How to Create a Thriving Culture in a Hybrid Work Environment
Welcome!
I’m Susan. I help leaders and organizations increase their impact, confidence, and results through coaching and unique people strategies and programs that wow employees and boost business!
We know from the research that a thriving team culture results in top performance. It can also create a level of employee “stickiness”, that is instrumental in attracting and retaining the talent we want and driving away those we don’t. As many organizations are returning to the office (at least in part), a big challenge we face as leaders is how to create a thriving culture with an increasingly distributed workforce.
We knew what we did when we all worked together in person, but what are we to do now that we’re here, there, and everywhere?
I had the opportunity recently to listen to a talk given by David Burkus, organizational psychologist and author of “Leading from Anywhere”, on the elements needed to create a thriving culture across distributed teams. His points were spot-on and given that they hinge on leading your team to show up differently, I thought I would share it with all of you, as leaders who are facing this very real challenge.
Rather than try to summarize his points myself, I thought I’d share his 12.5-minute video here, where he does a fabulous job succinctly summarizing those principles as well as providing useful and practical examples that you can implement with your own team(s). Take a peek…
If you prefer to read, here’s a link to his blog post, “How to Build Culture on a Remote Team”.
Amazing right?
In addition to the three elements he describes as being key for creating a thriving team culture: creating a sense of shared understanding, shared identity, and psychological safety, David also mentioned a fourth idea in the talk I attended that isn’t directly addressed here. I’ll do my best to recap it below, as I think it is equally critical as it supports connection, engagement, and longevity within an organization.
Having a “pro-social purpose”.
Essentially, it’s identifying the common cause you and your team/organization are ‘fighting’ for and using the power of storytelling to create a connection between an individual’s ‘fight’ with the team or organization’s ‘fight’. People don’t want to join a company, they want to join a cause that’s bigger than themself or any organization.
David described three types of ‘fights’:
Revolutionary (changing industry or society; we refuse to accept the status quo)
Underdog (proving the critics wrong when we’re on the receiving end of criticism or disagreement)
Ally (it’s not our fight, it’s the ally’s fight; very typical within non-profits)
As a leader, you may simply ask the following questions and reflect on them as a team:
When you think about the work you/we do as a team, what are we fighting for?
Does the mission and vision of the organization make you feel your job is important?
Once you’ve identified the common cause you’re fighting for, leverage the power of storytelling to make and reinforce the connection between the cause and the work the team is doing each and every day. Great leaders do this regularly and done well, this strong connection creates an amazing amount of ‘stickiness’ or loyalty with employees that contributes to high levels of engagement, a thriving team culture, and ultimately top performance.
Let me know in the comments below what ONE action you plan to take to create a thriving team culture as you migrate to more distributed, hybrid work teams.
Need additional tips on how to successfully transition back to the office or lead a hybrid team? Check out my blog: 5 Tips to Managing the Transition Back to the Office and Hybrid Work
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Colleen McCreary’s recent LinkedIn post caught my attention. It highlighted a recent quote from Jennifer Aniston where she succinctly captured the essence of a pervasive challenge that many individuals, particularly women, face in the professional world: the struggle to assertively ask for what they want and deserve.
Aniston stated, "There was a time in my world, my career, where I realized it's not being aggressive or combative or bitchy or emotional to stand up for what you deserve and what you want. It's a tough muscle to build. And also be loved and respected. It's hard to achieve."