Introduction

Although leadership teams are not family, if they are unified, they will be successful in managing world-class teams. A few years ago, a San Francisco–based software company asked me to help them fix a problem they were having regarding what they called a toxic workplace culture. The CEO complained that his leadership team were not getting along, and they were constantly arguing over how to operate the business. As a result, the business growth had been slowing down, the company was struggling to hit its revenue goals, and deadlines were often missed. When I joined the first meeting with the senior leadership team, I immediately spotted a few patterns. The chief marketing officer's (CMO) approach to business was completely separate from and even clashing against the chief revenue officer's (CRO) approach to business. Each of them had different goals, each of them strongly believing that their own set of goals was the one and only, and each of them not listening to the other party. What's more, both of them seemed more aligned with their subordinates than with their peers; this translated into fruitless leadership meetings, poor business performance, and a very toxic work environment where blaming was common practice. As I started working with the group and sharing some of the strategies and techniques to build a high-performing and inclusive team, I noticed a shift in the way the CMO and CRO treated each other. One morning in particular, as we were going through one of the workshops, I caught the CMO saying to the CRO, ‘I realize that I have not taken your goals into consideration as much as I should have, and I want to change that. I have been revisiting my marketing strategy and including your goals, and I asked my team to also be measured on new goals that include yours’. This was an ‘aha’ moment for the entire leadership team and a real turning point. From that moment onwards, the entire culture of the leadership team shifted from a blame culture to a unified team culture, and it translated into every aspect of the business. Within a few months, the business's revenue was getting back on track and its growth accelerated.

In this chapter, I will share the strategies and techniques that you can use in order to create a unified hybrid leadership team. I will share the steps that you can take in order to build unity amongst your leadership team when some members work from the office, some work from home, and some work in geographically dispersed locations. Many business leaders have asked me over the last 18 months how they can continue to lead hybrid teams successfully, even after the Covid-19 pandemic. How can they balance trust, engagement, and unity in this new complex way of working? As a diversity and inclusion consultant and author who spent a decade studying what makes teams successful, I spent years working with teams and, in particular, with hybrid teams to identify what makes them successful in a hybrid environment. I would like to share some well-known leadership myths that should be avoided at all costs:

1. Leaders have all the answers

   This is a very damaging claim. On the contrary, leaders have a very clear understanding of their own limitations, which helps them build unity with their peers. Leaders know that constant growth and learning is what makes a great leader. They also understand that leading is a team sport, and they must seek help from their peers if they want to be successful. ‘If you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far, go together’, says the African proverb. Great leaders understand that unity with their peers through asking questions is key to great leadership.

2. Great leaders are born, not made

   The idea that leadership is an inherited feature rather than a skill that is learnt is very dangerous and damaging; the skills that make a leader great are learnt and developed, like any other skill. I would actually argue that a great leader is entirely made and not born; all the skills that make a leader great are human skills that anyone can develop: communication, accountability, empathy, humility, resilience, vision, influence, confidence, and positivity. Great leaders constantly grow by learning from their peers, which creates great unity in the group.

3. Leaders must eliminate mistakes

   On the contrary, leaders see mistakes as an opportunity to learn and grow. Great leaders can see the difference between work that is lacking and unforeseen mistakes. Unforeseen mistakes demonstrate that the employee is taking risks and being accountable for their work, which leads to growth; unified leadership teams make mistakes together and grow together.

In summary, great leaders know that unity in leadership is key, and they rise above the most common leadership misconceptions; they understand what it takes to create a truly unified leadership team in hybrid work. Outstanding leaders attract, develop, and retain successful teams in a hybrid world by building unity amongst their leaders, especially in hybrid work.

Using Values to Unify

The most efficient way to achieve unity in your leadership team is to use your company values to unify them. In a crisis like the Covid-19 pandemic, or in any other crisis for that matter, the main goal is to navigate through it. Take the time to ensure that your company values are consistent with where you want your organization to be headed. When you use your company values to communicate to your leadership team how to move forward, you are communicating to them your DNA and your company culture, inviting your leadership team to embody your company values themselves. In a hybrid environment, the importance of your company values as the glue that keeps your leadership team together is more important than ever before. When the Covid-19 pandemic started impacting businesses in March 2020, many organizations contacted me to request help with building successful teams and resilient company cultures during these challenging times. One organization in particular was struggling with the crisis; it was a UK-based scale-up with 500 employees, and they had grown so fast that they didn’t have a strong, unified leadership team at the top. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, they noticed they were losing employees faster than they could hire new ones. Their employee retention rate had always been a challenge but, since the pandemic, they were losing employees at such a rapid rate that it was beginning to impact their bottom line. The company was suddenly unable to rely on their old ways of operating. When I started working with the leadership team, I asked the group what their mission statement was. A big silence followed. None of the senior leaders was able to come up with the company mission statement. We did an exercise whereby I asked each team member to write down answers to the following questions: What do we do? How do we do it? Whom do we do it for? What problem do we solve? What solution do we offer? After they had written all their answers, I asked each team member to share them with the group. What followed was a passionate discussion about the company values. The team really came together for the first time and were able to articulate the company values as a unit. They took this opportunity to revisit the mission statement and shared the company values with their entire team.

From that day forward, the leadership team used the company values as a compass to make all the important decisions related to the business. In that instance, we did this exercise virtually over Zoom because of the restrictions at the time related to Covid-19. However, I highly recommend that this exercise is done face-to-face wherever possible because it brings an element of greater connection and bonding. Once the unifying values of the company are in place and understood by the leadership team, it becomes easier for the management team to partner successfully with their employees to solve the company's challenges in a hybrid work environment. In a fully remote environment, I strongly recommend that you start each meeting with a reading of the company values to help everyone understand them and be driven by these values. One of the great benefits of unifying your leadership team through values is that it empowers them and all the people in your company to take charge. Think about it this way: when each employee is clear about the company values, they are empowered to make decisions because they know what values are important in this organization. This, in itself, improves employee engagement and removes bottlenecks and micromanagement. In hybrid work in particular, providing a value framework is critical because hybrid work itself creates additional challenges. Hybrid work can be used as an opportunity to revisit your company culture and values.

A June 2020 survey from the Insurance Journal revealed that isolation from co-workers was among the biggest challenges that workers were experiencing in remote work.¹ Feelings of isolation are increased if the team is newly remote. In remote or hybrid work environments, social interactions are much more limited than in traditional office environments.

