Virtual Teams: Home, In-Office, or Hybrid

We discuss managing virtual teams and defining your workplace engagement strategy. Since virtual teams are much more commonplace today, and organizations are facing decisions about continuing remote work, hybrid, and in-office, we offer thoughts on defining your workplace engagement strategy and getting your teams aligned through a transition. 

Transcript

Dr. D.  0:02  
Hello, and welcome to the realm. I'm Dr. D, I bring the strategy.

Dr. K  0:06  
And I'm Dr. K, I bring this psychology. We are business psychologist and your guides to the executive realm where we bring strategy and psychology together

Dr. D.  0:15  
so you can bring your best to your C suite, your teams and your customers. Today we're talking about managing virtual teams, virtual teams are much more commonplace today and organizations are facing decisions about continuing remote work moving to hybrid or back to an office. What are the tactics and strategies to get the most out of your teams with virtual members? Let's get to work. Dr. K is someone who runs a practice virtually what are some of the benefits and challenges you found when operating your business remotely.

Dr. K  0:42  
When I first started doing the virtual, I felt that there was more challenges? It wasn't because it was so difficult. It was completely an unknown realm. It was just that it was something that was new, I was used to greeting my clients in the office, I was used to you know, being face to face the most that I had to worry about was people running late hitting traffic, not finding parking, all the fun things of being in LA. What I have found, though, over time is the positives are now outweighing the negatives of it. The positives are my clients feel more one, they're more on time, they're able to get to most of their sessions, I have people that will leave their office and go to their car. So instead of having to take a two hour break out of their day, which they feel guilty for, or they feel the company doesn't appreciate, they're able to take time out. So the positive part is that it's more consistent. Now there's a lot more relaxation within the sessions that consistency and availability on both ends seems to be the biggest breakthrough with doing everything virtual

Dr. D.  1:46  
that makes a lot of sense as somebody wants to have a session. Being in an environment where they feel comfortable is important. And I therapists often really try to make their offices feel as comfortable as possible. But being in their own home. Even though there's the screen in between you It takes a lot of the pressure off I imagine with COVID now coming to an end and people facing the daunting thought of moving back into the office and organizations recognizing now they're old school thinking around working remotely, maybe wasn't old school thought other work options are better rather than paying for real estate or other expensive invest that in technology let people work from home and the organization. They're leasing office space, and they don't have to pay for that office space anymore contributes right back to their bottom line. It makes it a better working environment. Researchers now found a Gallup company who does the famous Gallup surveys found that 54% of people would leave their current job with one for more flexibility from working from home or a hybrid and two thirds of employees say they'd leave a job if flexibility decreases. So we've opened this Pandora's box of giving people more flexibility around work. I wonder if that is really going to influence the way that people think about it, I can tell you that business leaders that I've talked to and worked with over the past several months have said that they're really concerned that they're going to lose key employees, because they're going to require them to come back into the office a couple of days a week, which the hybrid model seems to be the most preferred, it gives the good balance of flexibility of working from home and having structured in office time and the social benefits, the short hand benefits of working together. But how do you deal with an employee who just says I'm not going to do it? What are you going to do fire me there are employees out there that are calling companies bluffs that say, Hey, we want you to come back into the office and an employee will turn around and say, well, it's impacting my well being, I am not going to be as productive. I don't work well in the corporate environment. But when you're trying to manage a team cohesively, you can't have one or two employees who refuse to follow the rules, you have to hold them the same level of accountability as you do to anybody else. And your strategy for having people in the office, whatever that is, if that's full time or fully remote or hybrid, you have to treat everybody the same way.

