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Hybrid Team Productivity

An employee sitting at a table on her laptop in a virtual meeting.

This workshop offered as part of our Future of Work learning program provides some best practices to help you help your hybrid team stay focused, aligned and productive.

Hybrid teams can face several unique challenges and leaders are responsible for supporting team members to overcome obstacles and unlock their full potential. Leaders are encouraged to use these practical strategies to maximize productivity on the team, streamline collaboration and encourage connection. 

Building trust and psychological safety

Psychological safety is defined as “a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes.”

Psychological safety is essential for team productivity. You can improve your team’s culture by not relying on spontaneous opportunities to build trust and psychological safety. Be intentional and incorporate these practices into the way you lead:

  • Consider the person first, task second. Understand that “small talk” is actually meaningful - budget time into your meetings and your workdays to build this in..
  • Make liberal use of praise and acknowledgement.
  • Employ situational humility. You don’t need to be perfect, know it all and be completely in control. When individuals use phrases such as “I don’t know the answer”, “I was wrong”, or “This is something I’m struggling with”, it builds trust and makes it okay for others to do the same. 
  • Replace vague questions with solution-focused questions such as:
    • What are one or two areas where you have made progress? 
    • What are your ideas for how we could do this even better?
    • What are your success stories for the week? 
  • Make sure everyone feels heard. Consider your team and answer the following questions: 
    • Who do I want to hear from more?
    • Who do I want to listen to better?
  • Create opportunities to reinforce trust and psychological safety within the team. Get it in your calendar!

Getting results with a hybrid team

In hybrid teams, we may have fewer touchpoints in which to align our priorities. This means changing a few ways in which we do things. Build the following practices into your leadership to get results in a hybrid work environment:

  • Consider weekly or bi-weekly check-ins/team meetings using the team meeting structure in the section below.
  • Keep high-level priorities and goals visible to combat the unprecedented number of distractions your team is facing. Use team meetings and collaborative online tools.
  • Follow-up with a focus on accountability, progress and support as it engages and motivates team members to know they are moving in the right direction.
  • Offer guidance regarding tasks that can be deprioritized. It takes some courage but consider asking your team: “What do you think we spend time on that has questionable value?”
  • Ask focusing questions such as:
    • “What are your top three priorities/objectives for the week?” 
    • “When and where are you planning to work on these?”
  • Set email expectations (in your informal hybrid team charter). Consider using the following three questions:
  1. Which types of requests do we genuinely need to drop everything for?
  2. Which types of requests can wait 30-60 minutes (or even several hours)?  
  3. What is the best mode of communication for genuinely urgent issues (do we agree to pick up the phone or use a specific Google Space for urgent items?)

A four part structure for your hybrid team meeting

Below you will find a four-component meeting structure for hybrid teams. Review these to see if any of these would be good to add to your current team meetings:

Part 1: Connect 

  • What are you looking forward to this week?
  • What did you learn or find interesting?
  • What are you doing for your wellbeing?
  • How are things with your friends/family/pets/hobbies?

Part 2: Reflect

  • What’s one “success story” from the past day/week?
  • What did you accomplish related to your objectives from yesterday/last week? 
  • What’s a “failure” or “mistake” that we want to celebrate?
  • Here’s the progress we’re making…
  • Here are some of the awesome things I see everyone doing…

Part 3: Prioritize and align

  • What are everyone’s “top three priorities” for today/this week? 
  • What’s one thing each of us is doing this week that will contribute to (insert higher level TMU value/initiative)?

Part 4: Action

  • What’s your plan? What are your next steps?
  • When and where are you blocking off time to work on your “top three”?
  • What challenges are you facing?
  • What support do you need?

Tips and practices to help make the hybrid team meeting work

  • Solicit input from your team on what they think would work well. This is a great way to make everyone feel heard.
  • Employ a roundtable. Everyone talks, everyone is heard.
  • Prepare. Craft good questions that will elicit meaningful responses.
  • Listen. Let silence do the heavy lifting.
  • Use visuals and annotation tools.
  • Build the habit. Host team meetings at the same time, same place.
  • Rotate who is leading your team meetings.
  • Be patient. Don’t expect an awesome team meeting right away.
  • Practice “one virtual, all virtual” or assign an advocate in the room to help ensure virtual participants have the opportunity to contribute.