Supervisory Development: Managing Flexible Teams Webinar

Key Takeaways

[Music] welcome to our webinar today on managing flexible teams i'm emily titchich and i'll be presenting the webinar today throughout the webinar i'll be joined by several experts to talk about some key points you need to know about flexible teams with me today are brandon sullivan the senior director of leadership and talent development and interim director of employee and labor relations in the office of human resources and lovie paisig the leadership development manager in ltd mayuamua she's the organization development specialist in the office of information technology and ashley alexander who's an organization development lin learning associate and university libraries while you're listening today and for a more active learning experience use the action sheet we provided for you in the reminder email or download it now by going to the link on the screen z.umn.edu managing flexible teams underscore action sheet use it to follow along and jot down notes this also becomes your takeaway to help reinforce learning and something you can reference so don't don't worry if you don't fill it out completely during the webinar we want to remind you that this webinar is not live you can pause at any time to write notes or do an action sheet activity i'll prompt you whenever there is an opportunity to refer to your action sheet and you'll also see the icon on the slide if you have questions at any time during this presentation you can submit your questions in the form on your screen or by going to z.umn.edu flexibleteamsquestions we'll respond to them in the coming weeks in today's webinar we'll be talking about exactly what we mean when we say flexible work arrangements we'll also talk through the steps and key considerations you need to take in order to prepare yourself and your team for flexible work as well as the skills you'll need to successfully manage flexible teams so this webinar won't cover any specific campus college or unit plan about flexible work but will instead provide you with guidance skills and resources that you can use should your local campus college or unit support flexible work we'll talk more about this later but local leaders are hard at work developing plans and guidance for flexible work arrangements and should communicate their plans by july 19th if you haven't heard from local leaders yet stay tuned this webinar will help you apply best practices for managing flexible teams if you haven't heard from local leaders yet that's okay just stay tuned you can still watch the webinar and go through the exercises we'll talk about today and start thinking about your team's work and thinking of questions you might need to ask your local leaders let's start by getting on the same page about what we're talking about when we say flexible work arrangements or working with flexibility to do this brandon is going to walk us through some different ways that flexible work can show up at the university thanks emily when we talk about working with flexibility there are two main types of flexibility we're talking about the first is space flexible space means flexibility in where the work gets done and you can think about three different categories of where work gets done the first is in person if you have a fully in-person team or department what that means is that everybody in that team everybody in that department works in one physical location so for example everybody has work space or an office in one building or maybe in a couple of different buildings that are next to each other all the way on the other end of the continuum you can have a virtual team or a virtual department and what this means is that there is no shared physical location everybody is working from somewhere else for example everybody is working from home then there's the middle category of hybrid and a hybrid team or a hybrid department is one in which you have some people that may be working on site in the same physical location you have some people who may be working remotely from home or from some other some other place and you may have people who do both right so who are in the office some days and who work remotely other days but as a whole the team or the department is hybrid if there's this combination of in-person and virtual the other main type of flexibility is around time flexible time means that there's flexibility around when the work gets done so for example you may have some members of a team or department who work nine to five most of the time maybe others work you know in the morning until mid-afternoon and then let's say for example they pick their kids up from school spend some time with their kids helping with homework and then they get back to work after that and there may be flexibility within the team or department around using whichever schedule best fits with the work and best fits with other responsibilities outside of work there's a lot of ways to do flex time but the idea is that there's flexibility around when the work gets done here you can see what different combinations of flexible space and flexible time look like starting in the lower left corner you can see it says fixed and this is what you might call more of a traditional work arrangement this is where everybody is expected most of the time to be there in person and everybody is expected most of the time to be there during certain hours that doesn't mean there isn't any flexibility in a traditional work arrangement you know a lot of times with supervisor approval you might be able to shift your hours around for a particular day if you have something come up but the the the standard expectation is that you're there in person and you're there during some core hours you can go all the way to the other end of the continuum and if you look at the top right box where it says flex time and flex space this is where there is flexibility around where the work gets done so you can work in person you can work virtually and then also when the work gets done so there's flexibility around the hours so there's two other categories that are worth considering one is flex space and that's where there are you know kind of more or less a fixed schedule so maybe everybody is expected to be working between nine and five most of the time