9 Principles of Successful Hybrid Leadership in Remote Teams

Managing a team is challenging — and managing remote teams in a hybrid work environment requires a new set of hybrid leadership skills. In today’s world of flexible work arrangements, successful leaders must adapt their approach to foster engagement, productivity, and well-being across dispersed teams.

We're going to answer this question by looking at the main principles that should guide hybrid and remote leaders alike.

First, however, we'll go through a definition of hybrid leadership, so you've got a clear idea of what we're working with and why it matters.

What is hybrid leadership?

Hybrid workforce leadership is the term used for managers and team leaders who oversee a hybrid team or hybrid teams that include both in-office and remote workers. These leaders are responsible for managing employees who are physically present in the office as well as those working from different locations, such as a remote location. The hybrid model, or hybrid work models, combine in office work and work from a remote location, making the hybrid workplace model increasingly common in modern organizations. Some of their direct reports may also be fully remote or fully in-office.

It can be tempting to say that hybrid leadership is just ‘being a manager but in a hybrid context’. This, however, is an oversimplification.

Hybrid leaders have to strike a delicate balance between managing the needs of their team members and those of the business. They’re also often responsible for helping their teams adapt to a remote or hybrid working setup, so their business impact is noteworthy. Effective management style, leadership style, and team leadership are crucial for success in hybrid leadership.

Why is hybrid leadership necessary?

From challenges with communication to struggles with team coordination, hybrid leaders have their work cut out for them. Managing distributed teams in a hybrid setting brings unique challenges, such as addressing feelings of isolation and balancing work and personal life for remote employees.

It’s like we said: hybrid leaders are tasked with balancing lots of complex spinning plates, including the needs of their teams and the demands of the company. To effectively manage these teams, leaders must implement strong communication strategies to ensure clarity, collaboration, and productivity. Without excellent leadership skills, it’s difficult to do this well.

Now that we’ve established the basics of hybrid leadership, we’ll put the topic under the microscope and explore some of the most important principles of hybrid leadership in the context of remote teams.

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1. Focus on team engagement

One of the most important tenets of great hybrid leadership is to hone in on employee engagement. Employee engagement is crucial in hybrid teams, as it directly impacts productivity, collaboration, and overall company culture.

Maintaining engagement in hybrid teams requires intentional effort from leaders, who must implement targeted strategies to ensure all employees feel connected and involved, regardless of their location.

By making sure your remote team feels connected despite the physical distance between teammates, you can help create a sense of team spirit. This is very useful for showing, rather than telling, your team that everyone can rely on each other. Plus, an engaged team is one that’s going to be motivated to meet goals and seek out success. Team building activities can also help foster engagement and team spirit in hybrid settings. That’s good for business growth, and for team morale–which we’ll discuss at length shortly.

2. Foster a welcoming team culture

Just because your team doesn’t meet in person doesn’t mean you can’t curate a wonderful and welcoming team dynamic.

In fact, hybrid leaders need to pay particular attention to the team culture that they’re establishing. This can make an enormous difference in the daily work lives of their team members, as these employees can’t rely on physical proximity to help them bond. Organizing virtual coffee breaks is an effective way to promote social interaction and strengthen team culture, allowing both remote and in-office employees to connect informally.

Team culture vs organizational culture

A truly inviting, open culture begins with the right approach to recruitment. By exploring a wide and varied applicant pool for each role, you can help ensure that your team’s individual culture becomes more welcoming in turn. It's also essential to provide equal access to development opportunities for all team members, regardless of their work location, to foster an inclusive environment.

At the same time, it can be challenging to transform your team’s culture when your organizational culture is more stagnant than you’d like. When this happens, it’s often helpful to engage in honest dialog with the recruitment department–and to bring ideas forward to department heads.

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3. Embrace flexibility

Remote work culture comes more naturally to some than to others. This means that while some people have an easy time establishing a good work-life balance in a remote context, others may struggle to set up healthy boundaries or find a good balance during meetings or group talks. Flexible working arrangements can help employees achieve a better work life balance and manage their personal responsibilities more effectively.

This is where a flexible mindset and openness to creative solutions can really make a change.

