How to manage teams effectively in the new world of work

While line man­agers used to be con­sid­ered “the frozen mid­dle”, they have now become “piv­otal” to organ­i­sa­tion­al suc­cess in a world that is mov­ing increas­ing­ly towards hybrid work­ing, believes HR guru Lyn­da Grat­ton.

The rea­son for this shift in per­cep­tion, which had start­ed before but accel­er­at­ed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, is that man­agers are now recog­nised as “crit­i­cal cat­a­lysts for change”. 

They are also under­stood to be “car­ri­ers of cul­ture, the glue, dri­vers of per­for­mance and engage­ment, and con­nec­tors”, adds Grat­ton, pro­fes­sor of man­age­ment prac­tice at the Lon­don Busi­ness School and co-founder of HSM Advi­so­ry.

Put anoth­er way, man­agers play a cru­cial role in cre­at­ing a pos­i­tive employ­ee expe­ri­ence, which includes becom­ing effec­tive coach­es who proac­tive­ly sup­port and devel­op their teams. Also vital is becom­ing a skil­ful sto­ry­teller as “craft­ing nar­ra­tives to win buy-in and sup­port pur­pose” is the “glue” that binds every­thing else togeth­er, says Grat­ton.

Mary Beighton, direc­tor of peo­ple and cul­ture at car finance spe­cial­ist Zuto, agrees. 

“This lay­er is crit­i­cal as mid­dle man­agers are ulti­mate­ly respon­si­ble for engag­ing and moti­vat­ing teams on a dai­ly basis – they’re the first point of con­tact, whether vir­tu­al­ly or in per­son,” she says. 

Modern managers

But the man­age­r­i­al role has also evolved “incred­i­bly”, par­tic­u­lar­ly over the past few years since new ways of work­ing came into play, Beighton acknowl­edges. This means a lot more is now expect­ed of them, which includes the need to be more inten­tion­al and delib­er­ate in how they man­age oth­ers.

“Line man­agers are try­ing to bal­ance tra­di­tion­al respon­si­bil­i­ties, such as man­ag­ing and moti­vat­ing per­for­mance, with rep­re­sent­ing the busi­ness from a val­ues per­spec­tive and trans­lat­ing that vision to the work­force,” she points out. “There’s also the addi­tion­al chal­lenge of sup­port­ing employ­ee well­be­ing and ampli­fy­ing employ­ee voice, so they have a huge amount of respon­si­bil­i­ty.”

What this means in prac­tice is that man­agers oper­at­ing in a hybrid or remote-work­ing con­text are now required to demon­strate high­er lev­els of pro­fi­cien­cy in soft skills.

Mike Thack­ray, prin­ci­pal con­sul­tant at organ­i­sa­tion­al devel­op­ment con­sul­tan­cy OE Cam, explains: “Man­agers need to be able to dial up all the skills that were nec­es­sary before to a whole new lev­el. This includes emo­tion­al intel­li­gence (EQ) as under­stand­ing indi­vid­ual sit­u­a­tions, cir­cum­stances and needs has become much more impor­tant.”

Oth­er key skills include effec­tive deci­sion-mak­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly in rela­tion to hybrid-work­ing prac­tices and espe­cial­ly if clear organ­i­sa­tion­al guide­lines do not exist. A key prob­lem here, though, Thack­ray says, is that “some man­agers just haven’t got the skills or con­fi­dence to make those kinds of calls, not least because as soon as you make a deci­sion for one per­son and it’s dif­fer­ent for anoth­er, you lay your­self open to chal­lenge.”

This sit­u­a­tion is also not helped at times by a lack of con­sen­sus among senior exec­u­tives as to the hybrid work­ing approach they should take – or even if they should go down this route at all.

Deb­bie Bayn­tun-Lees is pro­fes­sor of organ­i­sa­tion­al devel­op­ment, DEIB and change at the Hult Inter­na­tion­al Busi­ness School (Ashridge). She explains: “There are organ­i­sa­tions where lead­ers are in con­flict, with some want­i­ng to go hybrid and some not, but this cre­ates paral­y­sis, and caus­es ten­sion and delayed deci­sion-mak­ing. Man­agers tend to go to HR for help but are often in the dark too as it’s all so new and everything’s still in the exper­i­men­tal phase.”

Relationship building

Lit­tle thought has tra­di­tion­al­ly been giv­en to how man­agers are affect­ed by this kind of sce­nario. But it can result in them feel­ing caught in the mid­dle between senior exec­u­tives and their employ­ees, who are often keen to work more flex­i­bly and have in some instances tak­en advan­tage of today’s com­pet­i­tive jobs mar­ket to vote with their feet.

