Here are four ways leaders can create an environment that encourages clarity, ownership, and accountability in hybrid teams.
Many organizations are undergoing a fundamental shift in how their teams work. Leaders face new challenges when team members are spread across time zones and work remotely. It is not easy to manage the work necessary to reach goals and hold dispersed team members responsible.
Talent leaders need to encourage ownership and action in order to ensure the success of hybrid teams. This will ensure that all parties have a shared understanding about the work involved. Here are four tips for leaders of hybrid teams to create an environment that encourages ownership, accountability, and clarity.
1. Clarify the goals and direction for your team.
The Center for Creative Leadership believes that effective team leadership is a social process that creates. direction, alignment and engagement (DAC). The DAC framework allows individuals to work together to achieve organizational goals and accomplishments.
To achieve alignment and commitment in a hybrid environment, it is even more important to establish direction. Leaders of hybrid teams need to be more deliberate about creating rich team conversations that include discussing, agreeing, and documenting what the team is trying achieve together.
Leaders need to pay more attention when creating agendas that frame important topics and sending them out before meetings. Keep your attention high and engage team members in the conversation by asking them powerful questions. Next, explore their perspectives. Iterative dialogue is a great way to create a shared vision, test understanding, and agree on goals and outcomes.
These practices can be made a standard by leaders to ensure that dispersed team members are connected and engaged. This will result in greater clarity and agreement on priority areas.
2. Encourage ownership.
To receive direction effectively, team members must be willing and able to take responsibility for their actions and results. In a hybrid workplace, confusion about who is responsible and who has the right to execute can hinder genuine commitment.CharteringLeaders can use chartering to encourage and empower their team members to take action. Chartering is essentially a conversation that helps to reach mutual agreement on priorities and the actions that team members must take. These conversations can cover issues such as desired outcomes, acknowledged obstacles, work-load, available resource, decision rights, required authority for action, and others. Chartering allows leaders and team members to address real ownership concerns. This results in agreements that have high buy-in and confidence.
3. Show support.
It is easier for members to feel disconnected from their leader and team in hybrid work environments. Leaders must be more intentional about maintaining relationships with their team members and showing support, while their priority is to advance priorities. Here are some tips:
- Check-in proactive: Show genuine interest and concern for the achievements and challenges of your team members.
- Model resilience: Tell your team about the importance of setting boundaries to maintain personal well-being.
- By sharing new information, you can be an ally: Learn about organizational decisions and actions that impact the work priorities of your team. Share these developments with your team members to be a valued partner.
- Facilitate equitable access to opportunitiesEach member of your team should be consulted to determine the resources they require and their development goals. Follow up by providing resources in the best format for each individual’s situation.
Team members who feel supported are more likely to stay involved and commit to the team’s goals.
4. With accountability tools, you can stay on track and on-track.
It is a well-known fact that If it’s not written, it’s not real. In hybrid environments, where communication can be difficult, the risk of misunderstanding personal accountability is higher.
Accountability tools are a way to recap agreements. Leaders can generate clarity and empower team members to take ownership and act. One example of an effective tool is a document or workspace which records priority tasks, individuals who are assigned to them, targets dates, and space to track progress. Other tools, such as personal scorecards and team charter agreements, as well as project management software like Wrike and Trello, can also be useful. It doesn’t matter what tool you use, the important thing is to make sure they are easy to access, up-to-date as priorities change, and easy to understand.
Accountability is made easier when there is a designated space and system to keep the team on track.
Take a human-centered approach when establishing accountability in a hybrid world
Leaders and organizations must focus less on compliance and surveillance tactics to ensure team accountability. Building trust and engagement with team members. Employees who feel valued, supported, and aligned to the work of their organization in the world will naturally be more motivated for the tasks they are responsible for leading to high-performing organizations that move their companies forward.
