Thoughts on the new normal office environment

- from kitchen table of Michael Legut, PhD. March 30, 2021

Many leaders think that once the pandemic is officially under control, things in the office will get back to normal. But what is the new normal? Those brief hallway interactions may be less frequent, “meetings for coffee” may be virtual, and the lunch brainstorming sessions will be harder to arrange. While many office tasks will be the same, there will be changes in how work gets done and when it gets done.

 As many office workers work remotely from their kitchen tables, a new office protocol has taken hold. In meetings you hear dogs barking, birds chirping, and see children photo bombing. The boundaries between the office and home have become very flexible. In many ways this is refreshing because your co-workers are more than just co-workers. You see pictures on walls, books and knick-knacks. On a Zoom call, you are in their home and so the relationships become more personal. Many employees have enjoyed the flexibility of this new office environment and personal comfort it provides. The office is literally a home and this creates a deeper connection to employees and leader’s lives.

Recognizing this change in employee and leader relationships is important if we want to understand what the new work environment means for leading and working with others. Why? The boundaries of the company culture (norms, values and beliefs) now include more of the “at-home” culture. As we all know, people are different at home compared to when they are in the office. So while the office tasks may be the same, the social milieu, leader/employee interactions, and actual work time may be very different.

For example, the impromptu in-office meetings that were helpful to guide work on a task may no longer happen   in the post-pandemic office environment. In a hybrid office which is partially remote and partially in-office, there will be limited face-to-face interaction and the interpretation of task assignments is more independent. The “remote” employee work is more self-managed. A quick answer about a task could be delayed by a day. Furthermore, leaders who micro-manage employees will likely be uncomfortable with a hybrid office where some employees are remote and some are in-office. Given that micro-managing leaders tend to constantly tweak a task, or not provide all the information needed for the task, you can guess that there will be some problems. The hybrid office environment will limit a manager’s ability to constantly look over the shoulders of employees. Employees will need to depend on their own decisions and managers will need to learn how to give employees enough guidance, outline expected outcomes and allow the employee ownership and creativity to complete a task. Leaders must also learn to trust that the employee will follow through and ask for feedback if they are having difficulty with a task. The employee and leader relationships will be very different from the pre-pandemic office relationships, so leaders will need to think about their personal style and make adjustments to the social challenges of the post-pandemic more hybrid office set up.

As employees work more independently, the task priority and hand-offs to co-workers are also more likely to be misinterpreted. To understand this better, leaders will need to consider how the social aspects of collaboration and cooperation will be different in the post-pandemic world. To put it simply, less face-to-face interaction in a hybrid office may reduce collaborative and cooperative team behaviors. As employees self-manage the flexibility with when they work, more problems may occur when the work requires multiple hand-offs to other employees. Creating fewer hand-offs can resolve some of this problem. Still the lack of collaboration and cooperation between workers who are remote and in-office will likely cause challenges. Factors such as, employee response time and feedback to co-workers regarding the task completion are likely to cause delays and create less than optimal outcomes.

While there are many automated systems that can help prioritize and organize task management, the actual task output may require leaders to engage the team in a quality check and provide feedback to help improve the situation. One approach may be to include an after project review that is designed so that the work team comes into the office to socialize, do some team building activity and also conduct the project review. The leader can use the in-office time to provide team feedback and improve the collaboration needed for the next project.

To be effective in the post-pandemic world, leaders will need to look for solutions to address collaboration and cooperation issues before they happen. This will include more emphasis on how to promote collaboration, cooperation, creativity and competence within their work teams. In my upcoming blog I’ll explore ways that leaders can recognize and reward employees who model the 4-C behaviors - collaboration, cooperation, creativity and competency.

 

Leading Others In A Post-Pandemic World

 Great leaders understand that work and relationships in the post-pandemic world will be different. The "at-home" or remote work environment is now a permanent option and there are now new work habits and behaviors that have changed the boundaries of the leader-employee relationship. What do leaders need to know about how they lead others in the post-pandemic work place?