Dr. K  4:08  
You know, this is going to be a challenge for leaders and for organizations, what are the appropriate steps to take when people are admitting I did better, even if they were high performers before if they admit, you know, I felt better being at home, I was able to be more productive. So it is definitely going to be a big struggle. That's where the struggle is going to be for organizations where they could lose key players so they could lose them who might have done amazing work for the organization. However, on the flip side of that they might be able to pull in someone else that can do amazing work. And this gives

Dr. D.  4:43  
us I think, a good opportunity to talk about what I call the default problem. The default problem is leaders tend to think in a default sense, they think in what they know. So an organization tends to think if you are an organization who has traditionally Separated within four walls of a building have offices and cubicles and meeting rooms. That is your mental default. That is the place where your mind goes in how an organization should operate. So changing that default mentality is really difficult. And leaders have a really hard time even recognizing when they have a default bias when they have a default problem work from home is an antithesis of most people's traditional default of what working in business looks like most leaders and even most employees default perceptions of working are going into the office spending the time they're doing meetings and talking to people and trying to sequester yourself for a few minutes to get some real work done going to a couple other meetings, getting some stuff done wrapping up and then getting home. And that default strategy is always around in office presence. You can even hear that default strategy, when people are talking about opening up to a different strategy they work from home, or the telecommuting in the old language, even the hybrid, these things are called out as something other than the default. People don't say we're going to change our in office strategy to a work from home strategy, there's always kind of assumed in the way people talk about it that in office is the default. And on top of that there are these other ways of working leaders should not be thinking in default mode, it really closes off the way people interpret and view the world through a lens that may actually close them off to new opportunities, is the idea of defining rather than a work from home strategy, which is something separate or new from your default. Why don't you define a work presence engagement strategy, it takes away the default, whatever works best for your organization is going to get the highest level of engagement from your team, the highest level of productivity out of your organization, and the highest level of coordination so that you can achieve your mission doesn't really matter where people said, you have to have the ability to monitor the work, you have to have the ability to keep people and communication coordinated. And you have to be able to deliver a product or a service to your customers in a efficient and cost effective way. They work presence engagement strategy is a great way I believe in discussing, how do you think through as an organization the best way to get the most out of your people?

Dr. K  7:18  
Absolutely. And to keep going with that, again, we talked about being very communicative, as well as very transparent. And if someone is still in the default mode of how a business should run, it might be time to do a survey with your employees. So it's the communication to find out exactly what people are hoping for. Because same wanting Well, it's not always up to the employees, they're not gonna always get everything that they want. But what are they are hoping for? What are their likes, why they like it? What are their dislikes, why they don't like it so that you can put together this work presence, engagement strategy, how do leaders How do organizations create engagement, and then put that engagement into the workplace? In the end, it's about producing what the customers are looking for?

Dr. D.  8:09  
That's exactly right. You touched on an interesting point, it's, how do you know that you're going to get the most out of your employees, wherever they're working, when you're talking about changing the way people work, or how people engage in their day to day work control, a leader will feel like they have a sense of control over their current environment, because they're used to it. So if you've got a group of people that are centralized doing work, and you say, hey, let's distribute it, or it's out distributed, and you say, hey, let's consolidate it the immediate reaction of that leader as well, how do I know that's going to be better than what I have today, if you have good measurement strategies in place to how your workflows are being processed, how people are actually being measured in their productivity, it doesn't matter whether they're remote or local or centralized, decentralized. If you can measure it, you can monitor it when leaders say, Well, how do I know it'll be better after whatever change? It tells me immediately that they don't even really know how it's being measured or monitored today, because if those leaders really had a good grasp and handle on how their teams were performing today, they wouldn't need to be worried about a change. It would just be let's pilot it and we'll use our existing measurement strategies to compare groups of resources and see if it is actually an improvement. Many organizations may not have thought through what are the measurement strategies of the way that we get measure productivity today, or we monitor performance today or it's inconsistent from team to team or person to person, it's really important that you have a good measurement strategy in place because if you do if you have the ability to execute measurement, and it doesn't matter where somebody says you need to be able to treat any employee regardless of where they sit or how they work, how they choose to engage in working then in supporting your organization's mission, you should be able to measure and treat every employee the same regardless of where they are.

Dr. K  9:51  
In addition, it's important for leaders and organizations to accept the fact that the pandemic the lockdowns, the working from Home and change of routines have changed us what leaders need to remember is there has been a psychological shift due to the pandemic. So just thinking that we can go back to how it used to be is just not possible the way people feel about their job recognizing what they can do, and they can't do within their jobs, social anxiety being around people, that all has to be taken into consideration. organizations and leaders need to remember there has been a shift and they have to work with the shift.