but there's options to work in person or there's options to work virtually so there's flexibility around where the work gets done then there's also flex time and that's where the work is done in person so there's not an option to work virtually you have to be there but there's flexibility in when the work gets done and this is also something that for some teams some departments some type of work can be very practical and work very well and actually can not only give employees flexibility that's helpful for them but it also can help the team if you have different people working at different times because of the huge variety in the nature of work we have at the university teams and departments can and will often have different levels of flexibility for example there will be teams that because of the nature of their work need to continue working in person they can't offer virtual options but they could still be flexible if positions have some flexibility around time and scheduling around when the work gets done on the other hand there will likely be some teams or departments that are completely virtual and they may or may not have flexibility around when the work gets done and finally there are hybrid teams or hybrid departments and this is where some people are working in person others are working remotely and some are going back and forth between those two options we're likely to see a lot more teams like this in the future hybrid teams are a focus of a lot of organizations right now looking at what type of flexibility can be offered that meets the needs of employees while also meeting the needs of the teams and the departments what flexibility looks like in a particular role or for a particular team or department is going to vary depending on the nature of the work that being said there are quite a few benefits that have been well documented around increasing flexible work arrangements for example more flexibility can help people create a balance between accomplishing results at work and maintaining well-being outside of it when people don't have a lot of flexibility they're often faced with choices around do i get the work done or do i attend to this important thing outside of work when there's more flexibility it's easier to get both done and feel less stressed about it working with flexibility has also been associated with increased job satisfaction reduced work stress and feeling more supported and more confident in dealing with the demands that come at you at work and outside of work organizations with flexible work arrangements have also seen higher levels of retention and engagement compared to those without flexible work great thanks brandon to talk more about what supervisors can expect when it comes to flexible work brandon and i are joined now by lovey-paisic who's the leadership development manager in ohr to get us started i'd like to ask you both some more questions just about flexible work in general one of the things we've been hearing a lot from supervisors is some confusion about what's different with flexible work now as compared to during the covet pandemic could you two talk a little bit about what's different for supervisors going forward so let me hear um what really stands out to me is i think there's a lot more expectation setting and anticipation now when this pandemic hit just over a year ago there was a lot of adrenaline survival based instincts really motivating all of our behaviors in and outside the workplace so becoming agile adapting to a lot of change including for many teams going completely remote literally overnight i think while very stressful it was also in some ways easier because we had a lot of adrenaline and fear-based motivation running that now we're really asking everybody to be super intentional frontal lobe literally um planning for their future work arrangements and i'll just really add we're not quite out of a pandemic either so there's also this back and forth of you know should i still be fearful of my safety and health the health of others but i also want to really be intentional and anticipate a lot of change so a lot more um stress but in other ways a little less distressing from a motivational way and so i think it's really easy now for supervisors especially to second-guess themselves and get into what i like to frame as decision paralysis um because we don't have those same drives to make decisions a lot quicker and in some ways a little bit easier so brandon what would you add or elaborate on yeah i i would completely agree when i think about that that question the first thing that came to mind is exactly what you said around when uh when we first went to virtual most many of us it was overnight literally overnight there wasn't time to plan there wasn't time to think about it we had to do it which did make it easier in terms of making the decision and then making it happen and now what's different is that we can be more planful and more thoughtful about what works what doesn't work retaining the things that do work um and addressing the things that that don't work when i think specifically about sort of what's going to be different i think the the biggest thing is going to be more hybrid situations we're going to have a world now and many departments and teams are already seeing this where it's more of a hybrid you're going to be as a supervisor seeing some of your team members right there in front of you in the office or wherever you work and others are going to be remote and you may have plenty of situations where you're working on projects or having meetings or doing work and some people are there physically and some people are there virtually and that is a more challenging kind of situation to manage in a lot of ways creates a lot more opportunity though i think and there's a lot of upside to it but it there's no doubt that it's going to be a little more challenging for supervisors thanks brandon and lovey you both brought up some really good points that i think would resonate with our supervisors so something that strikes me about in what you said is that although supervisors have very practical first-hand experience in like you said for the last several months managing virtual or hybrid teams still there's something a lot of a lot of this sounds really like a new thing for supervisors