Keeping your company values alive in a hybrid environment requires work but is completely worth the investment. There are many techniques that you can use to keep your values alive in hybrid work to unify your leadership team, and these include:

1. Hosting virtual lunches and breakfasts for your leadership team with a focus on values and culture.
2. Creating a value Slack channel for your leadership team to encourage more discussions on that topic.
3. Hosting regular virtual value workshops for your leadership team.
4. Sending weekly or monthly pulse surveys to your leadership team asking how they feel on company values.
5. Communicating often via different channels on the topics of value and culture.

Implementing these techniques will help you build and nurture unity within your leadership team in a remote or hybrid work environment; more importantly, it will help your management team rally around your core values, which is fundamental to building a successful team in hybrid work.

A great example of a company using values to unify their leadership team is Salesforce. The famous customer relationship management (CRM) platform was built in 1999, when the four Salesforce founders launched the system from a small San Francisco apartment. All the software and customer data would be hosted on the internet and be available as a subscription service. This was groundbreaking at the time, and was the beginning of what we know today as ‘software as a service’, or SaaS. One element that was key to the success of this team of four was their unity around their values; the small team knew that they needed to cultivate trust with their customers in order to convince them to use this innovative technology. By cultivating unity through the shared value of trust, the team was able to grow the unknown start-up to the $21- billion annual revenue software giant we know today. As Salesforce themselves write on their website when talking about the company story: ‘Early adopters of our cloud-based model took a significant leap of faith. There was only one formula for earning their trust – that is, by building trusted relationships.’² Salesforce values are unique as they are almost entirely focused on their employees and customer base, and they include:

• Trust
• Customer success
• Innovation
• Equality

Salesforce even has a chief equality officer as part of the leadership team, as a concrete embodiment of their values and as a symbol of how important the company values are to unify the leadership team.

Unifying the leadership team around core values can be a challenging task, especially if you have not done this exercise before. So it's important to take a minute to explain what we mean by company values, why they are important, and how to identify them. Harvard Business Review defines core values as the deeply ingrained principles that guide all of a company's actions. Collins and Porras define core values as being inherent and sacrosanct; they can never be compromised, either for convenience or short-term economic gain.³ For all employees to work towards a shared mission and goal, it makes sense that the company has its own set of core values. Company values are here to guide actions, behaviours, and decisions.

If your company already has core values, you will still benefit from refreshing them and from unifying your management team around your company values. The following is a guide to help your leadership team identify or revisit your company values to ultimately become more unified:

1. Articulate who is involved in the process

   Be clear about who is leading the process of identifying the company values. Ideally, your entire leadership team should be involved because this will create unity and alignment. Make it clear that all leadership team members are equal in making the decision. Ensure that everyone gets a chance to speak and moderate the meeting. If your group is larger than five people, you might use the round-robin method to ensure equal share of voice. You might even appoint a meeting moderator to allow equal opportunity to contribute.

2. Get commitment and buy-in

   Without the full buy-in from your leadership team, you won't get the alignment and unity you need within your management team. Ask your leadership team members what values are important to them individually and how their contributions to the company values could help them achieve their aspirations. If any leader doesn’t seem be on board, you might speak to them individually. Try to understand their motivations and use them to get buy-in to the project. Take the time to ensure that each and every one of your leaders is committed to identifying and/or revisiting your company values so that they will become fully unified around your company values during this exercise.

3. Encourage research

   A great way to get your leadership team to identify or revisit your company values is to encourage them to look around. Invite your management team to get inspired by finding companies with inspiring core values. Ask your leaders to write down what values resonate with them most, what makes these values relevant to them, and how these values could become your company values moving forward. By getting your leaders to actively research and write down values, you are getting them emotionally involved with the work and more engaged with your company value project.

4. Consolidate

   Ask your management team to share the company values they have identified. Invite your leadership team to combine all these values into one final set of core values. Encourage your leaders to integrate the best values and the ones that resonate most with your organization. Invite your leadership team to articulate what they mean in your organization.

Using company values to unify your leadership team is key to creating a successful team, and especially in hybrid work, where employees are hungry for connection through shared values.

A great example of a company using its core values to unify its leadership team is Xerox. In 2001, when former CEO Anne Mulcahy was appointed CEO, the organization was $18 billion in debt, and on the verge of bankruptcy. The company had recorded losses in each of the preceding six years. Customers were unhappy, and to top it all, Xerox found itself in the middle of an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission concerning accounting improprieties in its Mexico unit. According to a 2008 US News article, Mulcahy met personally with the top 100 executives.⁴ She let them know how dire the situation was and asked them if they were prepared to commit. A full 98 of the 100 executives decided to stay, and the bulk of them are still with the company today. Mulcahy reported that she always felt great pride in staying true to the company values, rather than capitulating to Wall Street and the bankers. Anne Mulcahy was a champion of Xerox and its core values; as someone who had worked at Xerox for 24 years when she was appointed to the role of CEO, she believed in the loyalty of customers and especially employees and executives. Her leadership team understood what was at stake and became unified and aligned around the company values. ‘We wouldn't have survived if we didn't have that love and loyalty,’ she told US News. Another great example of a company that used its core values to unify the leadership team in a crisis is Chobani. In 2013, Chobani's yogurt cups started exploding (literally) in the supermarkets where they were being sold.⁵ A batch of products had been contaminated by bacteria causing a pressure inside the yogurt cups, leading to explosions. The leadership team quickly came together and made a few decisions based on the company core values: first, they immediately recalled the yogurt cups made in its Idaho plant, then, they jumped on social media to apologize and to personally address every tweet about the incident. According to Wired, the brand replied to over 3600 tweets in only 5 days.⁶ AdAge reported that CEO Hamdi Ulukaya shared his plan to write a personal letter to each of the 150 000 people that had an issue with its product because he takes it very personally and very seriously, and he wanted to thank them for sticking with him and standing by him.⁷ By making decisions based on the company values, the CEO and its leadership team were able to create a unified response to a crisis. To this day, the company values of Chobani remain strong and include:

• Giving back
• Innovation
• People

The company's mission statement consolidates these values as follows: ‘Chobani is a food maker with a mission of making high-quality and nutritious food accessible to more people, while elevating our communities and making the world a healthier place.’ Using values is the first step to creating a unified hybrid leadership team. Like Xerox and Chobani, you can leverage your organization's core values as the glue to align your leadership team.