Dr. D.  10:29  
The world is a different place. Now, the way people worked before and after the Great Depression are very different the way people worked before and after World War Two is very different after the conglomeration boom of the 1980s. The way people worked before and after were very different globalization happened then. And that changed the way people work. The technology shifts that happened in the early 2000s, late 90s changed the way people work. This is an externality that has opened up opportunities across the way business works, technology, people behaviors, the ability to change the model in which people work has fundamentally shifted I agree with you, 100%. And that means that savvy leaders need to think about how their workplace engagement strategy is defined, bring in experts, you have talked about surveying your employees? Yes, that's an important part of the strategy, bring in experts that can help you define what your workplace engagement strategy should look like? How do you get the most out of your people? And how do you engage in research oriented implementation of your workplace engagement strategy. And it all comes around to having really clear policies and measurement systems in place to be able to do that, and the technology to be able to support whatever your infrastructure need looks like because of the lack of understanding or the lack of definition around what your workplace engagement strategy might look like, employees packed up and they move to cheaper places to live, just hoping that if the organization knew that they were important to them, that they would just say, Okay, well, I guess you're going to work from home forever. Now, even though it wasn't clearly defined at the beginning, your policies around whether it's office hybrid, or work from home has to talk about or think through what's fair for every employee, what are the expectations across every employee? What are the expectations that you have as a leader and as a leadership team on those employees and how they engage in how they work. If it's a hybrid model, when do they have to come into the office. And that means that you can't necessarily move across the country, you're still going to be locked into a geographic location as an employee, you have to set those expectations. And most importantly, you have to lay out what the consequences are, if somebody does something that is outside of that work from home policy, if somebody is a terrible performer, or their performance slips, and you can demonstrate that through your measurement strategy, you have to lead and hold the team member accountable for the benefit of the organization. If somebody ups and moves and moves to another state, and your organization doesn't have the taxation structure to be able to pay employees in other states, and it adds a level of complexity that the size of your organization doesn't permit, then you're gonna have to let that employee go, it doesn't matter whether they're a good employee or a, you know, an underperforming employee, even if they are the best employee in your organization, you have to hold that team member accountable to the same thing that you're going to hold any other team member accountable to. And I think that's where leaders and leadership teams are struggling right now, in the urgency of the pandemic, people had to react and respond, which was good, but now there's some cleanup that has to happen after the fact. And how do you approach an employee who refuses to come back into the office, when you're requiring a hybrid strategy or a full in office strategy, it's going

Dr. K  13:40  
to be a little bit of a battle for both leaders and employees, employees have to remember, this is still an organization, this is still a company, this is not your personal business, this is not your company, and they are going to set some policies have some they're gonna put together a new culture, No, unfortunately, it may not coincide with what an employee wants. So it's also a decision outside of the leaders. It's not just the leaders get to decide the employees have to decide what is best for them as well. And that's, you know, not only is that the struggle for the leaders on figuring out what they're going to do if an employee decides that they never want to come back into the office, it is also up to the employee to process through what's the best choice for themselves for their family, there's going to be some losses for organization, and then there's going to be some losses for employees.

Dr. D.  14:33  
Absolutely, there is going to be a lot of migration just as a person may no longer be a good fit for an organization culturally, it doesn't matter how good of an employee that they are, if the organization doesn't fit, whether it's from a leadership perspective, or from a person perspective or an employee, if you're a leader and an employee doesn't fit within that structure anymore, you have to take action. You have to align your team so that so that your organizational need and The people that are filling the roles within that organization are aligned, it's absolutely critical. If people refuse to follow the policies or the intention of the organization, it's time to make the change. And if you are a leader or an employee in an organization, and you feel like your organization has shifted to such a degree, that it's not the same company that you were part of when you joined. And it's not a company that you believe you're going to continue to be a good fit for, then go find an organization that you will be a good fit for. Every person who's employed in an organization, they have things that are holding them back from making a reactionary change to the way that they work. Maybe it's tenure, maybe it's comfort, whatever it might be. But the reality is, you have agency, if the organization is no longer a fit for you, it would be in your best interest to find a new place. And if you are a leader in an organization, and you have an employee or two or 10, who are no longer a fit for the culture and the structure in the workplace engagement strategy that you have defined for your organization, you have to make the change.

