How to “Rehumanize” to Step Into Hybrid Work

You have “heard” us at PeopleNotTech “talk” about the importance of questioning the “where” and “how” of work for literally years, long before the pandemic made it the topic du jour for everyone and that stands for our presumption that hybrid will be the only way forward as well, but now that the Covid fog is starting to lift, things are getting clearer and we are starting to all be on the same page. This is great news in itself, but one of the imperatives now is to separate the inevitable noise from the valuable steps and do the latter urgently.

One of the things we have always maintained is that forced-pandemic-remote is not usual remote and it would be foolish to think that having slipped into processes and patterns that seem workable would be sustainable. Hence the discussions you are witnessing all around about burn-out and the questions around productivity. When it comes to the latter, it’s really important we don’t use performance data -whether positive or not- collected over the crisis to inform any major decisions or fuel any serious argumentation. Anyone claiming knowledge workers are either more or less productive as per their efforts during the pandemic, is simply widely off the mark as the extreme circumstances they were thrust into are not what remote and flexible work is about. 

Instead, everyone should take the time to familiarise themselves with the body of research on what has been the case for results in terms of remote work for the companies doing it before the crisis. “30 years’ worth of data says, unequivocally that remote work increases productivity globally” as Harvard’s Prof. Tsedal Neely puts it in this interview and it should be any smart organisation’s clear position.

Trailblazers like Cisco, Github and even the now controversial Basecamp, have been reaping the benefits of understanding that long before the pandemic, but even for them, this period has been anything but smooth sailing. 

Those of you following the unfolding Basecamp drama where their culture -present and perceived- seems to be laid bare for public dissection following a series of revelations and reflections, may have read some of their co-founders’ responses and in them, -leaving aside the major implications to Psychological Safety we may discuss at another time and the irony that they had literally “wrote the book on remote working” yet found themselves in this predicament-, one of the phrases should make workplace history as he says: 

“It's also a really hard time. We've always been a remote company, but we've never gone a year and a half without seeing each other. Normally, we'd all have met up thrice during this time to recharge, reconnect, and rehumanize. Add to that all the stress from the pandemic, from those societal politics, from, well, everything we've been through recently, and it's no wonder that everyone is extra vulnerable, extra quick to jump to conclusions, extra likely to escalate. We're human and that's a human response.”

“Rehumanize” - exceptional term and one we’ll all have to embrace asap. We all have to do it. Every company irrespective of size, every industry, every team and even every personal relationship outside of our social bubbles. 

How do we do that? You’d be forgiven to think that’s a fluffy label confined to theoretical discourse as usual, but you’d be mistaken - it’s all about a major and very practical to-do. Getting the team together (ideally physically) and “re-contracting” your dynamic. 

Whether you use Gustavo Razetti’s Hybrid Team Canvas or our Team Relaunch play (that we wrote about here and here and here) you need to look for a resource to guide you through a real moment of putting your heads together and redefining work and interactions for your team because there are different norms that apply to hybrid and as Prof. Neely says above “these norms don’t emerge naturally”.

Team leaders of all sizes -from product owners to execs- drop all other “day jobs” and focus on your team. Do it now. None of your other skills is irreplaceable - delegate the project managing, the admin, even the code writing. This is the time to demonstrate and double-down on increasing your EQ. Don’t let the rhetoric around “it’s online so we can’t read each other’s body language” fool you -you can and you should, it just requires more attention to details-. 

This is the time to make Psychological Safety your number 1 focus because it encompasses all the positive behaviours you need to become religious about driving to have a healthy team dynamic. 

Hold the team relaunch. Hold other human intervention plays regularly. Curate, facilitate, create physical and virtual space for openness and emotions. Aim for creative conversational turn-taking techniques “Now you take yourself off mute and speak up Monica” isn’t as effective as “Shall we each be devil’s advocate for a minute?” 