like they'll be responsible for more coming up can you and that might i don't know how that feels to our supervisor audience but it can feel a little bit like wait what like we didn't we just get through this already and now there's something else coming around the corner could you talk a little bit about you know kind of this newness that supervisors will be responsible for with this flexible work work arrangement yeah so that there's you know we're still learning about what that's going to look like to be totally honest but there are some things that we do know for sure um and there are some supervisors that are already on the leading edge of this experience and then others that are going to be you know learning as as we go but you know a couple of things really stand out you know one is that overall i think expectations for supervisors are going up um and some of the things that are going to create that there's going to be even more sort of ambiguity and uncertainty um than there used to be in terms of how to effectively manage a team or a department um there's not going to be exact right answers not that there ever were but right now when you think about the ways that we're going to be working together there are more of them than there used to be for many supervisors and that means there's more ways to supervise and manage so there aren't necessarily the same answers that there used to be um so their supervisors are going to have to sort of sit with that discomfort that that's going to cause sometimes around okay i'm not really sure what the right answer is here or i need to pick from three or four that might work which one is going to be the best so there's a lot of that that we're going to have to sort of navigate through together as supervisors and you know the other thing is that there's starting to be more more research coming out on what you know kind of what happens when we start managing more um workforces where you have people working in person or hybrid or virtual and when you look at for example employee engagement one of the things that we're seeing is that the levels of engagement are going up in organizations which may be a little bit surprising to some but what's going on is that many organizations university would be one of them there's been a real sense of togetherness through this and that's you know brought a high level of commitment and dedication to the work and the department or team and the university um so that's great but the challenge facing supervisors is that the way that people are working is shifting what it is you need to do as a supervisor to sustain engagement and help people not burn out so for example we know now we're starting to see trends and and this is not data from the university this is global data that workers who are more in person working on site some of the big challenges are around safety around communication from management around visibility these are some of the things that are really going to be driving engagement and supervisors need to be thinking about for hybrid workers a lot of what we're seeing is trends toward concerns about accessing the right resources the right tools the right systems to allow for hybrid work because it's a little more complicated and so supervisors are going to need to make sure that those those employees who are working hybrid have those uh so that they can be engaged and productive and then fully virtual workers um are talking a lot about challenges with you know sort of the always-on culture of 24 7 work you know how do you say okay now i'm done working now i'm at home when you're there all the time and many of us have been working virtually and know what that looks like that's going to continue to be a challenge for for workers who continue virtually so supervisors are going to need to develop the skills to really address each of those sets of concerns with the different types of employees whereas in the past many supervisors just had just had one type of employee in terms of those work arrangements to manage yeah and i completely echo everything that was just laid out and would just kind of zoom out i think what we're really then with again more of your frontal lobe and discernment intentionality asking supervisors to reevaluate how they identify with leadership and supervision so i think majority of supervisors out there didn't grow up in a completely remote or hybrid work arrangement themselves and so even realizing that they can craft that and leave that on their own teams can be really exciting for some and might even feel a little bit like grief or loss for others who had wished they had that themselves 5 10 15 years ago etc and so really encouraging supervisors to lean into some of this and find out what about it will be exciting and also challenging and discombobulating um to really think about how they identify with the you know idea of supervising and what that's going to look like differently in the upcoming months and years and it might take a while to feel comfortable um but i also think there's a lot of reward that we all have been talking about already that will come of that so thank you both so much for weighing in on these questions i we i hope our audience hears you loud and clear like there's no one way to do it there's no perfect way to be a supervisor it's just about like you said lovey you know not to overuse the phrase but really leaning in and asking yourselves these yourself as a supervisor these questions around you know what what does it take you know what does it take to to continue or to maybe to develop a team that's that's working well together and feels engaged and motivated in the work as well so we're going to switch gears now and talk about what you can do to prepare for flexible work we'll be joined again by brandon and lovey in a few minutes so stay tuned there are five main areas we want you to consider as you think about working with flexibility on your team equity and implicit bias local considerations or local guidance the nature of work for both the team and the individual positions within the team what individual people prefer with the flexibility you can offer their positions and finally we want you to consider what your plan will be for revisiting and checking in with team members about their work arrangements