Role Modelling and Setting the Tone

On a cold day in January 1961, Fred Schultz, a truck driver, slipped and fell on an icy sidewalk and broke his ankle while working. Fred ended up stuck at home with his foot up for more than a month. When Fred didn't work, he didn't get paid. Fred's wife was seven months’ pregnant, so she couldn't work either. Fred's son, Howard, was seven years old when the accident happened. At the dinner table, Howard and his sister ate silently while their parents argued about how much money they would have to borrow. Sometimes, the phone would ring in the evening and Howard's mother insisted he answer it: it was a bill collector and Howard was instructed to say his parents weren't at home. ‘That image of my father, slumped on the family couch, his leg in a cast, unable to work or earn money and ground down by the world, is still burned in my mind,’ the Starbucks CEO once said. Young Howard Schultz vowed that if he was ever in a position where he could make a difference, he wouldn't leave people behind. The story serves as the foundation for how the Starbucks CEO's behaviour became an example and inspired many to follow his good behaviour. Schultz's values manifested in nearly every initiative Starbucks implemented during his time as CEO: health benefits for part-time workers, tuition assistance, veterans hiring, and an employee stock purchase programme. ‘Starbucks has become a living legacy of my dad,’ Schultz said.

A role model, like Howard Schultz, is someone other people look up to in order to help determine appropriate behaviours. Positive role models offer a range of helpful or useful behaviours. Visibility plays an important part in making someone a role model. Leaders are the most visible members of their organizations, making them more likely to become role models for the rest of the employees. Since many employees can observe their leaders' behaviour, it is likely and natural that many of them will imitate their attitudes. Younger employees, in particular, are more likely to emulate a leader's behaviour because they are still developing their own identities.

If your leadership doesn’t set the tone, they will not share a common standard, and each leader will follow their own standard. This will lead to a mismatch, and issues will arise in projects involving cross-collaboration. If your managers don't model a good attitude, they will be more likely not to trust each other, creating disconnection between teams, building a toxic environment, and diminishing collaboration and communication. According to a 2020 survey by The Workforce Institute, more than half (58%) of employees say a lack of trust affects their career choices, including nearly a quarter (24%) who left a company because they didn’t feel trusted.⁸ The study also found that poor trust even hurts talent pools: one in five employees (22%) actively didn’t refer a friend, family member, or former colleague to an open role because they didn’t trust their company. Negative role models instil a lack of trust; in its 2016 global CEO survey, PwC reported that 55% of CEOs think that a lack of trust is a threat to their organization's growth.⁹

Modelling good behaviour in hybrid work or remote work can be a challenge. Many business leaders naturally wonder how they can effectively set the tone when their teams are working remotely, and they are not as visible to all their team members. There are effective ways to model good behaviour and set the tone in hybrid work environments. In particular, there are four ways that leaders can become inspiring role models for their teams in hybrid work:

1. Building trust

   This might seem counterintuitive at first, but being intentionally silent instead of solving all the issues can be more effective in building trust because it allows team members to feel valued. Great leaders refrain from rushing to fix things; instead, they invite their team members to find solutions by themselves.

   Another powerful strategy to build trust is to say when you do not know. Employees have been conditioned to feel that they will be punished if they do not know all the answers at work. However, nobody has all the answers all the time, so this assumption is simply untrue. You need to change the expectation that people should know everything in your team. Creating the tone that it is OK to not know everything is a great way to change that false assumption. For example, you can celebrate when someone says they don't know. Encourage your team to explore different perspectives for each scenario, showing them that more than one option is always possible, and by doing so, you are demonstrating that it is OK not to know everything, but rather it is better to be open to new ideas and perspectives. Think of how to ask questions that allow people to say they don't know.

   Allowing team members to think through challenges themselves and saying when you don't know can be done remotely; leaders can refrain from rushing to fix things and change the expectation that people should know everything even in a distributed environment.

2. Adopting a positive attitude

   Presenting a positive attitude at work seems obvious and straightforward; however, it takes conscious effort and intentional actions to achieve a consistently positive attitude at work.

   Being mindful about how much time is spent with negative co-workers can help keep a positive attitude. Being careful not to take part in negative talks, gossip, or drama will also help maintain a positive mindset.

   Being mindful of what information is being consumed is another great way to nurture a positive mindset. Listening to positive music, uplifting audiobooks, and following positive people can make all the difference. Choosing positive language and becoming more conscious of the words being used helps nurture a good attitude. For example, when an unexpected situation arises at work that significantly disrupts the course of the business, choosing to say, ‘This is an interesting challenge that will make us identify new and better ways to operate,’ would be more positive than saying, ‘This is a crisis that will have negative impacts on the business in profound and very disruptive ways.’ Being nice to colleagues is another great way to nurture and develop a positive attitude at work. When being nice to colleagues becomes a regular occurrence, a cycle of generosity and kindness is created, making the instigator feel good as well as the recipients of the act of kindness. In this way, the positive attitude spreads in the organization. Being mindful, meditating and breathing exercises, as well as regular physical exercise all create the right environment to cultivate a positive attitude. Encouraging your leadership team to keep and nurture a positive attitude will help them model good behaviour and become a unified leadership team, which is especially important in a hybrid work environment.

3. Inspiring their team

   Setting a clear goal to inspire their team is a great way to invite your leadership team to model good behaviour in remote work. Inviting your managers to foster a growth mindset with their teams will help them become role models themselves. Offering personal and professional development opportunities, encouraging continuous learning (online or face-to-face), normalizing feedback, and encouraging knowledge sharing via Slack channels are great ways that your management team can inspire their own teams, even in a hybrid work environment. Focusing feedback on the effort of the team rather than the outcome is a powerful way to foster a growth mindset to inspire people. Feedback sessions should be focused on the steps that employees took in order to achieve a goal. Inviting your leaders to proactively ask their team for regular feedback is a great way to foster a growth mindset and ultimately to inspire; this can be done in hybrid work by using a Slack channel for feedback, or by starting or ending your online meetings with, ‘What can I do better right now?’ With a regular feedback loop that is normalized, employees will naturally strive for continuous improvement.