The upshot of these pres­sures is line man­agers who can feel “dis­em­pow­ered and demor­alised”, a sce­nario that fre­quent­ly has a neg­a­tive impact on staff morale too.

As a result, Bayn­tun-Lees points to the impor­tance of both lead­ers and man­agers learn­ing to inter­act with their teams in what she describes as an “inten­tion­al rela­tion­al” fash­ion. One of the aims here is to find ways of devel­op­ing “qual­i­ty rela­tion­ships and inter­ac­tions” so that both staff (and their man­agers) feel “known, val­ued and involved”.

“Lead­ers and man­agers need to become con­nec­tors,” she explains. “This means facil­i­tat­ing con­nec­tion-focused con­ver­sa­tions to ensure employ­ees are high­ly engaged with the organ­i­sa­tion­al mis­sion and work expec­ta­tions but also that lead­ers are con­nect­ed to employ­ees’ aspi­ra­tions and well­be­ing.”

To do so requires a man­age­r­i­al mind­set that is “able to learn, share pow­er and respon­si­bil­i­ty and col­lab­o­rate with peo­ple. But it also requires lead­ers to be vis­i­ble, to devel­op rap­port, build trust and cre­ate psy­cho­log­i­cal safe­ty”, Bayn­tun-Lees says. 

A key skill in this con­text is facil­i­tat­ing dis­cus­sion both among teams and with indi­vid­u­als. This includes learn­ing how to hold dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions and man­ag­ing employ­ee expec­ta­tions on issues, such as flex­i­ble work­ing options or pay ris­es dur­ing today’s cost-of-liv­ing cri­sis. 

But it also involves enabling inclu­sive dia­logue in which every­one is giv­en a voice, not least on how hybrid work­ing might work for their team. Address­ing pow­er imbal­ances and poten­tial con­flict are oth­er impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tions. “It’s about inject­ing more human­i­ty into the world of work and ensur­ing that man­agers under­stand the pow­er they have both in terms of their own role and in man­ag­ing the pow­er dif­fer­en­tials of their team to help cre­ate more of a lev­el play­ing field – and it’s a new set of skills for many,” says Bayn­tun-Lees.

Anoth­er set of vital but all too fre­quent­ly over­looked skills that man­agers like­wise need to devel­op, mean­while, are what Grat­ton calls hybrid-enabled prac­ti­cal skills. While they may appear to be basic, admin­is­tra­tive activ­i­ties such as joint­ly devel­op­ing team agree­ments on accept­able behav­iour and plan­ning for more effec­tive work­flows can make a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in help­ing teams man­age their time more effec­tive­ly to sus­tain high per­for­mance lev­els.

Learning new tricks

As to how man­agers can best go about learn­ing new skills and enhanc­ing old ones, there are var­i­ous pos­si­ble approach­es. Man­age­ment train­ing and upskilling cours­es that have been revised to sup­port hybrid and remote work­ing will undoubt­ed­ly help. Zuto, for exam­ple, updat­ed its man­age­ment devel­op­ment pro­gramme to include new mod­ules on resilience and hold­ing dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions. It also opened up par­tic­i­pa­tion in both areas to any inter­est­ed employ­ees, to help them “feel more equipped to deal with any chal­lenges”, Beighton says. But beyond more for­mal train­ing, role mod­els and men­tors also have a vital role to play. 

“There’s a lev­el of self-aware­ness required for all this and it’s dif­fi­cult to devel­op with­out focused help,” says Bayn­tun-Lees. “A lot of man­agers feel pulled in all direc­tions and need guid­ance, so sup­port from role mod­els is key.”

Anoth­er use­ful strat­e­gy is to intro­duce peer-to-peer learn­ing. Here, line man­agers across the busi­ness get togeth­er reg­u­lar­ly to dis­cuss any issues, chal­lenges or inno­va­tions to learn from shared expe­ri­ences.

But Zuto has also been care­ful to intro­duce sev­er­al sup­port mech­a­nisms, such as stan­dard­ised tal­ent man­age­ment frame­works, to pro­vide clear career path­ways for both employ­ees and man­agers going for­ward.

“It’s been a chal­leng­ing tran­si­tion for line man­agers over the last few years, with a lot of new things expect­ed of them, so we want­ed to pro­vide process­es, struc­ture and con­sis­ten­cy. There’s a huge amount of respon­si­bil­i­ty in the line man­ag­er posi­tion these days so it’s impor­tant to focus on height­en­ing skills to help them adapt, man­age expec­ta­tions and inspire the troops,” Beighton con­cludes.