for the best learning experience we encourage you to pause the webinar and reflect in your action sheet after each step if you'd rather watch the webinar now and reflect later a separate worksheet is available at z.umn.edu fwa underscore worksheet either way considering these questions will help you prepare to make decisions about flexible work that makes sense for your team before making any final decisions about flexible work arrangements on your team make sure you check with and align to any guidance from your local campus college or unit around flexible work as you know there's a huge variety of work done at the university all with different needs and priorities because of this local campuses colleges and units may have different positions and guidance that you'll need to consider and align to like we said at the beginning of the webinar by july 19 2021 you should have heard from your local leaders about any flexible work guidelines specific to your campus college or unit if you're watching this before july 19th and you haven't heard anything yet that's okay university leaders are working on guidance now and you should hear from them soon just keep in mind that any decisions you make for your team will have to align with guidelines from your local leadership understand your bias everyone has biases that's okay but before you start making decisions about flexible work take some time to pause and reflect on your own bias and how that could affect your decision making around flexible work as well as how you manage team members as a supervisor you must build awareness around bias in your flexible work decisions implicit bias left unexamined leads to unproductive and often harmful consequences for the people you supervise and the mission of the university you can make a difference by challenging status quo ideas around work being a part of a culture shift and addressing inequities to help you build awareness let's talk through some common types of cognitive biases that can show up in flexible work affinity bias affinity bias is when you give preferential treatment to someone because they share similar experiences as you or they remind you of someone you know and like for example if you're an in-person manager with a flexible team you may give more rewarding or interesting work to the people you see in person because you have a shared experience with them this is an important bias to disrupt recency bias is another bias that shows up this is when recent events or information are given more weight and importance than older ones for example you may give more weight to one team member that you work closely with and often with versus another team member that you haven't been in a meeting with for a few days and you can probably see how that might introduce bias and again it's important to disrupt another type of bias is confirmation bias this is when you're seeking or taking in new information to confirm your own beliefs rather than being open-minded for example a supervisor who always thought flexibility was a bad idea or could never work may give up on flexible work arrangements at the first sign of difficulty or challenge now that might sound logical to you but that is indeed a bias you're taking that information to confirm your own beliefs rather than working through it you're seeking information and opportunities to confirm your own thoughts around flexible work rather than working through it so again another bias to avoid and we'll talk about that more in just a minute consensus bias is when people see their own thoughts choices and judgments as common and shared with others for example a supervisor may think that there's no way team members can be productive if they're working outside of the office with consensus bias they may just assume that everyone else agrees with them so of course you're probably thinking now too how often assumptions go hand in hand with biases before we invite some of our experts to talk about equity and understanding bias i want you to pause the webinar and answer some reflection questions about bias and flexible teams so that you can recognize your own biases when they happen and make changes to procedures to break the link between bias and behaviors you can take a minute to do that now in addition to recognizing and mitigating bias supervisors must commit to treating people equitably and balancing the needs of individual with the needs of the team to talk more about equity and bias i'm joined again by lovisig as well as brandon sullivan so levy and brandon equity when we talk about equity it can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people so i want to take a minute to level set and i'd like to ask you both in your opinions and your expert opinions what are we talking about when we say equity in the context of a flexible work arrangement how should supervisors think about equity yeah and i'm happy to get us started on this um the first thing that always comes to mind for me is really separating equity from equality or sameness you know we all have different life circumstances we have different kinds of jobs goals motivations learning styles even values and strengths and so you know i always believe people should have equal access to work opportunities to have meaningful work as well as work that provides a certain level of income and sense of security etc but how we all achieve those things can look very different because we have different life circumstances so what i really been encouraging supervisors and i think this is a best practice again prior to the pandemic and post pandemic as well is really working with your team members individually case by case basis about what they each need to really thrive at work that can be differences in schedules differences in priorities deadlines using their strengths and not expecting everybody on the team to need the same kinds of resources at the same time and really just paying attention to individual differences as well as similarities or themes across team members as well um but that's where i really go first when i think about equity at work is paying attention to your work members as individual people who have all very different needs and and strengths as well um brandon what would you add you know focusing on equity really requires that you learn each