   When people adopt a growth mindset and a culture of feedback by mirroring their leaders, they feel like they are in the driver's seat of their careers, which makes them fully engaged at work. In a hybrid work setting, this can be easily achieved through regular pulse surveys that can be completed online.

4. Exhibiting integrity

   Establishing a culture of integrity in your leadership team means that each leader shares a sense of mutual trust and accountability. Integrity can be defined as aligning one's conduct with what they know to be excellent. Leaders with integrity always seek to reflect ethical standards and do the right thing regardless of whether someone is watching or not. When your leadership team acts with integrity, it gives everyone peace of mind in knowing they will do the right thing regardless of the outcome. First and foremost, you must convey the importance of integrity within your leadership team. A great way to do that is to simply ask your management team the following questions, and let them come up with their own answers:

   • What makes integrity important in our organization?
   • How will integrity allow them to do their best work?
   • Who do they need to work with to exhibit high levels of integrity?

   When you help your leadership team understand the value of integrity, they will become more likely to exhibit high levels of integrity themselves and model that positive behaviour with their respective teams. Invite your team to repeat this exercise by asking employees questions about integrity in team meetings. Your leaders can host a virtual meeting with their individual teams and discuss the power and value of integrity and what makes it important to a team's success. Encourage your managers to find creative ways to embed integrity in their own teams. In a hybrid work environment, modelling integrity will be a key element of a team's success since there is less visibility and employees are not monitored as closely.

In their best-selling book The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations, authors James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner wrote, ‘Exemplary leaders know that if they want to gain commitment and achieve the highest standards, they must be models of the behaviour they expect of others.’ The authors also said, ‘When leaders are doing their best, they model the way, inspire a shared vision, challenge the process, enable others to act, and encourage the heart.’¹⁰ Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business Professor Christine Porath, who studies civility in the workplace, found that bad behaviours are contagious.¹¹ In her famous Harvard Business Review article, she reveals that even the simple exposure to rude words can affect employees’ abilities to process information and perform up to standard. Porath recommends that leaders start by examining the way they interact with others. She calls attention to this surprising fact: ‘Verbalizing negative thoughts is 10 times more damaging to our sense of well-being than if we simply think about them.’¹² When leaders verbalize negative thoughts among their peers or team members, they negatively impact their peers' well-being as well. Another study by the Work and Stress journal found that leaders who showed up to work while feeling ill had workers who were more likely to do the same. That study highlights the fact that leaders must not only say what the expectations are but also model the expectations themselves.¹³ In other words, leaders failing to model good behaviour themselves also fail to build teams that act as they are expected to. If your leaders say they expect employees to act with integrity and respect, but they are unreliable, lie, and criticize colleagues in front of others, then the whole team is likely to be unreliable, lie, and criticize colleagues in front of others.

In hybrid work, there are many ways that leaders can exhibit positive behaviour to unify their teams around the same values: allowing team members to think through challenges themselves and to come up with their own solutions, which can be done via emails and Zoom calls; creating a Slack channel called ‘shoutouts’ to praise a great attitude; sending regular pulse surveys to teams to collect feedback, and host virtual meetings to discuss feedback and actions to improve; hosting virtual meetings to discuss the power of integrity and brainstorm ideas to embed integrity in the team. Like Howard Schultz, you can become the role model that unifies your leadership team by setting the tone and exhibiting integrity and positive behaviour.

Setting Common Goals

When Leanne Beesley joined Giggster early in 2021 as the general manager for Europe, it was her first experience managing people. She recalls, ‘As I started scaling the team and scaling the company, honestly, I felt a bit overwhelmed. I wasn't from a business background.’¹⁴ One day, Beesley came across Andrew Grove's High Output Management book, and discovered Objective and Key Results (OKRs) as a tool to accelerate collective output. ‘As soon as I worked with the team to implement OKRs, our growth just skyrocketed,’ she says. Within a year, their revenue increased by 2628%. Before the company used OKRs, she said that it sometimes felt like each team was building ‘separate houses’. They all had their individual quarterly plans that weren't always necessarily connected to a cohesive vision. OKRs allowed the teams to create plans that moved them forward toward a common goal, says Beesley. ‘So we created a really strong foundation for success by laying the bricks together to build one epic mansion.’

OKRs are an effective goal-setting leadership tool for communicating what a team wants to achieve. OKRs can be extremely helpful in aiding a leadership team set common goals. Common goals give a group of people a shared purpose. They encourage people to work together as a unified team and to achieve an end result. Common goals are strategic in nature, and they are a company's objectives that the leadership establishes to outline expected outcomes and to guide their employees' work. Establishing common goals directs employees’ efforts, justifies a company's activity, sets standards, and helps eliminate unnecessary activity. Common goals inform the entire team about the company's destination and its plan to get there. Common goals can also be referred to as shared goals, common objectives, and common purpose.

In their book The Strategy-Focused Organization, authors Robert Kaplan and David Norton reported that ‘a mere 7 % of employees today fully understand their company's business strategies and what's expected of them in order to help achieve company goals’.¹⁵ A 2015 Gallup study revealed that half of employees strongly indicate that they know what's expected of them at work.¹⁶ Gallup reviewed data from 550 organizations and 2.2 million employees, and they also found that the managers of these employees are equally unclear on what is expected of them. Gallup also found that only 12% of employees strongly agree that their manager helps them set work priorities, and just 13% strongly agree that their manager helps them set performance goals. Gallup highlights that highly engaged employees want ongoing feedback, and they want to be held accountable.

When the leadership team takes the time to set common goals, the benefits to the business are countless. Setting common goals within the leadership team helps boost engagement and productivity because it helps leaders understand what their role is within the leadership team. Shared goals also help save time and improve efficiency, as it avoids having leaders pursuing different objectives. When leaders share common goals, it creates transparency because communication is open and each team member knows what everyone else is working on. Everyone in the team knows exactly what the team is working on, since the common goal has been made clear. When the leadership team shares a set of common goals, it also means that every leader understands the wider purpose of what they are doing, which creates motivation. Common goals create a sense of purpose, they connect team members to the organizational purpose, which fuels their work. When leaders share common goals, it means that one leader's success is everyone's success. Leaders are then more likely to actively help each other and work collaboratively in the pursuit of the same goals; common goals within the leadership team fosters better collaboration and reduces competition within the team.

