth while. Else people will rightfully question why they need to give up their flexibility to work from home just to sit in a meeting they could have just as effectively participated in from home.
Some meetings can be done remote, but work much better in real life
Here is a list of some of those meetings and activities that truly are easier to facilitate, and often yield better outcomes and more engaged participation in real life vs. hybrid or remote setups. These meetings work best in person; ok in fully remote setups, and are hardest to do in a hybrid group with some team members on site and others remote:
- Any meeting where creative abrasion is part of finding great new solutions. Having these conversations in person minimizes the risk that the desired tension around ideas and the encouragement of diverse viewpoints is bleeding into personal conflict. (e.g. creative and brainstorming work around new processes, innovation, ideation and open ended discussions with intentionally diverse groups.)
- Any conversation that may have team members experience shame, embarrassment or judgement in a group setting. It’s easier to catch and appropriately navigate the emotional side of these conversations when everyone has full access to each other’s body language. (e.g. retrospectives, post mortem discussions and conflict mediation/resolution between multiple team members.)
- Any meeting where the full focus and a discussion between multiple people (more than three) is necessary and audio quality could challenge, stress or exclude participants. (e.g. strategy making, joint goal setting, discussions about purpose and values, conversations about privilege, bias or empowerment)
- Social activities aiming at team bonding, trust creation and seeing the human side in each other
- Conversations about changes and improvements to how a team is working together (e.g. who is doing what, how do we decide together, in what order should work get done, etc…)
- Onboarding of a new team member (Where seeing when somebody looks lost or confused is often necessary to offer the required support. It’s also when your new team member develops the social bonds to feel at ease and welcome in the team, feels comfortable to ask questions, learns about culture from watching behavior, gets informal and fast direct feedback on how to succeed, etc…)
All of these could be good to schedule on days of the week where everyone can be on site together, team members will understand why this kind of work actually benefits from them being there in person. Having an open dialogue about this topic – and completing the list with the kind of meetings that you want to have in person in your context – is a great way to create buy-in and understanding with the team why some time together in person is good for them, their success and the success of their team.
If these kind of meetings must be had with groups that have a mix of remote and on-site participants (maybe because some team members live very far away and simply can’t travel), then having everyone dial in from their personal laptop to create more equal access to body language is the best way to create a meeting that gives everyone an equal voice. People should then ideally all sit in quiet, separate spaces of the office and/or have really good mute/unmute practices.
Trusting people that work gets done
This sounds like a no-brainer, yet I have heard leaders either openly express (or in their interactions with the team implicitly show) that they do not actually trust their team members to get work done in a remote setup. Either because they believe that people will simply not work at home (or rather take care of their household and/or family), or because they lack the focus and ability to work effectively from home themselves (maybe because there is no access to a quiet dedicated work space they can close the door to), or because they have a hard time trusting people in general (and somehow believe it is their job as leaders to tell people what to do and to check up on it => in other words: they micromanage their team).
I think the Pandemic has shown, that remotees can contribute just as effectively from a homeoffice setup as they can from an office. For some roles that require deep thinking (such as software engineering, data engineering, research or writing) results may actually be far better in an undisturbed home office compared to an office where people are frequently interrupted and distracted by other people on the team. Trusting people to get work done in a remote setup is a key belief and success enabler any leader of hybrid or remote teams must bring to the table. This is quite nicely expressed by Brian Chesky (CEO at AirBnB) in his email to the AirBnB team about their new “work from anywhere” policy: “Now, I understand the anxiety of not seeing people in an office—how do you know if your employees are doing their jobs when you can’t see them? For me, it’s simple: I trust you, and flexibility only works when you trust the people on your team. You’ve shown how much you can accomplish remotely. In the last two years, we navigated the pandemic, rebuilt the company from the ground up, went public, upgraded our entire service, and reported record earnings, all while working remotely. It’s clear that flexibility works for Airbnb.“
The good news is: trust can be unpacked, practiced and learned, one of the leadership qualities you can and must develop in yourself if you are leading a hybrid or remote team (a coach can be a great accelerator here).
Creating equal, fair participation opportunities
Trusting people should go hand in hand with the creation of equal and fair participation opportunities for everyone on the team. This has been true in co-located settings, but is even more important in our new hybrid or remote work world, else people will simply quit and take another remote role. The “toxic five” culture qualities people most commonly refer to in the reasons why they have quit their jobs are: disrespectful, non-inclusive, unethical, cutthroat and abusive (more on this here).
The opposite of that – and what you actually want to create as a leader – is a culture of belonging, equality, respect, appreciation, joy, trust and collaboration that is rooted in a shared sense of purpose and values. It takes intention, conversation, accountability, a willingness to be uncomfortable, an interest in joint learning and growth, and the ability to co-create that with your team.
Working this way starts with a leadership team educated about and committed to work on these topics themselves and with their team. It gets operationalized by a combination of interactions with the team, the co-creation of purpose and value statements that are coupled with effective accountability mechanisms, changes in hiring practices, changes in meeting facilitation, proactive work on advancing inclusion and reducing bias, and an awareness of privilege and power structures. It also takes awareness and intentional fostering of empowering, learning, trust and growth behaviors, a willingness and ability to spot and change existing organizational structures that hinder equality and a sense of belonging, plus ways to measure your progress along the way. This is work that almost nobody will ever get perfectly right, it will lead to uncomfortable conversations, it will surface tensions and conflicts and it is what will ultimately build a truly psychologically safe team. Which in turn is the key to high performing teams and the path for building innovation into the DNA of all teams.
Joy, humor, fun and lightness
This might sound cheesy, but paying attention that joy, humor, fun and lightness are part of the way you work together, is what people enjoy showing up for. It’s simply human that connecting, smiling and laughing is taking tension and stress out of our system, even if it is only for a few moments. We want to be part of these nice interactions, the ones that are not adding stress, and don’t personally challenge us. They can show up as calm, playful, silly, entertaining, surprising, connecting, and funny experiences and simply put us at ease. Life is full of challenges, distractions, pressures, and uncertainty. Giving space to and allowing the voice of joy, humor, connection and fun in the team is creating that breathing space before your team successfully takes on their next challenge. You know you’ve scored on this one when you see a broad smile on the face of everyone in your video conferencing call or in one of your precious in person meetings. I’ll write about how to build more joy into your team in an upcoming post, if you don’t want to miss it, feel free to subscribe to my blog. Or reach out and we’ll work together on developing great remote team practices for your team. When you regularly focus on improving your remote work practices, you’ll see your hybrid and remote teams thrive!
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