person's needs and challenges and strengths and and so on individually and and you really need to cue in on that to know what what does each person need from you to be successful and it's going to be different person to person and that that is a little bit of a different way of thinking about this kind of work than maybe we've done before where the focus has been more on sort of treating everybody exactly the same that's not going to work here there's a real recognition that that it's going to have to be equity not the same thing for everybody it's have to be okay what does everybody need and how do we support them as best we can so that is going to require supervisors to really attend to each person a little bit more maybe than than they're used to awesome thank you both for your for your insights there and for helping us take a very big topic a very big concept in kind of focusing in on what it means for supervisors so another question i have is about the consequences of not thinking about equity in flexible work arrangements so a big concern we hear especially from non-supervisors is well what if my supervisor holds on to the you know that old way of working and won't even consider flexibility even though i know my job could accommodate it so these questions around again around equity so it you know in a word or two what would you say to supervisors who are reluctant for whatever reason but who are reluctant to try out flexible work arrangements on their team even when there could be opportunities to do so you know we always say you start with the work so what does the work require and we want to look at work through the lens of both an individual and the work that they're doing but also the team or the department that they're a part of but of course you know it might be easy to fall into old ways and say well the work has to be done this way and so then it's like okay does the work really require uh that that it be done in person for example and so certainly there's a range of supervisors who are going to feel comfortable and open to you know trying new things that's natural um but i would say that if you if you're a supervisor who's finding yourself feeling skeptical uh of flexibility there may be good reason for it depending on the work that you do at the same time i would encourage you to think about challenging your own assumptions around that because we know that going forward a lot of employees are going to have expectations that there's more flexibility that has all sorts of benefits for people being able to manage you know stress and keep stress a little bit lower be productive be engaged stay in their roles i would encourage you to think about the impact of productivity to retention to engagement and and the expectations that employees are increasingly going to bring around that so those are a few things there's a lot of reasons but those are a few that come to mind yeah i mean i i wholeheartedly agree and would just elaborate you know with what i was sharing earlier we were motivated in our bodies to survive and change to you know new habits that some still feel new for many but also are you know i now forget that zoom wasn't my norm several years ago or a couple years ago with my work um so asking people you know to return to an on-campus setting or a new arrangement that wasn't the current way of doing things through the pandemic is going to require even more effort and intentionality from people and without that same fear-based motivation to do so if there's not a huge business case or carrot if you will that really makes sense to your workers it could actually be a really demotivating experience for the team um if things feel and seem more rigid than your team really thinks they need to be and so coming up with a convincing business case um that you know is where i would suggest if you're trying to bring your team to be um back on campus or back to the old norms um but you know i would also add you know test out your logic with you know why flexibility is something you're hesitating about as a supervisor and understand that there's some risks too other than demotivating your workforce i agree with what brandon said productivity could suffer if people feeling forced to do work the way that they no longer want to or need to and there's um you know depending on your particular work and sector or industry you know the job markets though are really looking for employees and our competitors if they're offering more flexible arrangements than you are um i think retention as well as engagement can really be an issue for us and i think we all know how to do our work and hope that we're being trusted to do things that way and so i would really lean into connecting with your teams and people individually to find out their preferences and how they view their work and how they do the work to be conducted on-site hybrid completely remote um because if there's a disconnect between how you want to do things and how your team wants to um there could be some risks and issues short-term and long-term with that as well yeah well yeah one thing that that came to mind too is there's a lot of research showing that when you provide flexibility around time and around schedule what that actually does for employees is it gives them more resources to be able to deal with work challenges and so and and and there's a direct correlation between how much you can sort of you know have someone working on um and how many resources they have to deal with that if they don't have as many resources don't have as much control over things um they're gonna be able to do less and it's just kind of that simple and of course that impacts engagement and well-being and all sorts of other important things so one way to think about it is if you can as a supervisor find a way to create flexibility especially around time but but also around where people are working you're giving your employees more resources to do the work so in that way it's it's kind of a you know i hate to use the cliche but it's a win-win situation for everybody if you can figure that out i think giving people as much control and i love the word agency to approach the work the way that it works for them is also very very inclusive um and i would just really encourage supervisors who and you know value that or