Leadership Behaviors that Drive High-Performance in a Hybrid Workplace

Written by Brian Cole, Ph.D. | Aug 20, 2024 11:34:00 PM

Hybrid work continues to impact employees’ preferences, but how does it impact their leaders?

In 2021, the World Trend Index reported that 73% of employees wanted flexible remote work options. The latest insights from Gallup show the number dipping only slightly to 60% today. Remote-capable employees are getting what they want, as most are working in a hybrid or exclusively remote arrangement. But are leaders getting what they need to provide support and get results?

Leading success in a hybrid world is truly owed to company culture.

So how do you go about shaping this culture and making it last? Focus your efforts through the lens of Five Leadership Behaviors.* They’re the result of more than 30 years-worth of research into what the most accomplished leaders do right in any world of work.

These Five Leadership Behaviors will help you shape a sustainable hybrid work culture:

1. Align on clear expectations.

For many leaders, goals haven’t changed, although the methods and tools for reaching them have shifted considerably. Here’s how to get and stay on the same page:

Have clear, ongoing discussions with your employees about scheduling, accommodations, and the business case for hybrid work.

Sequence work according to which tasks require active face-to-face collaboration, and which require reflection or research that can be relegated to time at home.

Extend and model flexibility without compromising your defined expectations.

2. Observe performance.

No matter where people work, there are ways to observe performance directly or indirectly, even remotely. Regularly reflect on questions like:

What types of work are easier in-office or at home?

What trends in performance/productivity do I see when people are working in the office or remotely?

How engaged/participative are people in meetings?

When a difference arises, what is contributing to it?

3. Remove barriers.

The structure of remote work demands that we address and remove barriers regularly to maximize engagement and performance. Here are questions to weave into your touchpoints with employees:

How can I help you remove barriers to your work?

What obstacles do you foresee impacting remote work exclusively?

What hurdles are present when working in the office?

4. Give and receive feedback.

Feedback is still just as critical as it’s ever been. Most leaders are accustomed to giving employees positive and constructive feedback, but these takeaways can help you make the most of it:

Opportunities for feedback aren’t one-way in modern business, so ask employees about your effectiveness in this environment and your impact role-modeling hybrid work culture.

Use performance data in-person vs. remote to make recommendations and develop insights about what hybrid work success looks like in your organization.

5. Coach.

Perhaps the most vital part of this behavior is identifying the new and different skills needed to sustain success in a hybrid environment. Many won’t change but may need tweaking or additional focus. Coach to strengthen your employees’ skills through these best practices:

Conduct regular one-on-one meetings to ensure the effectiveness of your hybrid work culture.

Encourage direct reports to be proactive and give them the confidence to make decisions.

Don’t pile all the focus on the current environment as it will constantly shift.

Leaders benefit from assessing performance in a hybrid work culture.

While putting the Five Leadership Behaviors into action, you may wonder how to fairly measure individual performance, especially if you have more contact with some employees on-site.

However, hybrid environments give leaders an opportunity to further validate the objectivity of the goals, data, and benchmarks used across performance evaluations. Regularly reviewing these criteria helps leaders do the following:

Stay conscious of potential biases.

Use knowledge of biases to critically evaluate their assessments.

Be intentional about drawing on the Five Leadership behaviors that will foster fair performance evaluations: observe performance; give and receive feedback; and coach.

Leading in a hybrid world isn’t always about new tools.

To put it simply, success is often about how we use existing tools in new ways. Consistently demonstrating and adapting the Five Leadership Behaviors to a hybrid environment while objectively and fairly assessing employee performance will help you create and sustain a successful hybrid work environment.

*The Five Leadership Behaviors is a proprietary leadership tool developed by CLG (dba ALULA).