Hybrid working: it's not where you gather but WHY and HOW

This month as winter gives way to spring in the northern hemisphere, I want to focus on connection. This is the month where we start to see signs of rebirth in nature; where the rest and retreat of the colder months is giving way to a spurt of (re) growth.

If winter is the season of hibernation, then spring seems the season of (re) connection

Perhaps too, I am thinking about connection, as I write this from the mountains of Panama, reunited with a friend I met at university a million years ago and with whom I shared so much in my late teens and through my twenties. Then there was a 20-year gap, slightly punctuated by Facebook updates and the occasional email or text exchange. And yet, at the airport as we hugged and on our six hour drive to the mountains where we talked about everything, anything and nothing and where we laughed till we cried, those 20 years disappeared; we felt connected.

I’m reminded of the Brené Brown quote:

Connection is the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued. The Gifts of Imperfection

Leadership is the art of energy generation

It seems to me that this is one way of seeing the mindset and value-add of leaders. For what else is motivation, creativity, innovation and productivity, but the harnessing of energy towards a specific purpose?

Which leads me onto the issue of where, how and when leaders can best nurture and harness the energy of their people. In dry corporate speak I guess we’re talking about hybrid working.

Let’s refresh our memories about what working pre-pandemic was really like

I want to take you for a trip down memory lane. A few years ago, I was doing a lot of work in New York and New Jersey, spending weeks at a time working with teams in various financial services teams. I will never forget the scenes in one of the office buildings; people in suits, sitting in corridors, balancing laptops on their knees. What I saw looked more like people evacuated in a hurricane than some very smart, well-paid people making important decisions at the office.

What made it worse,from a personal point of view, was that the highly organised, very kind, PA of the MD I was working for had secured a meeting room for me to use for the week I was there. It was large enough to seat at least 8 people and had wonderful views over to Manhattan.

It was lovely – but I couldn’t work there while people huddled in dark corridors. So I went out and offered up “my space”. At least 8 people could work in more comfort, and probably with more focus, this way. Our own impromptu co-working space was born, and I got to know every one of those people as we sat around that big table.

Meanwhile, managers had been told that they couldn’t have their own dedicated office, meaning that each morning they had to retrieve their things from a storage locker before beginning work and lock everything away, out of sight, in the evening.

In practice, the managers wanted to sit somewhere where their teams were sitting. And the teams, in order to be able to sit together, had to get into the office earlier and earlier otherwise they’d be sitting in the corridor. All the managers gravitated to the offices that used to be theirs – with the personal mementos that make you feel like you belong – only now they were bare and soulless. Except for one MD with a large collection of baseball hats who in act of rebellion had nailed the hats around “his old office” just below ceiling height. Out of reach of any mean-spirited jobsworth who might want to tear them down.

Now I know that several somebodies got a sizeable bonus?that year as they “saved money" on facilities and real estate. It takes no particular talent to cut line items on a budget, it takes way more skill, empathy and imagination to work out the real cost of doing so is in terms of motivation, innovation and productivity.

This story is not crazier than some of the stories I’m hearing now

People mandated to return to the office, where they find themselves squeezed into one big open plan office and they all put their headphones on and work parallel to each other, and plenty of tales of Zoom burnout where people hop from one virtual meeting to another, with no breaks in between.

Lynda Gratton, Professor of Management Practice at London Business School, identifies four elements to make sure hybrid work is productive work:

• Energy
• Focus
• Cooperation
• Coordination

Leaders need to understand the impact and trade offs on each of these areas when crafting new working processes and practices, and use emotionally intelligent leadership to spot signs of stress or lack of motivation in staff. ?They need to pay attention to – and nurture – energy.

Sa?d Business School interviewed managers from 20 global companies which helped them to identify that workplace activities tend to fall into four general categories:

1.?????Focused creative tasks

2.?????Individual procedural tasks

3.?????Coordinated group tasks

4.?????Collaborative creative tasks

I’ve listed them in a rough order of how easy or suitable they are to working virtually; focused creativity usually needs good tech and little teamwork, while collaborative creative work need an environment where groups can gather in structured and unstructured ways to access the collective “hive mind.”

You cannot expect productivity by dragging people back to the same old office

Productivity is often at odds with efficiency. Just because you can squeeze 20 desks into a space if everyone is in rows facing the same way, doesn’t’ mean you should. In fact, you never should.

Just because we are now all familiar with video meetings, doesn’t mean we should cram more virtual meetings in. Research has shown that it takes more energy to interact with an array of close-up faces on screen (so close that we’d only get this close in-person if we were planning to hit or kiss them!) And you should never have back to back meetings anyway!

Successful working is about intentionality and evidence

Adam Grant, Professor of Organizational Psychology at Wharton Business School, is fond of reminding people of the difference between Research and Mesearch; just because it works or doesn’t work for you, doesn’t make it a wise platform for leadership decisions.

This new era of working presents a tremendous opportunity for change – which means NOT trying to recreate the past. It demands evidence-based decisions and better leadership – people aware of their own energy levels and that of others. It also requires a new kind of contract about what is necessary for any of us to do good work from our homes.

Individual wellness contracts where we reflect and agree on how we manage our “commute”, ?how we take breaks, how we manage boundaries and movement are good, innovative ideas. And companies should be taking responsibility for making sure that their staff have good desks, chairs and space if they are expecting their people to work from home.

And while we’re talking about evidence…

It’s probably worth saying – again! – that both introverts and extraverts get their energy from other people. Sorry die-hard MBTI peeps ?? Do read more here about the myths of introverts and a wonderful rant - sorry newsletter - from Adam Grant on the many, many problems of Myers Briggs.

Now over to you:

Where do you do your best work?

What even IS your best work?

What do you think about this idea of leadership being about energy?

And are you like me in thinking that spring is really the start of your new year?

Share your experiences of remote, hybrid and office working in the comments below.