As part of that team re-launch exercise make sure you take time to spell out the purpose in human terms - “Why does this matter to us”; “What’s the impact of what we do, what are the consequences of our success or lack of (even the negative ones are helpful if they help us connect)?” and so many more. 

Irrespective how you choose to “rehumanize” these are some big themes you must keep in mind:

• Redefining work around outcomes and always define “good” solely through customer feedback, not in principle. For those of you working in Agile this is largely implied and ideally, you work off ever-re-examined and client-need-generated backlogs but for everyone else, be mindful of what is being done and how - at the very least ruthlessly re-evaluate the need for meetings, always set out goals that are measurable and product-related and benchmark against purpose often;
• Recategorising all work as either “Individual Work” or “Group Work” or “Client-Interaction Work", as doing so will open the floor for a discussion on personal preferences around everyday life commitments and self-knowledge of productivity times and it will get you as close as you can be to true flexibility - for instance never forget only joint group work or client-interaction work needs intersection of schedules, every other “work hour” is an artificial and constraining construct when individual work can and should be performed only when the employee knows they are at their peak performance and can achieve flow (whether that is 9-5 or at midnight);
• Always creating level playing fields. Rules such as “one remote - all remote” should have emerged naturally and become common sense by now because presence is only valuable if 100%. 9 out of 10 people in the meeting room and one on zoom should automatically mean 10 on the zoom from their desks- but there are other areas where you should look to safeguard equality such as “One off-camera - all off-camera” because -while not desirable-, anyone has moments when they can’t/won't be willing to be on video and that should become the case for everyone else in that meeting;
• Reinforcing the “Permission to be human”- this is new to everyone and it will be hard but it's paramount we all succeed in ensuring everyone in the team feels supported to express themselves fully and deeply in casual and personal ways. That applies not only in meetings but outside of them too and an idea is to encourage them to set aside time for 1-on-1s between each other once every few weeks aside from the 1-on-1s with the team leader which should be intentional, regular and meaningful. Everyone should work on their EQ and on the way they notice the positive behaviours of Psychological Safety in the team - hopefully by measuring them forensically- and overemphasise the new definition of “engagement 2.0” as true emotional bods with each other not sterile NPS scores;
• Enabling everyone to fully engage by avoiding Impression Management. Kit them with the skills to have a version of the “Catch Yourself Counter” as it’s fundamental to safeguarding Psychological Safety and enabling this new, intensely human and involved work. Aside from the absolute need for theoretical education on the definition of Impression Management as the negative behaviour that causes people to refrain from speaking up for fear of appearing ignorant, incompetent, negative or disruptive, teams must find practical ways to reframe. One of our clients who sees constant Impression Management Alerts in our Dashboard, for instance, is plotting a major campaign where they will send each employee a “Courage care package” complete with a Brene Brown book, a couple of fancy shot glasses, a brochure on Impression Management and a handheld clicker like the one they use on planes to count passengers to have them record in meetings when they stop themselves from engaging;
• Having that first “In Person At Last” formerly known as “Team Offsite”. The importance of this can not be overstated and every team should already have one in the calendar that they have hopefully plotted together! There is no team anywhere who isn’t in desperate need of a real-life in-person meeting right away and when it happens, it should contain some form of Team Relaunch as well. Discussing how many and how often these in-persons should occur in the usual cadence of hybrid should also be part of the discussion when “group work” is evaluated. 

Make no mistake about it, this is a pivotal moment in every company’s life. History will judge us all -potentially in the stock exchange too- through the way we knew how to “step into hybrid” right now and anyone who fails to “rehumanize” and lay strong foundations, risks doubling their already hefty HumanDebt? and that may well be fatal.

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The 3 “commandments of Psychological Safety” to build high performing teams are: Understand, Measure and Improve

Read more about our Team Dashboard that measures and improves Psychological Safety at www.peoplenottech.com or reach out at [email protected] and let's help your teams become Psychologically Safe, healthy, happy and highly performant.

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