In a hybrid work environment, where employees are more disconnected from each other, ensuring that leaders share common goals is even more important to the success of the organization. Although it can be difficult to unify the leadership team in a remote or hybrid work environment, it is critical to do so, and it can be done by following specific steps:

1. Identify business goals

   The first step for setting common goals for your leadership team is to identify the business goals. As the business owner, chairperson, CEO, or leader, your role is to facilitate the process and let your leaders contribute so that they feel emotionally involved. Remember that your primary goal is to create a unified leadership team in hybrid work, so helping your managers identify and clarify the business goals is key to uniting your leaders. This exercise is better done in person because people can be more present in the discussion when physically in the same room. However, if it is not possible to gather your leadership team in the same room, this can be done in a virtual meeting. If done virtually, ensure that you brief your team members about the importance of this exercise and you expect their full attention during the virtual meeting; do not tolerate distractions such as phone calls or meeting interruptions. If you have some leaders in the room and some leaders attending remotely, tell your in-person leaders to minimize private conversations during this exercise, as this can distract the remote leaders and make them feel excluded. Setting the tone for what behaviour is expected during this exercise will be a key factor to the success of setting common goals.

   As the leader, your role is to facilitate and guide the conversation rather than answering questions yourself; having said that, you can certainly offer guidance and ensure that the business goals that are identified by your leadership team are aligned with yours. Ensuring that you let your leadership team come up with their own answers about what the business goals are is a key part of this exercise, because it creates accountability and ownership within your team members; identifying business goals will keep your leadership team aligned towards a shared objective. Some questions you might ask your leaders to help them with setting business goals include:

   1. What does our company stand for? What are our values?
   2. What is the reason the company was created?
   3. Where do we want the company to be in 10 years, 20 years and 30 years?
   4. What is one goal that will never be compromised for other goals? In other words, what value is more important than any other value in our company?
2. Set SMART team goals

   Once you have helped your leadership team identify your business goals, you must then move onto the next step of setting common goals: setting SMART team goals. A SMART goal is a tool that helps plan and achieve a goal more effectively. The SMART acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. When your leadership team sets SMART team goals, they are much more likely to focus their efforts and to achieve their goal. Specific SMART team goals have significantly higher chances of being achieved. Here are some questions you should ask your leaders when doing this exercise:

   1. Are our team goals specific enough?
   2. Are our team goals measurable? If so, how will we measure our goals?
   3. Are our team goals achievable?
   4. Are our team goals realistic?
   5. Do our team goals have a timeline associated with them?

   This exercise of setting SMART team goals is better done face-to-face for maximum participation; however, if face-to-face is not an option, it can be done in a hybrid work setting, provided that all leaders are fully engaged in this session, avoiding conflicting meetings and distractions such as Slack notifications or phone calls, etc. If this exercise is done in a hybrid work setting, in which some leaders are in the same room and some leaders are joining remotely, it is critical that the meeting host allocates equal speaking time for each participant; you might appoint a meeting host to moderate speaking time. Here are some examples of SMART team goals:

   • Achieve 90% customer satisfaction across all geographies within the next 6 months.
   • Launch new product within the next 6 months and achieve new product adoption with 30% of our client base in the next 9 months.
   • Secure 500 paid registrants to our Summit in 6 months, and achieve $750 000 in opportunities from Summit within 3 months after Summit.

   Make sure that your SMART team goals are aligned with the business goals that have been previously identified by your team.

3. Document team goals

   A study by psychology professor Gail Matthews at the Dominican University in California revealed that people are 42% more likely to achieve their goals if they write them down.¹⁷ As Pablo Picasso famously wrote: ‘Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.’ Documenting goals in writing increases the likelihood of achieving them and keeps everyone accountable. Ask each of your leaders to write down the team goals in their strategy and have them share their strategy with each other, including yourself. Here are some recommendations you might share with your leadership team as they document the team goals:

   1. Use active words, such as ‘we will increase our customer NPS to 90% within the next 6 months across all geographies.’
   2. Articulate how each leader will play a role for each goal. Don’t have just one leader or a few leaders be solely accountable for a team goal– every leader should play an active role for each team goal.
   3. Be specific and clear about what success looks like.
   4. Connect each team goal to the business goals and the organization's values.

   In a hybrid work environment, documenting team goals is more important than ever because people are more isolated than before; writing down team goals and sharing them is key to create a unified team in hybrid work or remote work.

4. Measure progress through check-ins

   A 2016 Censuswide survey revealed that 50% of companies that tracked metrics in real time met all their goals in the last 12 months compared to only 24% of companies that didn’t track in real time.¹⁸ The study also found that 92% of companies that tracked their metrics in real time met some or all their goals in the last 12 months compared to 64% of companies that didn’t track in real time. When we measure progress often, we are more likely to achieve our goals. Many teams forget to set regular check-ins to track progress, which leads to a lack of progress overall. Once you have identified your business goals, set SMART team goals, and documented team goals, you must set up regular team check-ins to track progress. Ideally, this should be done at the same time as you identify business goals, set SMART team goals and document team goals, so that the complete exercise is done, and no step gets forgotten. Simply invite your leadership team to create a cadence meeting and to add ‘tracking progress’ as part of the agenda. In a hybrid work environment, this cadence meeting can be virtual and doesn’t need to be face-to-face; however it's important that each member of the leadership team shares an update regarding the team goal tracking during each meeting. The key is to avoid having only a few leaders sharing updates regarding certain team goals in these cadence meetings because this would send the message that only they have responsibility for certain team goals. You might even add the name of each leader next to the ‘measuring team goal’ agenda item, to set the expectation that each leader will have to share an update on progress against each team goal.

Setting common goals for your leaders is critical to creating a unified leadership team, especially in a hybrid work or remote work environment. The importance of a unified team that is aligned is highlighted by the story of the Google Aristotle project. In 2012, Google launched Project Aristotle. Google analysed data about employees on more than 100 teams at the company.¹⁹ The study found that in the best teams, members show sensitivity, and most importantly, listen to one another. Google's study highlighted that the best teams are mindful that all members contribute to the conversation equally. When a team is unified, it has the right foundation for being successful. Creating a unified leadership team in hybrid work can be challenging, but it can be done by following the steps highlighted above. When you build a unified leadership team, you set the foundation for a successful team. Setting common goals is a key factor in achieving unity within your team.

