Hybrid or remote working

Leading in a hybrid or remote working model. This is what we'll be talking about on today's episode of How to Lead the podcast for CEOs, founders and leaders who want some clear tools, techniques, and strategies to really help them lead well so their teams thrive and results follow.

My name is Kate Waterfall Hill, I'm a leadership coach with hands-on experience in board level roles for numerous businesses, agencies, and consultancies for over 30 years. If you like my take on leadership but would like more support to actually put my ideas into practice, have a look at my website, waterfall hill.co.uk.

There you can book a call or ask me a question via an online form to see if we are a good fit, or if you are the sort of person who takes action and gets moving, you can book a place on the leadership accelerator or get immediate access to one of my online courses at the click of a button.

In today's episode, we're diving into one of the most critical, yet often under discussed challenges in modern leadership, how to build and sustain trust in hybrid and remote teams, because regardless of the tools or the technology, trust is the real infrastructure. And when you're not in the same room, you have fewer natural opportunities to build it.

So instead of relying on corridor chats or reading micro expressions in meetings, you need to be far more intentional. Today we'll look at why trust matters. the most common pitfalls I see leaders fall into, and most importantly, the practical habits that make hybrid working, smoother, fairer, and more human.

I am currently working on a masterclass all about this subject hybrid working, and it'll go into far more detail than I can get into on this podcast. And I'm going to share with you tools, scripts, meeting structures, and real world examples on that masterclass.

So if hybrid working is part of your world, or if you want to upskill your managers, it's going to be a brilliant next step. So keep your eye out for that. And if you're listening to this in 2026 or beyond, it'll be on my website soon, if not already. Right. Let's see what Linda, the bad manager, my alter ego on social media has to say about hybrid working.

“Hi team. Quick update on the hybrid working policy. It's quite simple. Anyone can work from wherever they like. As long as I can either see you physically or I can see that you are on teams every minute of the day, and preferably both. I'm very supportive of flexibility, obviously. I mean, it suits me very well when I want to skip off early to go for a drink with Janet.

Otherwise, I just find that ideas are better when you are physically here. You know, I can overhear what you're saying, interrupt, interfere, and I know hybrid working is all about trust and I trust you all completely. As long as you reply instantly to every message I send you. Stay online all day and don't do that thing called deep work, which means that you are offline for a minute because you are concentrating.

Sounds a bit self-important. If you asked me right then. See you all at the next all hands meeting. The ones of you who want to suck up to the bosses will be here in person. The rest of you will be at home probably on mute with your cameras off in your pyjamas drinking gym, but we'll never know will we?”

You sort of knew that was going to happen, didn't you? But anyway, let's start with trust and why it matters. When you are co-located, trust tends to grow organically. You overhear things and you spot when someone looks overwhelmed, you can see who's quietly getting on with things, and you can nip problems in the bud.

In a hybrid setup, all of that evaporates unless you create it on purpose. So when trust is low in distributed teams, you'll often see things like people duplicating work because they're not sure what others are doing. Maybe they over report because they're trying to prove that they're working.

Sometimes people go quiet in meetings and decisions slow down. The other thing I see is simmering resentment between those in the office and those at home. But when trust is strong, something different happens. People act with more autonomy. They take decisions with confidence.

People tend to raise issues early rather than leaving it until it's a crisis. And they assume good intent rather than making up unhelpful stories. and this is the leader's job to make trust the default operating system. if you're working in a hybrid situation, you probably come across lots of different pitfalls.

These are the most common ones I see in hybrid and remote teams. The first is proximity bias. Humans naturally pay more attention to whoever's physically near them. In a hybrid world, that usually means office-based staff get more visibility, more feedback, more opportunities, and more influence. Even if that's not intentional. If you don't actively correct for this, you will most likely accidentally create a two-tier culture.

Secondly, out of sight often means out of mind. Some leaders struggle to trust what they can't see. Linda certainly does. If you're only satisfied that people are actually working when you see a little light on teams trust is already on shaky ground.

Thirdly over monitoring can be disguised as support. If you find yourself asking for too many updates, too many check-ins, or over scrutinising activity, you'll communicate mistrust even if you don't mean to. Then I see communication extremes.

Remote teams often swing between these two extremes, either an overwhelming volume of messages or near silence when no one knows what's happening. Both of these erode trust. Then there's the lack of structured connection. And connection doesn't just happen by accident in hybrid teams.

If you don't design it, you probably won't get it. And then lastly, ambiguity around expectations. Hybrid teams really, really need clarity even more than anybody else. If your people don't know what good looks like or how decisions will be made, they will often fill the gaps with assumptions.

There are several core principles of trust in hybrid work. Before we get into the tactical tools, here are some principles that sit underneath everything. Consistency beats intensity. It's so much better to do three small trust building behaviours consistently than an occasional big gesture.

Another principle is that clarity beats guesswork, clear expectations, clear processes, clear ownership, clarity creates that safety that we all want. And humility beats perfection. When leaders show vulnerability, others feel safer speaking up. Equity beats efficiency.

The most efficient route, like making a quick decision with whoever's in the office might undermine. Inclusion and relationships rarely matter.

A team that likes and respects each other will always outperform one that's purely transactional and iteration matters. Hybrid working isn't fixed. You refine it as you go.

