June 29, 2021
Most teams are headed back into the office, at least for a portion of the week. This “hybrid workplace” offers leaders significant upside – we can offer flexibility for team members to work from home with the choice to collaborate face-to-face in a company office. Leading this level of individualized variability won’t be easy. This article highlights helpful suggestions for leaders to be successful. For example, expectation setting and clearly defined policies are a must and we’ll need to shift our focus from process execution to the outcomes we want to see. With many people working independently, I suggest that our teams will appreciate (first) having input (and then) having clarity about what our consistent expectations are. Trust me, the consistency you get from your teams and the satisfaction they get from knowing what the expectations are will be worth the extra effort.
Previously, we’ve spoken of leaders as change agents. The Forbes article mentions new ways of doing business – each of these represent change… and at the root of successful change is open communication. It’s going to take extra work when we’re operating under a load of new challenges, but nothing is more important than getting this transition point right.