Bruce Harpham
Business Analyst
Bruce Harpham, based in Toronto, is the author of “Project Managers At Work” and holds the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification. He holds multiple Salesforce certifications and has over ten years of experience in the financial services industry.
Leading hybrid teams is a crucial skill set for project managers. Hybrid work is relatively new and evolving, so best practices for managing hybrid teams must be regularly reviewed and updated.
This article covers building relationships with your hybrid team members, setting hybrid working expectations, clearing barriers, and ways to make the most of in-person work sessions. This guidance is grounded in today’s cutting-edge research from Gallup, which has conducted surveys of workers and workplaces for decades.
What is a hybrid work setting?
Before you can master how to lead hybrid teams, it’s essential to understand what hybrid work means for your project. A hybrid work setting entails working in an office location and remotely (typically at home). For example, a hybrid work week may involve working remotely on Mondays and Fridays and coming into an office on the other days of the week.
At their best, hybrid teams enjoy the flexibility of fully remote teams while gaining the benefits of in-office work. However, making hybrid work arrangements successful is more challenging than a traditional in-office experience.
If you’ve struggled with hybrid team management, know you’re not alone. According to Gallup, 31% of US workers had less access to work resources and equipment, and 28% felt less connected to the organization’s culture.
Get to know your hybrid team members
In contrast to traditional managers, project managers tend to have more turnover in the people they work with. Therefore, investing time upfront to know your project’s working teams is vital.
Look for informal ways to connect with your hybrid team members whenever possible. At the start of a project, invite your project team members into the office for a day. While everybody is in the same place, take the opportunity to have one-on-one coffee chats or a team lunch. These informal interactions make a tremendous difference in cultivating your relationships.
Ask employees about their hybrid team preferences and challenges to maximize these conversations. Get the conversation started with these questions.
- What does work-life balance look like for you?
- How do you like to develop relationships with project team members?
- What is your experience coordinating tasks, schedules, and deliverables with hybrid teams?
The answers to these questions will help you develop your answer to how to lead hybrid teams that reflect your organization’s and team members’ needs.
Set expectations for working hours and communication
Setting common expectations (and modifying them as needed) is one of the most essential best practices for managing hybrid teams. Your starting point for formulating these expectations will be company policies. If those policies are general, it is wise to develop project team-specific expectations.
Use the following ideas to get the conversation started with your team.
- Core hours. Schedule flexibility is a key element for hybrid work, but the project team must also make progress. Therefore, consider proposing core working hours as 10 am to 3 pm, so it is easier for the project’s different working teams to schedule meetings, working sessions, and other activities. Reasonable exceptions are acceptable.
- Communication responsiveness. Propose that project emails be replied to within one business day. You may set different expectations for phone calls.
- Meeting etiquette. Set clear expectations for meetings. For example, internal meetings with the team can be informal regarding dress code. However, meetings with clients and executives require a higher degree of formality. In all cases, encourage project team members to accept or decline meeting invitations so everybody can start on time.
Troubleshoot hybrid team management barriers
Project managers are known for their excellence in troubleshooting. Extending that skill to support your hybrid team members’ flourishing is crucial in your project team meetings and periodically asking the following questions.
- Are you facing challenges with workload or burnout?
- What pain points are blocking you from getting your work done?
- What resources or support do you need?
These questions help you better understand what your team members need and also help reveal common trends. For example, you may find that most of your working teams have family responsibilities that require them to be at home on certain days of the week. Once you understand these responsibilities, it is easier to accommodate these needs.
Leverage in-person work effectively
You must make the most of precious in-person work time. Visiting the office to spend the whole day on video calls is a missed opportunity. While remote work is excellent, in-person work has some advantages.
Increased chance encounters and break down silos
When you work in the office, you have a greater chance to meet people from different departments, including senior leadership. For example, getting the opportunity to meet the CEO of a large bank by requesting a meeting may not work out. Nonetheless, I met the CEO of a bank I worked at several times by attending events and enjoying a brief conversation.
Grow stakeholder trust with in-person meetings
Many projects involve external stakeholders or clients, but those people don’t always understand how the project progresses. There is a distinct “out of sight, out of mind” risk to the project! Therefore, setting aside time for in-person meetings with your external stakeholders is a powerful way to enhance trust and elicit more feedback.
Enhance work-life balance by separating work from home
Traveling to the office and finding a dedicated workspace can help with focus. Commuting allows employees to mentally prepare for the workday and disengage on the way home. Highlight this benefit for your hybrid team members if they find it difficult to disengage from work.
Increase the quantity and quality of your communication
Successful hybrid team management requires more communication effort than in person. Set the bar for your hybrid team by communicating more often. Specifically, consider the following best practices:
- Allow time for casual conversation. Your hybrid team members may have yet to work together. So, giving people time and space to connect socially is helpful. For example, you can book a monthly “social meeting” for this purpose.
- Equip people to succeed with meaningful meeting agendas. Going to a meeting without a proper agenda makes it difficult to succeed. Therefore, take a few minutes to write bullet points on the topics to be covered. When leading hybrid teams, it is also crucial to provide references or links to any needed resources so that your team can prepare accordingly.
Set yourself reminders to give more meaningful feedback
Gallup research has found that “80% of employees who said they received meaningful feedback in the past week were fully engaged — regardless of how many days they worked in the office.” This finding is significant for managing hybrid teams because the project manager may have fewer opportunities for casual interaction and observation with their team members.
Providing positive and negative feedback with a stronger emphasis on the positive is recommended. When your project team member delivers a task early, give them immediate positive feedback. When they miss an important meeting without an explanation, give them feedback about the behavior’s impact on the time and ask them to improve in the future.
Finally, ensure that you also seek feedback from your hybrid teams. In a hybrid work team, you may have blind spots, and requesting feedback is one of the best ways to improve and ensure everyone feels heard.
Conclusion
Developing your personal best practices for managing hybrid teams as a project manager takes time and experimentation. Get started by following a people-first approach to understanding your team members. Then, we set expectations for how the project will unfold. Finally, communicate and provide and solicit feedback to keep the team aligned.
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