Hybrid Leadership: Why Does It Matter and How Is It Developed?

Hybrid leadership is the most important management capability your organisation isn’t investing enough in.  

Back in the days when everyone worked on location, academics interpreted hybrid leadership to be a mix of authoritarianism and empathy.

Now, it refers to the challenge of managing a team that’s not always in the office.  

And this isn’t going away.  

Forbes found that 98% of employees want to work remotely at least part of the time.  

The hybrid leadership model demands entirely new skills.  

Why?  

Because structure without flexibility drives your best talent away.  

Now, here's the good news.  

In this article, you’ll get clarity on exactly what hybrid leadership demands and how to build it. We’ll cover:

• What hybrid leadership means  

• The hybrid leadership model explained  

• Why hybrid leadership development matters

• The difference between hybrid leadership and traditional leadership

• The criteria for hybrid leadership

• Hybrid leadership in practice

So, without further ado, scroll for the full story.

What is hybrid leadership?

Hybrid team leadership balances the autonomy of remote working with the connection of in-person collaboration. Ideally, it forces managers to focus on the most important thing: results.

At its best, hybrid team leadership has the potential to bring a new level of productivity and engagement.  

Unlike traditional in-office leadership, hybrid managers can’t rely on watching their team to get a sense of how they’re working.  

And unlike entirely remote managers, hybrid leaders can facilitate in-person sessions that allow for collaboration and creativity.  

Managers need to develop the skills to navigate these unique challenges and lead with intention, not instinct.  

As MIT’s Sloan review stated:  

“Hybrid work is not a policy challenge – it’s a leadership capability challenge.”

The hybrid leadership model explained

So, what exactly is the hybrid leadership model based upon?  

First and foremost, managers move from monitoring how employees work to monitoring their outcomes.  

That means developing specific and manageable goals, communicating them clearly to team members, and trusting them to pursue those goals autonomously.

In fact, communication is a fundamental building block of leadership strategies for a hybrid workforce.  

Unfortunately, a recent MarktEffect report found that most professionals believe their managers need to develop their communication skills, while managers overestimate the effectiveness of their communications.  

This mismatch has the potential to disengage employees, which can cause huge problems in a partially remote team.

Second, inclusion. There are already countless studies showing how a manager’s implicit bias can hinder their team. Hybrid working brings the additional challenge of whose voice gets heard – quite literally. Managers must ensure that who’s heard doesn’t depend on who’s in the office that day.  

The bottom line?  

Inclusive leadership becomes paramount.

Hybrid leadership vs. traditional leadership

To better understand the difference between hybrid leadership and traditional leadership, let’s start with outlining some principles related to the latter.  

For instance, traditional leadership favours physical presence and visibility, with leaders walking around the office, face-to-face supervision, or even a purely office-based environment.  

Furthermore, traditional leaders will follow standardised processes, like uniform work hours of 9 to 5 or exclusively in person, office meetings.  

Seems fine on paper, right?  

In reality, it’s counterproductive.

For example, a manager doesn’t need to clearly set a goal if they can watch an employee through every task.  

And there are certainly many stories of traditional managers who mistake a productive aura for actual productivity.

These practices can be exacerbated by remote and hybrid leadership, or they can be entirely broken.  

Managers might still try to watch employees through every task by micromanaging from afar. For example, by demanding constant status updates or trying to digitally walk team members through each step, rather than communicating a final output and checking it at milestones.

Managers who haven’t dedicated time to learning inclusion can find themselves falling into proximity bias.  

They end up relying on whoever is in office, rather than distributing the task. Or they can hold “hybrid brainstorms” where the only voices heard are those in the physical meeting room.  

Hybrid leadership requires extra effort from managers to ensure that all voices are heard, and all responsibilities are distributed appropriately.

What is important for the hybrid leadership style?

Business leaders and academics have spent the past few years exploring the skills, styles, and key principles of managing a hybrid team.  

There have been many theories put forward, but there are some common findings across the various structures.

Some hybrid leadership skills might be new to managers, and some might be old skills applied in a new way.  

However, there are some key elements to a successful hybrid working environment.

Communication

• Clarity: managers need to communicate clearly with all team members. Everyone needs to know exactly what their goals are, what their status is, and how it fits in the bigger team picture. It’s surprisingly common for managers to assume their team knows everything they know. Even in-office, that can cause slowdowns and unneeded work. On a hybrid team, that effect is magnified.  

• Documentation: some of that clarity can be found in documentation. Instead of assuming what team members know, managers should make sure that important information is written out as well, whether that means a shared team tool or just an email following up on a conversation.

• Asynchronous communication: this is the beauty of most digital communication. It allows professionals to focus on thought-intensive projects, then respond to team inquiries. It also facilitates the move to flexible scheduling, which is becoming more popular. But this only works if managers don’t demand that employees immediately respond to any messages.

Autonomy

• Trust: it can be very difficult for managers to trust their employees. It can feel like letting go of control. However, as the University of Melbourne’s Dr Belinda Allen points out, “Leading from a place of distrust is a sure-fire way to create a toxic work environment. If you don’t think you can trust a team member to get the job done, that’s a performance issue and needs to be treated accordingly. But not trusting your team can’t be your default position.”