come from units that are really putting a stake in the ground around inclusivity going forward that this is a practice that can really take that to the action level so i just have one more question for you and this is a little bit a little bit broader but i think very actionable i'd like to talk about how bias comes into play both in making decisions around flexible work arrangements and in managing flexible teams like after the decision is made so can you just speak a little bit about what biases supervisors need to build their awareness of that you know the ones that come to mind for you the ones that you've been reading about and of what actions they can take to disrupt their biases one of the themes that brandon i've been sharing is just expecting things to remain a bit ambiguous uncomfortable i use the word discombobulating at times and so i would say you know to avoid some confirmation bias really taking over is don't confuse any of those emotional states as a sign of doing something wrong or bad as a supervisor um i actually if i were coaching someone one-on-one would actually say if you're a bit out of your discomfort you know if you're feeling a little bit discomfort it probably means you're doing something new great um and it's a sign of success in many ways um obviously you can tell with your work deliverables and whatnot if things are going in the way you need them to in your work but i really encourage employees to not confuse you know any sort of discomfort with trying some new things out as a sign that this is bad or is a bad idea because that's definitely not the case and it's really a sign of growth and exploration with you know some of these flexible work arrangements that we all been discussing and describing so so that's where i go first when i think about this this question you know one of the things that comes to my mind um is sort of the what and the how of performance so sometimes people will talk about you know there's the what of performance which is the results you're trying to achieve and the how of performance is you know how do you get there what are the the behaviors or the actions you take to get there and you know one of the things that as we're looking at more flexible work that's going to likely happen hopefully will happen the what of performance may not be changing what you're trying to achieve as a team or department may not be any different but how you get there is going to have more paths than it used to have and supervisors and myself included and you know i think this is true of everybody is we're going to have our our favorite house right our favorite paths the past that we're comfortable with the paths that we've seen be effective in the past um and and we're going to have a bias toward you know okay this is comfortable this makes sense i know this works other paths may not work so i'm going to focus on you know information that's telling me my path is right and other paths you know especially when you put it together with the point lovey just made you're gonna see i don't know that i don't know that that's working so well let's go back to what's comfortable and so you know i think there's a lot of that confirmation bias and some other biases that can come into play there where you're maybe not giving quite enough weight to evidence that other ways might actually be working and i think that's going to be a real important sort of set of biases for all supervisors because we all we all have those around okay here's how i think this work should be done i mean we you know we wouldn't be supervisors if we didn't have some sense for that but we've got to expand our thinking around that um because that's going to be a little different going forward yeah i i love that approach and i think what branding you're also describing then is for supervisors who aren't maybe were forced in the past to be super clear on what the what is in performance spelling that out very clearly and communicating that and making sure your teams are understanding the what is going to be even more essential because we're hopefully giving people a lot of agency to kind of figure out the house to getting the what done but the what's going to have to be clear to do that definitely thank you so much lovey and brandon for your expertise and your thoughts on equity and bias i i mean i i feel like we're just kind of dipping our toe in the water there's so much more we could talk about but i think you've given our audience a lot to think about so after you've figured out your campus college or units guidance and have committed to disrupting bias and building equity on your team the main driver in your flexible work decision making process should be the nature of the work while not every team or every position's work will lend itself to flexibility around space many will in order to make the best possible flexible work decisions think hard about what your team needs to accomplish and then what the individual positions on the team need to do too we really encourage you to pause the webinar and record your thoughts on the preparing for flexible work arrangements worksheet remember what brandon lovey said about challenging your assumptions and preferences about the work really stretch yourself to rethink the way you have always done things how can your team achieve its purpose in new ways take a minute to record your thoughts now after analyzing the needs of the team's work consider the nature of each position how is each position responsible for contributing to the larger goals of the team just like the larger team's work challenge yourself to critically think about what needs to be done where and when stretch to find opportunities to rethink how the work gets done in order to leverage the benefits that flexible work arrangements can offer your team members take a moment to pause the webinar and think through the positions on your team for each position consider what is this position responsible for what must be done in person and then what can be done virtually so you can pause this webinar now and take notes on your action sheet after analyzing the nature of the team and individual positions work it's time to touch base with team members to talk through your thought processes gather input and set expectations at this point you should be