Dr. K  16:00  
Agreed. This is where leaders as well as the organization, when they come up with whatever whatever work present engagement strategy that they've decided is best for them, they need to be very transparent. They need to communicate it and give employees time, you know, you can't say it on Monday morning, and then expect everybody to be like, okay, I'll be at work Tuesday, there's got to be, hey, this is what we have decided and then give their employees time to adjust. The organization needs to give some timeframe of when the change will happen, because people need to be able to adjust when all of this shutdown happened, and everybody started working from home, there was a lot of confusion in the adjustment. So we don't want that confusion. And that anxiety and that overwhelming burnout feeling to come back. We want to give employees and the organization itself time to put their strategies into place so that it can happen in a much more linear transition, but give some timeframe. But then you have to stick to whatever your changes.

Dr. D.  17:05  
Yeah, it took three to four months at the beginning of the pandemic for people to be able to figure out what to do adapt to the change and get systems in place. organizations were cobbling together ways to continue to do business. But folks didn't really settle in until pandemic started in January, February, things really started locking down in March, it wasn't until June or July before organizations really started to get their feet under them and working well together as a team. And whatever that new environment is probably a good model for thinking about coming back, you say, look, we're beginning a four month transitionary period. But by the end of this four month, we're going to hold everyone accountable to these policies. So if you moved out of state, you have three or four months to move back into state if your workplace engagement strategy requires in office time, or you're going to have to figure out how to commute to this location once or twice a week consistent with our policy, or we're sorry, you're no longer fit for the organization. But give people time to make the right choice to come back to the organization, a two week timeframe might not be enough time to ensure compliance to your organization. It might seem inflexible, if you give too short of a period of time before you actually enforce people coming back, give out a rational time horizon, six months in organizational terms is not that long, given all the uncertainty that's happened over the past year. So I encourage leaders to take a little bit more time. But at that end of that time horizon, they are explicitly enforcing whatever policies that they put in place. And that might mean over for the organization. If you have a critical employee with a key skill set or resources that over that six month period, you have to hedge your bet and figure out how to cross train somebody or bring in external resources or hire somebody to offset the fact that you might have an employee or two with a specific set of skills and knowledge and engagement within the organization that you're going to have to replace that person. a longer time horizon also gives an organization to plan for those contingencies.

Dr. K  19:05  
Absolutely. So Dr. D, totally agree with you. What can leaders take away from this discussion today?

Dr. D.  19:11  
Well, it's important to define your organization's work presence engagement strategy, make sure you have clarity around who when and how your teams should be managed. When expanding or formalizing your remote work approach. set clear expectations around your work presence strategy. Make sure your team members and team leaders understand the expectations, boundaries and requirements of the model and be prepared to hold the line and hold people accountable. Recognize and redefine if your organization has a default perception about in office work or any style of work. Don't use one mode as a punishment over another. The goal is collaboration and execution in support of your mission. Don't let leadership and measurement caps lock you into operating a certain way. Regardless of your organization. strategy, expectations and accountability should be the same across work modes. What makes good effective in office leadership is very much the same for managing remote work, engage the intangibles like courtesy, thoughtful check ins and respect and manage with consistency. That's really what's important. So Dr. Kane, what's on tap for next week?

Dr. K  20:14  
Well, next week we will be talking about imposter syndrome. Why do people sometimes believe they are not as competent as others perceive them? It is a common feeling among newly promoted to next level leadership roles. We will explore this feeling of self doubt and how to settle it within yourself and how to support team members who may experience it themselves. And let me tell you, this is a topic that I often talk with clients about on a consistent basis. And there are many strategies that I work with clients on a consistent basis that have helped to at least settle this imposter

Dr. D.  20:48  
feeling really looking forward to that discussion. And to all of you joining us on this journey to the realm Thank you so much. I'm Dr. d.

Dr. K  20:56  
And I'm Dr. k. And we are looking forward to your next visit to the Executive Realm.