So here are some practical strategies for leading hybrid teams, the habits that make the biggest difference. Firstly, maintaining consistent rhythms. Predictable rhythms, create psychological safety. So this means keeping regular one-to-ones and don't cancel them unless you absolutely must. Having a weekly or twice weekly team check-in and being visible in small ways, not constant messages, just enough presence to signal I'm here and I'm paying attention and make those check-ins human even a quick, what's one thing we should know about how your week is going? Really helps to build trust.

Secondly, narrate your thinking what I mean by that is that people need to understand the process, the decision making, and in hybrid teams, people don't get to watch your process. So you need to narrate it. Say, here's why I'm making this decision, or here's what's changed in the brief, or here's the tension we're holding. It reduces uncertainty and strengthens alignment.

Number three is building psychological safety actively. And that means modelling the behaviour you want. So try asking questions like, where might I be missing something? What doesn't make sense yet?

What would you do differently if you were leading this? It shows you are not attached to being right. Number four is create equity in meetings. Hybrid meetings tend not to be neutral without structure. You find that office-based people speak more remote, people speak later or not at all. Side conversations happen and decisions get made without the full group.

So you need a design for equity. Some simple rules here can work wonders, so invite remote people to speak first. Use round robins, make sure everyone gets a voice. Rotate the chairs and the facilitators. So make that a responsibility of everybody, including the remote people, and make decisions in the meeting, not afterwards, in corridors.

And also make sure you stick to them. Don't undo them after the event with just the people in the office. Having a decision log can be really helpful with this. so everybody's really clear on the decision that was made and why. Number five, be explicit about expectations, because as I said, hybrid teams perform best.

When everyone is crystal clear, they need to know what does good look like, who owns what? How will decisions be made? Which channels are to be used for? What type of communication and when are people expected to be available? I've talked before about delegation models like Mocha, where you really clearly label who's the manager, the owner, who's consulted, who's the helper, and who's the approver. And this really helps remove ambiguity if everybody knows their role in the task.

Number six, repeat key messages in more than one way. Not because people aren't listening, but because remote environments are noisy. So if something matters, share it in a meeting, in writing, and in a follow-up summary, reinforce the essentials.

Don't think it's once and done. You need to repeat yourself. Number seven, build connection intentionally. And it doesn't need to be cheesy, but it does need to be regular. some options here include things like end of week wins, monthly virtual coffees, a five-minute start of the meeting, check-in a shared playlist and in short, reflective prompts.

What's one friction point we can smooth out? These micro moments make a huge difference.

I'd also encourage you to be thoughtful about return to office policies. We can't talk about hybrid working without acknowledging the enormous pressure some organisations feel to bring people back in simply because they have expensive office space sitting half empty. Either that or the exec team has just decided it's better to all be together.

But here's the thing, filling an office is not a strategy in itself. People can feel the difference immediately. Mandatory return to office policies, especially when they're vague or unjustified, tend to create resentment, not collaboration. My suggestion is we treat people like adults and give them a meaningful reason to come in.

So a leader might say something like, we collaborate better in person, so let's choose one day a week to do that. Well, it's probably better than saying you need to be in the office three days a week because, uh, because I want you there. The difference in engagement is night and day.

What I see working brilliantly is organizations who choose one anchor day per week, where that specific team comes together, the whole team, not because it's mandatory, but because it's purposeful. Make sure that day is useful, so it becomes the hub for team meetings, problem solving, creativity, maybe client reviews, cross-functional discussions, and importantly social connection.

And I suggest that you make it okay explicitly that you don't expect people to get much actual work done in terms of producing output on those days. Acknowledge that the team office day is about collaboration and connection and you'll get lots of productivity during the rest of the week from those happy engaged people.

And when people find their office days genuinely useful and enjoyable, people end up coming in more often by choice, maybe even one or two days a week, extra naturally without pressure. And importantly, you need to create an office worth coming to, not a box people are forced to sit in where they just spend their whole day on endless team meetings. The goal is connection, not compliance.

And then lastly. Ask for feedback and iterate. Hybrid working is a work in progress. Every team is different.

Use regular lightweight feedback loops, like short pulse surveys, retro questions, what's helping, what's hindering, and quick temperature checks in meetings, share the themes and what you're changing. That visibility, again, builds trust faster than anything.

I often see leaders who are running hybrid teams, where the remote people feel sidelined.

Through coaching, the leader comes to realise that they maybe need to listen a bit more. So they survey the team, realise decisions have been happening informally in the office, and then introduce meeting equity rules and a weekly or remote hour within weeks. Participation improves within months.

Trust deepens, small changes, big impact. As I said earlier, if you want to go deeper, do look out for my hybrid working masterclass that goes into even more detail and gives you a guided tour of how to lead in hybrid or remote models really successfully.

So here's your homework for this week. Run a short pulse check on trust in your team. Pick one trust building habit and do it consistently for a month. And then have a reflection. Notice what changes.

That's all for today's episode of How to Lead. Until next time, if you want to avoid being like Linda, keep leading with clarity, care, and curiosity.

If you've enjoyed this episode, please do follow for more leadership insights and spare a moment to like, leave a review and share with your fellow leaders to help spread the word about the How to Lead Podcast. If you'd like my personal support, take a look at my website, waterfall hill.co.uk for more information about my services.

The best leaders are clear on the vision, care about their people, approach interactions with curiosity, not judgment. Until next time, don't be a Linda and thanks for listening.