Creating Opportunities to Co-Lead

In 1895, Lord Kelvin, a world-renowned mathematical physicist, stated that ‘heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible’.²⁰ That same year, Thomas Edison himself stated: ‘It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere.’²¹ Even Wilbur Wright said in 1901 to his brother Orville that ‘man would not fly for 50 years.’²² However, on December 17, 1903, the Wright brothers made their first flights with their first powered aircraft. What allowed the Wright brothers to succeed against all the odds? How did the two brothers create what seemed to be impossible at the time, when other, better-funded entrepreneurs were failing at inventing the modern aircraft? Although the answer is probably a combination of multiple elements, co-leadership is a key factor for the success of the Wright brothers. Wilbur and Orville understood the power of leading together. According to their mechanic Charlie Taylor, Wilbur and Orville were never really mad at each other. One morning after one of their ‘hottest’ exchanges, he had only just opened the shop, when Orville came in saying he ‘guessed he'd been wrong and they ought to do it Will's way.’ Shortly after, Wilbur arrived to announce he had been thinking it over and ‘perhaps Orv was right.’ The point was, said Charlie, ‘when they were through…they knew where they were and could go ahead with the job.’²³

Co-leadership is having two or more leaders sharing equally the responsibilities for a team, a project, or an objective. The American Psychological Association defined co-leadership as ‘the sharing of the organizational, directive, and motivational duties of leadership between two or more individuals.’²⁴ According to a 2002 study by Pearce and Sims, shared leadership is a useful predictor of team effectiveness.²⁵ When we analyse what makes co-leadership so successful, we can easily identify three main reasons. First, co-leadership improves buy-in from different teams. Co-leaders represent their own team, department, and geography and therefore their people feel represented at the top. Second, co-leaders make better decisions.

Third, co-leaders set the tone for a culture of collaboration. When employees see leaders always working together as a team, they see a behaviour of collaboration and are more likely to emulate that collaborative behaviour themselves.

Creating opportunities for leaders and managers to co-lead is an extremely powerful way to create a unified leadership team. Particularly in a hybrid work environment, where employees are naturally more isolated and disconnected from one another, cultivating ways for leaders to lead together creates bonds and strengthens the relationships. Here are a few ways you can create opportunities for co-leadership:

1. Match leaders intentionally

   When thinking about matching leaders for a co-leadership project, it's important to think about your outcome. What are you hoping to achieve with this co-leadership team? What result do you wish to get with this specific team of leaders? How will this co-leadership further unify your leadership team? If some of your leaders are not as aligned or as unified as you want them to be, consider asking them to become a unit by inviting them to co-lead a specific project together. This might be exactly what they need to come together. It might feel counterintuitive to match leaders who are not as aligned as you want them to be; however, co-leading a project is an effective way to make people collaborate and find ways to make things work no matter what. Equally, consider matching leaders from departments that do not usually interact; for example, you might match your chief marketing officer with your chief technical officer, or your chief human resources officer with your VP of engineering; these cross-functional co-leadership teams will spark some creativity and innovation, opening up new collaborations that will further align your leadership team.

2. Monitor and facilitate the relationship between co-leaders

   Co-leadership projects will inevitably bring some conflicts between the two leaders. It is important to remember that not all conflict is bad. Healthy conflict is actually essential for the success of the organization because it allows everyone to feel heard and valued, and it helps reach the best outcome for the business. Expect conflict. Tell your leaders to anticipate natural, healthy conflict during their co-leadership journey, and normalize healthy, productive conflict within your leadership team. Communicate to your leaders that healthy conflict is good and is a sign of people pushing through their limits and focusing on the best possible outcome for the business. Encourage your co-leaders to establish some rules that will help them reflect on their co-leadership dynamics: scheduling a weekly meeting to discuss what is working, what needs improvement, what should be stopped, what should be done differently. Remind your co-leaders to ask for help when they meet a roadblock and check on the co-leadership projects often.

3. Remind co-leaders to define roles and responsibilities

   As with any relationship, communication is key and especially when communicating what's expected of the other person. Remind your co-leaders that they should discuss their roles and responsibilities in this co-leadership project, and they should come to their own conclusion by themselves. The key here is that co-leaders have an open discussion about what each expects from the other, so that everyone is clear about their role and their responsibilities; this process should be a continuous discussion that takes place often, as things will evolve, and therefore, their roles and responsibilities will evolve too. Encourage your co-leaders to be open and honest about who owns what and to keep each other accountable; remind your leaders that co-leading can feel challenging at times, but it is all part of the process of creating more alignment in your leadership team, and if everyone focuses on that alignment outcome, the process will be more enjoyable.

4. Bring the fun into it

   Wait…did we just say ‘fun’ in a business book? Absolutely! Leaders are human beings, and they are moved by emotions. Don't let the pressure and stress of being a leader get in the way of what makes every human want to share time with others: having fun! Without creating any ‘forced fun’, you can instil a sense of humour and fun in your co-leadership projects. Co-leaders who are having the most fun in their projects are often those who also are the most successful with their projects. Find ways to have fun at work yourself and your leaders will model it; when you see your leaders having fun, communicate to them that it's a great thing! Create fun by finding ways to make co-leading a fun activity; A BrightHR study found that 62% of employees who took no sick days in the previous three months had fun at work; and 58% of those who took 11-plus sick days reported not having fun at work.²⁶ Having fun at work makes people feel more engaged and ultimately more collaborative. Remind your leadership team that fun is important, and share fun moments often with your wider team to increase engagement and collaboration.

Leading during a crisis such as the Covid-19 pandemic and managing the needs of remote employees can take its toll on managers. An increasing number of CEOs and business leaders have been sharing their struggles with burnout and stress. This has led to a wider adoption of the co-leadership model, with more co-CEOs sharing the responsibility than ever before.

Roleshare co-CEOs Sophie Smallwood and Dave Smallwood say that being co-CEOs of the company was ‘a way of alleviating some of the mental burden of being CEO’. Sophie and Dave explain that being co-leaders of the company provides ‘an extra layer of confidentiality and vulnerability that not even your closest C-suite ally can offer – regardless of whether you're married.’ Sophie Smallwood added that it can be lonely to be at the top of the organization because of the demands from many people. Co-CEO Sophie Smallwood also confessed that it is hard to be positive all the time, and if you are alone it can make it even harder. ‘In a partnership, you can lift each other up,’ says Sophie Smallwood. The co-leadership model clearly worked out well for Sophie and Dave Smallwood, who went from just 2 to 12 employees in only 4 years and have already attracted sought-after investors including Techstars²⁷.

