Much like a team sport, a team wins or loses together – as one. Being a team implies interdependence, where all members rely on each other’s special expertise to achieve a successful outcome. However, building an interdependent team will look different for everyone, as each team is unique. Thus, identifying the type of team you lead is necessary in determining what strategies will be most beneficial for your specific team. Teams are also becoming increasingly virtual and hybrid, with more and more companies moving away from the traditional workplace setting. Knowing how to leverage the benefits and confront the challenges of remote work is key for successful leaders today.

There are many unknowns and challenges to contend with as organizations continue working in a virtual and hybrid model. However, there are factors to incorporate in a virtual or hybrid team that can increase the cohesion of a virtual team, impacting employee engagement, individual and team performance, and subsequently project success. By implementing the necessary drivers, you may encounter a higher level of achievement than you would in a traditional work environment. But first, you need to address your mindset; your mindset plays a critical role in how you cope with work challenges. Having a growth mindset and accepting the hybrid work model as a new opportunity can enable you to effectively lead a dynamic virtual or hybrid team.

In so many ways, meetings are the building blocks and core elements of the organization. In the virtual and hybrid workplace, meetings can provide the necessary opportunities to develop deeper relationships with team members, leading to a stronger, more committed team. But if this is the case, why do so many find that meetings are a waste of time? The short answer is that they are not being structured and led effectively. Frequently they are scheduled within an improper length of time. To compound on this problem, meeting leaders rarely consider the number of attendees and who is best suited to help meet the goals of the meeting.

A positive meeting experience and ongoing communication rely on several components including: a purposeful agenda, positive energy, and intentionally selected technology-facilitated communication tools. To create a positive meeting experience, you must be intentional in developing the agenda and deliberate in creating a positive mood and energy among participants. The type of communication that occurs early on in meetings predicts communication occurring later for the team. Meetings should start in a way that ensures subsequent interactions are as positive as possible. Due to the lack of frequency of face-to-face meetings for virtual and hybrid teams, technology-facilitated communication is essential to the collaboration process; leaders need to be deliberate about selecting the proper communication tools, provide hands-on training and ongoing tech support.

As a leader, you are likely faced with continual problems that need to be solved. But many of these challenges are not actually problems to be solved, rather polarities. Many leaders are tempted to look at situations, such as reducing costs and improving quality, from an either/or perspective, seeing the importance in only one side or the other. What these leaders should do is develop a “both/and” mindset, where they work to find a balance between both ideas. Instead of deciding to focus on reducing costs or improving quality, they should work to reduce costs and improve quality.

Leading teams from a distance can be challenging, and the nuances that come with virtual and hybrid teams are especially difficult to manage. Introducing a new perspective — polarity thinking — helps teams improve their performance over time. There are 4 essential polarities that high-performing virtual and hybrid teams effectively leverage: formal & informal communication, task & relationship orientation, flexible & traditional schedules, and working together & apart. Being aware of these polarities is crucial, but not enough; you need a plan to manage them better in the future. It is imperative that you motivate your team in order to make the necessary changes to fully leverage these polarities.

Trust and psychological safety are shown to impact both working relationships and the ability to achieve business results within a team. Team psychological safety is the belief and ability to speak up with candor and feel your voice is valued. It's also the shared belief among team members that the team is a safe place for interpersonal risk taking. Psychological safety is proven to have a critical impact on team relationships and productivity, but shared trust must be developed and maintained over time to create sustainability.

Trust and psychological safety are shown to impact both working relationships and the ability to achieve business results within a team. Clearly they are vital to the success of any virtual or hybrid team, but they don’t develop without intentional effort to foster and retain them within a team. Successful teams work to sustain trust and psychological safety through purposeful efforts and behaviors. Intentional actions are needed to maintain team trust and psychological safety. When achieved, both have many benefits to the overall team and its members.