In many cases, your team members will have their own ideas about possible flexible work arrangements or similar flexible accommodations you can make. It helps them feel heard when you take their suggestions into account. ​​​​​​​

Scheduling with flexibility in mind

One way in which you can introduce flexibility into your hybrid leadership is by providing non-rigid scheduling options.

Tools like dedicated interview scheduling software help you book interviews and manage team availability. For example, TIMIFY offers a flexible scheduling solution that supports remote teams and hybrid workforce management, ensuring seamless coordination across locations.

4. Accommodate everyone's needs for better work life balance

On that subject, it’s important to make room for the needs of remote employees when you’re acting as a hybrid manager. Supporting employees, especially remote team members, is crucial for helping them balance work responsibilities with their personal life.

As we’ve mentioned, standard 9-to-5 work doesn’t always ‘gel’ with remote workers’ personal demands and needs. As their manager, you have to find a way to balance those needs with the team’s need for building connections and working collaboratively.

You can start doing this by listening to what everyone is asking of you, then drawing up plans to accommodate those requests.

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5. Work towards diversity

Remote workers will rarely start spontaneously feeling a strong sense of unity within the team. This has to be actively encouraged and curated within a remote context, which is why diversity is another key principle of successful hybrid leadership.

From helping Asian, Indigenous, Latinx, and Black employees feel welcomed within the team, to creating an inclusive and accessible experience for disabled workers, hybrid leaders need to know exactly how to embrace diversity.

A great tool for this is anti-bias technology. If your recruitment technology helps you systematically eliminate bias in the recruitment process, for example, you'll already have an easier time fostering open-mindedness and recruiting with true diversity in mind.

6. Opt for continuous learning

The remote and hybrid workforce is an amazing space for learning. That's because remote work comes with the major advantage of being ideally suited to virtual learning sessions and other, often asynchronous, learning programs.

What that means for leaders is that they don't necessarily have to find one perfect day that works for everyone to schedule learning and/or development sessions. Instead, they can adopt a modern solution to let everyone learn at their own pace.

That's why we strongly recommend opting for a model of ongoing learning that doesn't have an ‘end point', but rather accepts that learning is a lifelong process. This mindset will help you adapt to change and encourage your teams to do the same.

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7. Do your research

Even for people who are already very familiar with the demands and rewards of the hybrid workplace, research is always worth the effort.

Remote work as a concept is not, altogether, something new. However, it is something that's constantly evolving and becoming a better version of itself. This makes it very useful to keep doing research and learning more about the changes happening in the world of remote work.

For example, the remote call center trends of 2024 might be completely different from those of the previous year--or they might be a repeat of the trends of 2021. By observing trends closely and learning from them, you can better prepare yourself and make the most of new developments.

8. Actively boost morale

The remote workforce often needs a little nudge in the right direction if it’s going to be super productive. This is why hybrid leaders have to actively choose to create a motivated workforce that succeeds in all areas. Supporting employees' mental health is crucial, as it not only boosts morale but also contributes significantly to overall business success.

To achieve this result, morale-boosting tactics have to be built directly into your remote workforce model. ​​​​​​​

Reward hard work

A very noteworthy example of helping your workers' morale stay high as a remote or hybrid leader lies in paying close attention to performance so you can reward exemplary efforts.

For example, if one of your team members has gone the extra mile and done remote work while traveling or commuting to meet goals, you should absolutely call this behavior out and reward it. This shows hard workers that you see and value them.

It also incentivizes other workers to put in extra work or push a little harder. This, in turn, raises morale for the team and reminds them that they're in this together.

9. Practice and encourage good communication

Remote work always comes with its own communication challenges, due in no small part to the fact that people can't speak face-to-face while working remotely.

However, strong communication skills are vital for creating a sense of togetherness. That's why hybrid leadership needs to focus on hybrid communication, and on helping team members speak clearly to one another even without conventional conversation elements like body language.

This calls for a strong grasp of the technicalities of virtual communications. A leader that knows exactly how to be clear when communicating digitally can help teach and inspire their direct reports.

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Final thoughts

Successful hybrid leadership comes down to much more than just giving your team access to virtual reality meeting rooms and hoping for the best. In fact, a good hybrid leader can make up the difference between a team that struggles and one that thrives.

That's why hybrid leadership is so important.

When you follow the principles we've set out here, you'll be well on your way towards successfully leading your remote teams. All that's missing is adding your own unique personal touch.