Effective Hybrid Teams.

Hybrid starts with measuring results.

When we get clear on what ‘finished’ and ‘great’ looks like, anyone can apply their preferences into the model.

Some of us love working autonomously. Others are desperate to get back into the office and work in person. We may all have different preferences, but we have shared needs. 

We all crave clarity on what ‘good’ and ‘finished’ looks like. 

We want to know what the priorities are. 

We want to know that our work makes a difference. 

We want to feel valued, recognised for our contribution, know that we are on the right track and feel in control over our lives. 

They say creativity comes from constraint. If we want to enjoy the freedoms of designing our own routines in a hybrid environment, we need to know what the constraints are to work within.

When teams get clear on what ‘finished’ and ‘great’ looks like, and assign metrics for reporting those, anyone can apply their unique working preferences into the model. There are clear constraints - and from that place of structure, we can then apply individual preferences. 

When your hybrid model is clear, you can have better performance conversations, great feedback dialogues and produce incredible work you can celebrate. Here are 7 ways to set yourself up for success.

Clarify what good looks like.

So often we can get distracted with the hype of becoming a high performing team, we can overlook the fact that we don’t yet have a functioning team. A functioning team knows what the minimum outputs are every week.

When teams know what the minimum factors for success are, and the output expectations, they can then retrofit everything they do to that. 

So rarely do we ever stop to see if we know the answer to:

• In our team/department/company, what does ‘good’ look like?

• What does ‘finished’ look like?

• What is the minimum we need to achieve each week (or in our milestones) to reach this?

If these questions are not (yet!) clear to you or your peers, here is a format you might value:

• What outputs are we responsible for, that our success is judged on?

• What does this translate to on a quarterly, monthly, or project basis?

• As a result, what is a ‘minimum viable result’ per quarter, month or project?

From there, the next step is to simply solidify what reporting helps achieve the above. Clear outputs produce peace of mind.

Design your reporting dashboard.

Without reporting, hybrid does not work. Working flexibly only works if there are clear ways to report on progress. 

Designed well, a dashboard delivers you clarity on what you’ve achieved collectively and individually, enables you to see gaps in understanding early, provides the format for people to ask for help early in a project and gives you regular data points on how the team is performing.

Here are three questions to clarify before you begin:

• Based on success measures, what do I need to know early?

• What is okay for me to know retroactively?

• What does ‘green’, ‘yellow’ and ‘red’ status look like for my team & projects?

Let’s take a look at a Happiness Concierge example. 

• I define a project as ‘green’ as a 9/10 average score, ‘yellow’ if a team member is uncertain or having a tricky time, or the client's expectations appear different to our understanding, and ‘red’ if we have not taken constructive criticism or action towards fixing a problem. 

• Based on our success measures, I need to know the risks of a project not going to plan early. This might be an unexpected score, a surprising client query, or a team member having capacity issues. If I know this early, I can take action.

• I need to know when someone is having trouble early. I can help when I know when something isn’t being delivered, or someone’s having a tricky time. I can’t do that retrospectively.

• If a project is going well, it’s great to see the results retrospectively. I don’t need to be involved if the project is going brilliantly. Knowing the results afterwards means I can congratulate the team involved and get out of their way when I’m not needed! 

Let’s look at what your dashboard could look like.

• What ‘batches’ of information do I need to know?

• In what regularity?

• In what format - according to a) my personal preference and b) easily understandable by anyone if and when I am not available (important as you grow your team).

• Who has that responsibility or oversees that information?

• Do I have an example I can start with to open a discussion?

With the answers to these questions, you can bring the relevant people together and explain what you need, why and what’s in it for them. For you, it’s a visibility tool to help you gain greater insight into the work they do. It helps you see their regular achievements and provides you with a way of seeing progress without needing to check in with them every day, minute or hour. For others, it’s a really succinct way of sharing information.

If (and when!) you get pushback about this, remind everyone for hybrid to work, you need everyone to shift from one person reliance to a reporting format that is simple, easy to understand and that anyone can access. 

The benefits? Less reactive ‘pings’ on instant messenger, less interruptions and a much more impactful way of working for everyone. No calls on your days off. No passive aggressive emails wondering where something is at.

From this place of clarity, everyone can have the freedom to work at their own pace.

One source of truth.

If you want to enjoy a high autonomy, high collaboration culture, there needs to be one source of truth. 

This means you have one way of overseeing version control so everyone can work on a set of documents and, it doesn’t rely on ‘so and so being online’ to understand where things are at. If you have a way of working where all documents are central, including works in progress, anyone can dial in, at any given moment during the week, and get what they need.

This can be as simple as a server where all documents live, a place where people upload their documentation at the end of a cycle, or one way of ‘doing things’.

At Happiness Concierge, we have all work on our server, including works in progress. Simply naming the document with the convention ‘WIP document title’, or ‘internal notes’ until it is completed so people know it’s your thinking on a page, as opposed to a reference document, helps people know when something is completed or is a work in progress. This means nothing is ‘on someone's laptop’ and requires someone to be ‘online’ to answer a question.