The post-pandemic business activity will create a "new normal" for your work place. Because many work teams will be partially remote and partially in-house, leaders will need to be more focused on how their daily interactions and leadership influence will be different. Impromptu meetings, hallway conversations, and coffee break brainstorming will occur less often, and so leading employees and influencing peers will require some alternative approaches. At the core of all effective leadership relationships, leaders need to know how to influence and reward behaviors like collaboration, cooperation, creativity as well as competency. While the 4 "C's" are not really new to those who understand how to build high performing teams, the approach is new when it comes to how leaders manage their teams in the post-pandemic, "new normal" work place.

During the pandemic, the office environment has become an on-line office. "At-home" and remote work has become standard operating procedure. Employees working from home have grown accustom to new types of office protocol and daily work behavior. For example, many employees now have self-managed work schedules, zoom call meetings may be at the kitchen table, and they may be wearing business attire on top but dressed in pajamas below the waist. The new office environment and habits have introduced more flexibility, more self-management and less in-person interactions, and this has changed what was considered the normal for in-office pre-pandemic work environment. 

While some employees long to return to the "good old days" and can't wait to get back to the office, others may never want to go back to long commutes, cramped cubicles and hovering managers.

In this "new", more hybrid, office environment, how will leaders lead their teams so ensure collaboration on the right work needed to achieve the business objectives? How do you get commitment and cooperation from team members who have not been in the office for over a year? How do you keep employees engage with other team members so that the important tasks get done? How do you retain talented employees who don't want ever come to the office again?

In my next few blogs, I will propose ways in which leaders can adjust their approach to leading and influencing employees in the post-pandemic work place. My goal is to help leaders understand how to build effective hybrid teams (partially remote and partially in-office) that are productive and high performing. 

Some of the topics that we will explore in future blogs will be;

• Understanding what the new work environment means to remote and in-office employees
• Recognizing and rewarding the 4 -C's - collaboration, cooperation, creativity and competency
• Approaches for leading a hybrid work team
• How leaders can adjusts their leadership to help shape a post-pandemic company culture.

If you would like some individual consultation on these topics, or to contribute to the discussion, you can connect with me at www.Leaderimage.com or on my LinkedIn page.

Understand Disruptors That Help You Lead In a Post-Pandemic World

As a leader you must understand the characteristics of disruptors. Here are some important thought- leader ideas from Deliberate Disruption for Transformational Growth by Michael E. Raynor.

....three general principles separate real disruptors from apparent ones. First, real
disruptors offer “a new business model that defines a different frontier.” Second, usually
even when a company defines a “new frontier,” it isn’t doing anything disruptive, since
that would call for some new “technology or set of processes” to set it apart. Third, to
force their new frontiers to grow, disruptors must offer equal or better performance at
prices incumbents can’t match.

When established firms try to innovate, they often borrow practices that work for startup
firms. They hold “idea hunts,” generate lots of concepts and fund the promising ones.
And they often fail to innovate because they miss a crucial point: No matter how you
apply disruption (to one idea, to a portfolio), it forces you to abandon your existing ways
of thinking about innovation. Applying disruption in an incumbent industry is like trying
to go back to gills after your species develops lungs. It doesn’t work.
Emerging firms often articulate their development processes in adaptive terms. They test
various permutations, pick one that works and keep it, following the “variation-selection -retention
model.” When venture capitalists invest in an emerging firm, they want to build
a business profitable enough to sell. Their criterion is “will this make money?” In an
established firm, the criteria are more complex. Such firms aren’t just economic entities;
they are “political, social organisms.” Instead of evaluating ideas based only on finances,
people invest their reputations and status, so incumbents are much more risk averse.

Don’t flood your firm with new ideas; just pursue new concepts
within the context of a defined, profitable future. Often ideas have been circulating in your
firm, unexplored, for years. Shape them into more specific, focused possibilities. Instead
of trying to “fail fast,” try to “learn fast” and apply the lessons to your business. Instead
of testing new ideas at random, articulate your model clearly so you develop innovations
in a framework where they can succeed.

Leadership Development Assignments

Great ideas on leadership development. My opinion is that all leadership development should have a real-time activity tied to the development assignments.

Leadership Development

Your Leader Image - Learning Leadership Presence

Your leader image is about how others perceive your presence.Your physical, emotional and spiritual presence is about your actions in the company of others.

Here is a great quote about the act of spiritual leadership.

“Speak less, listen deeply.”
― Radhe Maa