UK media company Jungle Creations also adopted the co-CEO model as a way to accelerate growth. Jungle Creations co-CEOs believe that it takes more than one leader to be prepared for what lies ahead. Jungle's co-CEO Nat Poulter shared that having another leader to ‘stress-test new ideas against’ leads to better outcomes; Jungle's co-CEO Melissa Chapman believes ‘it makes for more effective, hands-on leadership.’ Clearly the move from a single CEO model to a co-CEO model paid off for Jungle, whose employee count increased from just 132 in December 2020 when the co-CEO model started, to 153 employees (and counting!) in December 2021.²⁸

Although the co-CEO model is still relatively rare and not widely reported in the media, many successful companies are embracing this co-leadership model. Netflix has had two CEOs since 2020, with co-founder and long-term CEO Reed Hastings responsible for the streaming side of the business and Ted Sarandos focusing on Netflix's content. American online retailer of prescription glasses Warby Parker has embraced the co-CEOs model since day one: co-founders and co-CEOs Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal have shared the realm since 2010, when they founded the company. The two co-founders went to college together and decided to start a company to offer prescription glasses at an affordable price, providing a great user experience. The success of the company has been so big that Warby Parker received a $3 billion valuation when it raised $245 million in August 2020.²⁹

A study published by Wiley in 2011 named ‘It Takes Two: The Incidence and Effectiveness of Co-CEOs’ found that ‘co-CEOs generally complement each other in terms of educational background or executive responsibilities’.³⁰ Even more encouraging, the study revealed that ‘the market reacts positively to appointments of co-CEOs, while a propensity score analysis shows that the presence of co-CEOs increases firm valuation.’

Thomas Asseo, co-CEO of the US’s largest organic ready-to-eat meal delivery service, Fresh n'​ Lean, explains that the co-CEO model helped take his company to the next level; Asseo reveals that his company achieved $87 million in revenue in 2020, which is more than double from the previous year. Asseo believes that the co-leadership model allows him and his co-CEO Laureen Asseo (his sister) to complement each other. During the decade that Thomas and Laureen served as co-CEOs, their company Fresh n’ Lean grew from a very small team to 475 employees, they delivered 17 million meals, partnered with key brands in the sports and fitness industry, and grew their revenue exponentially. Laureen Asseo adds, ‘There was too much for one person to oversee as a CEO and not enough hours in the day.’

One of the main benefits of the co-leadership model is that it creates alignment at the top and it unifies the leadership of an organization. Co-leaders share more than just a project or a team, they share a relationship, a partnership. Working together every day creates a special sense of belonging, a special purpose. The proximity created by co-leadership facilitates better decision-making; another lateral effect of leading together is the better access to information that would not be otherwise possible. The constant discussions simply provide more opportunities to bring up different pieces of information that would otherwise not be shared. Each leader gains a better understanding of what is happening in the other leader's department or business units, which leads to more informed decisions. Co-leadership also brings balance to decisions. Having another perspective added to the single, narrow perspective of just one leader, often leads to more balanced decision-making and a better outcome for the business. The knowledge, experience, expertize, and approach of one leader will always add value to the other leader's perspective. Co-leaders often complement each other through their skill sets, their way of thinking, their network, and their life experiences. Although decisions might take a little longer, the benefit of co-leadership outweighs that because the decisions are more often than not better, more balanced, and lead to better business outcomes.

Co-leadership in hybrid work can happen just as easily, if not better, than in an office setting; by leveraging Slack, Zoom, and Google Drive, remotely leading a project or team together can happen just as effectively.

Having regular meetings between the two leaders remains an essential element of making the co-leadership model work. Any opportunity for the co-leaders to strengthen their relationship will help make their work better; if possible, it is helpful to arrange regular face-to-face, informal reunions such as face-to-face breakfasts, lunches, or dinners, to build a strong relationship that's not just built remotely over Zoom.

Schedule Informal Time

When Jennie Kim got engaged, she decided to get in shape for her wedding. Unfortunately, her job at Udacity meant that she was spending more time snacking than exercising. So when she found out that her co-worker was also getting married and wanted to get in shape too, she decided to play Dance Central once a week in her company's game room. ‘I find that these sessions help re-energize me for the rest of the day,’ said Jennie Kim.³¹ Jennie's informal time at work is not an isolated case. At Udacity, creating informal occasions to bring people together for a fun event is part of the company culture. Udacity hosts ‘Fancy Fridays’: these are days when people can dress up to fit a theme. Past themes included Bumpit Friday (big hair), Fancy Feet, Oscar Night, and Panda (everyone wore black and white). Udacity also hosts regular ‘Recess’ after work; these events are usually a small party focused on something fun such as making snow cones, dim sum, or ice cream.

Employees of 91Springboard started chasing the ball as a team-building exercise, but today they are taking part in full-blown football matches early in the morning, before work.³² Anil George, vice president of operations at 91Springboard, says, ‘While “work, work” may not be discussed at all during these games, spending time with those you don't get a chance to meet during work hours helps people approach each other with a sense of comfort that eases work.’ Ayush Pranav, a 25-year-old portfolio analyst at 91Springboard, also agrees that these football games helped him get access to colleagues he would not have otherwise had access to: ‘The matches are fun, but the other upside is that we get to mingle with the senior management. That works out well for all of us.’

An informal situation is one which is relaxed, friendly, and not very serious or official, according to Collins Dictionary.³³ Informal gatherings at work are events that are less planned and regulated than formal meetings. Team building, in particular, can be defined as the process of turning a group of people into a more cohesive team. Team building refers to different types of activities aimed at improving social relationships; both informal meetings at work and team-building activities help improve the alignment of a group of people and strengthen a team.

Team-building activities and informal gatherings at work are extremely powerful ways to create a unified leadership team, which is especially important in a hybrid work environment.