Our internal rule is: if it isn’t written down, it doesn’t exist. Because we all work remotely, flexibly, we may need to access something while you’re offline. To help us not call you on your day/s off, start, save and export from the server. Simples.

Be 3 times as explicit with agreements.

I can’t tell you how many times instructions or conversations have been miscommunicated. What one person assumes is clear, the other person doesn’t quite understand. What one person feels is explicit, the other person experiences as implied. What one person sees as ‘to be expected’ to another is ‘above and beyond’. In hybrid, these small misunderstandings can be three times as frustrating given the absence of informal ‘hey does this make sense’ check ins.

A simple tool we use to great effect is being three times as explicit as we might be ordinarily knowing that the person will have to make a series of decision working hybrid where they might work hours when we aren’t online, or have questions crop up when they’re working flexibly. 

Answering the questions to these in your conversations when delegating or providing a project update helps minimise misunderstandings. They’ll still happen, that’s life, but lowering the volume helps enormously and bonus: increases transparency and trust in teams.

• What are we agreeing to do, as a result of this call?

• Can you play back to me, what you plan to do and I can check if that matches my understanding?

• Here’s my understanding of my next steps, does that match yours?

• When are we agreeing that’ll be done by? What time?

• What does that need to look like? Is it a 5/10 idea on a page, or a 9/10 nearly completed document?

• In what format?

By getting into the habit of having rigorous conversations, we ‘front load’ anything that could go wrong, lower the risk of assumptions being made (that’s life after all!) and have greater chance for a matching version of success.

Bake two-way feedback into every connection.

There are two sides to feedback: appreciation and direction. Research tells us 98% of employees fail to engage without feedback, and a driving factor is uncertainty and fear on ‘how’ to source helpful feedback. As a leader, you can minimise that uncertainty by asking a series of questions every single time you connect. 

Increase trust by having feedback conversations more regularly. No need to wait until the performance review. Here’s what that can look like.

• During the meeting, share one thing you see going well, or something you’ve noticed that has helped this person perform.

• At the end of every meeting, ask, ‘is there anything I can start doing more of, or less of, to make this easier for you?’

• Pose the question: ‘what could make this even better for you?’ And invite your team to reflect an report back.

See how easy that was! By having a two-way conversation based on observations, you not only raise the confidence of your team members, you also source valuable data on your leadership and insights into what would help your team member have an even better time at work.

Create ways to share information.

Remember that data you’ve been capturing through your great reporting system? When we work remotely, we lose a fair amount of visibility of what everyone else is working on. Creating a monthly connection to showcase projects in action, share high level highlights and appreciation for your team gives your team something to look forward to, helps them feel appreciated and bonus; you’re sharing intel across the group.

This can be informal as a fortnightly, 45 minute ‘showcase’, where one team member presents a piece of work they’re working on, a 30 minute ‘highlights’ meeting each three weeks where you present the high level results and learnings, or as formal as monthly ‘skills sessions’, where you teach a skill you’ve noticed is working well in the team.

At Happiness Concierge, we’ve tried all sorts of formats over the years. Here are tools that work well for us:

• Bi-annual updates that showcase everything we’ve accomplished and a clear road map for our positioning in the market.

• “Welcome to YEAR" - start of calendar year goals session where I outline our focus for the year, how we’re doing it, the investments we’ve made, and where our focus lies.

• Monthly ‘Skills Sessions’ where I teach a skill based on what I’m noticing is trending in workplaces. The format is a 15 minute update on Happiness Concierge accomplishments, projects we are working on, 15 minute sharing from the team on their highlights and work to date, and a 25 minute lesson on a tool they might find useful. This session is recorded and distributed following so anyone can watch if they’re unable to attend.

• Fortnightly optional ‘HC Lunch’ to dial into a central link and catch up with the team and share what you’ve been working on.

• Internal Slack Channel to share links and reports of projects so people can scan at their leisure and be across projects.

As you can see, it doesn't need to be laborious, just consistently done.

Make appreciation your leading narrative.

When we receive recognition, we feel valued and see how our unique contribution makes a difference. Companies in a study that scored in the top 20% for building a ‘recognition rich culture’ enjoyed a 31% lower voluntary turnover rate and 67% of people in a study reported that praise or commendation by their manager was a bigger motivator than any other financial or non-financial recognition. 

Here’s how we bake that principle into our workflow:

• Celebrate the small wins informally and formally. 

• Make recognition G.R.E.A.T (Generous, Regular, Empowering, Authentic and Timely).

• Create recognition milestones at the end of projects and before holidays to acknowledge the end of a ‘cycle’.

• Create ways for peers to acknowledge each other informally.

• ‘Off-board’ the team before holidays/breaks so they feel valued.

• ‘Re-board’ the team back after holidays/breaks outlining how their role directly contributes to the company goals.

• Feedback is also a form of recognition - showing you care about someone to support them to succeed.

Research proves that regular recognition can have a game changing impact on how our team experience work and thereby our retention rates. And this is absolutely key when working in a hybrid environment where those touch points are digital.

Here are some handy tips for recognition. Did these insights give you some ideas? We’d love to hear what works for you.