• Outcome-based management: this is the verify portion of ‘trust but verify’. By setting clear and timely goals for each team member, managers will have a clear sense of how employees are working. Set check-ins at the logical steps along the way, and any issues will be clear, whether it’s a process issue or an employee issue.

Fairness

• Inclusion: this has several components. One is decision-making. Where possible, include your staff in decisions that affect them or their work. Inclusion also means being sure to get a broad spectrum of perspectives, so employees with a different gender, class, and/or racial background must be heard by their managers.

• Equal information access: this is crucial to any hybrid leadership style. It’s easy to fall into the trap of letting in-office employees know about changes first, but managers need to proactively avoid this by ensuring that information is shared on digital channels at the same time as in-person channels.

• Avoid proximity bias: likewise, it’s natural to connect more with people face-to-face than online. Unfortunately, that can lead to an ‘us-vs-them mentality’ that can divide the team. Managers need to constantly be aware of the temptation to take in-office workers more seriously. One thing that can help is proactively setting meetings.

Feedback

• Performance support: work with remote teams and team members to set clear goals, with milestones along the way. As this University of Melbourne study noted: There’s extensive research demonstrating the power of goals in motivating teams, regardless of where team members are located.

• Regular check-ins: to keep projects on track and remote team members engaged, be sure to set standing times to meet with both individuals and team members. During group check-ins, be sure to hear from each team member.

• Development: approach this from an individual and group perspective. On the individual side, use milestones to talk with team members about career progression. This can be according to time, such as every six months, or by project completion. Likewise, try to organise face-to-face sessions with the entire group that are structured around development, so colocation has a benefit to individuals as well as the team.    

Companies need clear, organisation-wide expectations about specific hybrid leadership competencies.  

Via this approach, companies can ensure that they’re providing targeted hybrid leadership training.  

And the core thing to remember is that this training needs to be hands-on.  

Too often, managers walk away with theories that they themselves need to figure out how to put into action.  

It’s a bit like trying to cut your own hair; with a lot of practice, you might be able to get a straight line. However, it’s much easier for an outside person.

Practical learning also ensures scalability, which helps to create a continuous learning culture around the subject.  

And manager communities are a great way to make sure lessons are being applied and skills are constantly reassessed.  

Remember: the theory of hybrid leadership is important, but the only thing that matters is its application.

Hybrid leadership in action

So, what does a hybrid leadership style look like in practice?  

Here are a couple of examples.

Example 1: Turn on the camera as soon as there are people in the room.  

This makes chit-chat is open to everyone.  

If the in-person team always gets there early, be sure to let remote workers know so they can log in as well.  

During the meeting, proactively ask questions of remote members and keep an eye on the screen to see if anyone wants to jump in.  

Even with a perfect internet connection, it can be harder for remote members to add their opinion or expertise.

Example 2: Feedback that’s friendly for remote and in-person workers.  

Luckily, performance management has some of the same tools that managers should be using: clear goal-setting and regular check-ins.  

Managers need to use either time or project milestones to speak with remote employees about where they’d like to go and the steps to get there.  

Managers should follow up with clear documentation, even if it’s just an email, to be sure everyone’s on the same page.  

From there, regular check-ins can catch issues before they become too large.

Example 3: Transparent communication

If a manager suspects a remote employee has become disengaged, communication becomes even more important.  

The manager needs to explain clearly what they’re seeing and why it’s a concern.  

From there, the manager needs to set reasonable goals for a specific work period, then check back in with the employee at the end of that period.  

If there’s no noticeable change, it’s time to move onto more serious steps, such as a performance improvement plan.

Why Hybrid Leadership Development Matters

As the working world moves more towards remote work, hybrid leadership becomes increasingly important.  

It is, however, a skill that needs to be actively learned, not picked up on the job.  

Good hybrid leaders aren’t born; they’re trained.  

Risk of low morale in teams

Managers without specific hybrid leadership skills run a real risk of demoralised and dysfunctional teams.  

As Harvard Business School pointed out, workers already list relationships with colleagues as their top source of tension at work.  

The pitfalls of virtual communication have the potential to deeply exacerbate the problem.

Risk of poor retention

A disengaged and dysfunctional team makes it harder to retain talent. Even in a pro-employer jobs market, this is a significant expense.  

Estimates vary widely, but the Society for HR Management found that recruitment can cost almost five thousand euros per role.  

Combine this with the cost to ongoing projects, and it becomes clear how important retention is to companies.

Risk of poor employee engagement

Beyond simple retention, employee engagement has a deep effect on business success. It influences culture and outcomes.  

An engaged employee performs better, both in terms of quality and in terms of speed.  

With so many benefits, hybrid leadership training becomes an easy way to get a competitive edge for most companies.

Conclusion: Hybrid leadership is now a core capability

Just as the nature of offices has changed, so has the role of a manager.  

The majority of companies now use some combination of remote and in-person work. And this mix of working places appears to be the new normal.  

Across the Western world, companies are locking themselves into long-term leases for offices that cannot hold full capacity. Managing these hybrid teams requires specific skills and tactics that many managers haven’t had a chance to learn or develop.  

To remain competitive, companies need to proactively train their managers with this new skillset. Fortunately, courses exist to give these managers hands-on experience of working with the managerial tools for hybrid teams.  

These courses set up both managers and their hybrid teams for success.