When Sandy Pentland, professor at MIT Management Sloan School led a research study on teams who consistently deliver higher performances, he found an interesting pattern. Pentland equipped teams (comprising 2500 individuals from a variety of projects and industries) with wearable electronic sensors to collect data on their social behaviour.³⁴ The data revealed that the most important predictor of a team's success was its communication patterns. The researchers could foretell which teams would outperform just by looking at the data on their communication. Pentland identified three key communication dynamics that affect performance: energy, engagement, and exploration. The research found that team members who have side conversations within the team, who take breaks together, and who catch up on non-work topics frequently were part of the most successful teams.

Another similar study published in the MIT Sloan Management Review found that hybrid teams can outperform teams working in an office together if collaboration is managed properly.³⁵ The study researched the performance of 80 different teams with different levels of dispersion. The research found that key drivers of performance are processes that facilitate communication among members. The study revealed that ‘social processes that increase team cohesion, identification, and informal communication help establish and maintain interpersonal bonds that enable a group to better cope with conflicts’. Those social processes helped improve the performance of remote and face-to-face teams. The research clearly indicates that informal time that creates stronger connections is a strong predictor of a team's performance.

When organizations facilitate informal meetings and team-building activities, they create a more unified team that performs better. But in a highly distributed team, how can you facilitate informal time to achieve better connections? There are different ways that you can schedule informal time in a virtual or hybrid environment.

Conclusion

When a workforce is made up of teams working from home, teams working in the office, and team members distributed across the world, many challenges arise that can hinder the growth of the organization. Employees working in isolation from each other can feel more disconnected and disengaged from their peers and from their work, and this can hinder collaboration, communication, customer service, customer support, and user experience because disengaged employees will deliver lower performances which, in turn, will be felt by their peers, customers, and by the market. Distributed teams have more difficulties communicating in real time, which leads to slower decision-making and more mistakes. Employees working remotely may also feel less part of the team or less supported in their choice of work compared to their office-working colleagues.

However, the hybrid work model is here to stay, and companies must find ways to create highly successful teams that thrive in a hybrid work model. One of the main components of a successful hybrid team is a highly unified and aligned leadership team. A study by LSA Global found that highly aligned companies grow revenue 58% faster and are 72% more profitable while significantly outperforming their unaligned peers.⁴¹ Employees need their leaders to remind them often of their organization's mission, yet 33% of employees don't feel like they are reminded of their company's mission often enough.⁴² In a study by Clear Company, 97% of employees and executives believe lack of alignment within a team impacts the outcome of a task or project, and 86% of employees and executives cite lack of collaboration or ineffective communication for workplace failures.⁴³ Alignment is key to organizational success, and it is the leadership team who drives alignment from the top. Particularly in a distributed environment, creating a highly unified leadership team is key to the success of the organization.

As a CEO or team leader, there are different ways that you can create a unified leadership team in a distributed work environment. Building alignment and unity within your leadership team takes time and commitment, but it can be achieved, even in a distributed organization. Values are a powerful vehicle of human behaviour, and leveraging common values to unify your leadership team should be considered if you want to create a unified team. Host virtual lunches for your leadership team with a focus on values and culture, and create a value Slack channel to encourage discussions on that topic. Facilitate regular virtual value workshops, sending weekly or monthly pulse surveys asking how your team feel about company values and communicating often via different channels on the topics of value and culture. Help your leadership team identify your company core values by themselves to develop even more commitment to your company values. If your company already has core values, you can still benefit from refreshing your core values and from unifying your management team around them. The second step to creating a unified hybrid leadership team is role-modelling and setting the tone. Role models are individuals other people look up to in order to help determine appropriate behaviours. Positive role models offer a range of helpful or useful behaviours. Visibility plays an important part in making someone a role model. Asking your leadership team to become role models is a great way to create a unified leadership team, especially in hybrid work. Encourage your team to build trust by refraining from rushing to fix things but instead allowing their team members to think through challenges themselves and to come up with their own solutions. Invite your leaders to present a positive attitude at work, because even though it might seem obvious, it takes conscious effort and intentional actions to achieve a consistent positive attitude. Invite your people to set a clear goal to inspire their team: it is a great way to invite your leadership team to model good behaviour in remote work. Encourage your managers to foster a growth mindset with their own teams because it will help them become role models themselves; establish a culture of integrity in your leadership team whereby each leader shares a sense of mutual trust and accountability. Integrity can be defined as aligning one's conduct with what they know to be excellent. Leaders with integrity always seek to reflect ethical standards and do the right thing regardless of whether someone is watching or not.

Remember to set common goals for your leadership team. When the leadership team sets common goals, everyone understands what their role is within the team. Shared goals help save time and improve efficiency because it avoids having leaders pursuing different objectives. It also creates transparency because communication is open and focused. Most importantly, when a team shares common goals, it means that one team member's success is everyone's success, so leaders are more likely to actively help each other.

The fourth element of creating a unified leadership team is to create opportunities to co-lead. Co-leadership improves buy-in from different departments because each co-leader represents their own department, and their people feel represented at the top. Co-leaders make better decisions because they are forced to challenge each other's perspectives all the time. Co-leaders also set the tone for a culture of collaboration because when all employees see leaders working together collaboratively, they see a behaviour of collaboration and are more likely to emulate that collaborative behaviour themselves. Creating opportunities for leaders to co-lead is an extremely powerful way to create a unified leadership team.

Finally, the fifth element of creating a unified leadership team in a hybrid work setting is to schedule some informal time for the people to create stronger relationships. Non-formal meetings at work significantly improve communication because people open up more in a relaxed atmosphere. Informal gatherings also increase productivity as a result of better communication and collaboration; they improve morale and motivation, encourage creativity, build more trust and respect, and add more fun to the world of work. Setting up non-work-related spaces such as informal Slack channels can help create a more unified leadership team in hybrid work; hosting virtual breakfasts, lunches, and coffee breaks that are facilitated and promoted by the CEO can create spaces for the team to come together. Hosting group learning sessions can also strengthen bonds between a team because they encourage collaborative learning and discussion in a less formal setting.

Creating a unified hybrid leadership team is a critical strategy to build a successful hybrid team because creating alignment and unity at the top allows everyone to navigate in the same direction, regardless of where they work. However, simply creating a unified hybrid leadership team is not enough, and some work must be done to further set your organization up for success. Building extreme clarity and transparency is another critical strategy to achieve success in hybrid work.