comfortable with the type of flexibility you think each position can have and should hold a discussion to communicate that decision and figure out the team members preferences within those parameters take a minute now to pause the webinar and reflect on what questions you would ask your team members to figure out their preferences we also have a guide to discussing flexible work arrangements which has some questions and conversation starters you can use to hold a conversation with your team you can find that listed on your action sheet or you can go to z.umn.edu fwa discussion guide finally and this is crucial make and communicate a plan to revisit flexible work arrangement with team members don't just do it once and be done like we've mentioned in this webinar already you and your team members may run into challenges in your flexible work arrangements it's okay it's expected but plan on revisiting regularly with the other person you can use quick weekly or bi-weekly ongoing check-ins to ask your team members how things are going and if you need to adjust at all at this point you can pause the webinar and reflect on some of the questions in the preparing for flexible work arrangements worksheet think through how you will keep track of how flexible work arrangements are going how you will give feedback and receive input and how you will hold yourself accountable to checking in with team members now that we've gone through how you can prepare for flexible work arrangements i want to take a few minutes to bring some other voices to the table to talk a little bit about how this might look i'm joined now by ashley alexander with university libraries and my umua with the office of information technology so ashley in my uf we've just gone through these five areas that supervisors will need to spend time thinking about when preparing for flexible work arrangements while these areas touch on practices you may already have in place we know anytime there's a shift in the work environment it's a lot for supervisors to think about it all at once so both of you are involved in preparing for flexible work arrangements in your local units what are flexible work arrangements currently looking like so far in your units could you talk a little bit about that yeah so as many across the university um for oit the office of information technology a transition to a flexible working regimen is pretty natural for us we've been doing this for over a year as everyone else and right now we're really working on empowering our managers to define what flexibility looks like for their teams while of course staying within the parameters of the guidance as well and managers know the most about their staff they know the most about their teams and the work they do so we're recommending that managers consult with their team members consult with key partners folks that they work closely with before finalizing any plans that would allow them to still achieve their their objectives so while you know at the same time also supporting their employees and then allowing for that flexibility thank you so much maiwa actually what about in your unit what does it what do the flexible work arrangements look like so far at this point so when people think of the libraries they often think of our physical buildings like walter or wilson or mcgraw and so it's important that we continue to have some in-person presence for our students and faculty and community patrons but not all work has to be done in person and there are other types of flexibility that we might be able to offer to our employees so we've put together a few principles like having regular business hours and having remote first zoom meetings when possible but our most important guiding principle is to follow the work also we'll be using tools like google calendars and chat to note work hours and stay connected when we're working on distributed teams and like like oit we are emphasizing that managers follow the work and offer flexibility when possible and that they really have a lot of they're empowered to make a lot of decisions around flexible work thank you so much it sounds like both of you have thought a lot about preparing for flexible work arrangements in your units so far and it sounds like so far you've got some great ideas so could you talk a little bit about um what advice you would give to a supervisor who's worried about you know or maybe feeling anxious about having to make a lot of important decisions in the next couple of months yeah we know that as we emerge from this pandemic things will continue to shift as we've seen over the last year and a half or so so we're really encouraging our managers to view especially fall semester as a transition period and as an opportunity to really try new approaches or different approaches and managers will be working with their teams to define what work arrangement looks like for them and we're really encouraging them to define this for the short term and then also make a commitment to have dialogue and to evaluate moving forward kind of the next couple months and even over the course of the next year so that we can adjust as appropriate throughout the course of the year but also in the long term ashley what advice would you have for supervisors at this point um i would encourage supervisors to let go of the idea that there is one right decision instead think of this initial flexible work arrangement as a draft flexible work is going to be evolving over the course of the next few months the fall semester the year so try to approach it with an experimental mindset and make sure that you and your employee have an agreed-upon plan to revisit and evaluate how the arrangement is going feedback is going to be really important over the course of this experimental approach to flexible work so be mindful about where you can give feedback and when and establish those expectations up upfront thank you ashley um thanks to both of you at this point for putting some of this into very concrete terms for us and i'll welcome you back in a few minutes and we'll talk about a few more things about kind of what this all looks like in your units and we look forward to that your perspective is really valuable so now that we've talked about how to best prepare for flexible work let's talk about the skills you can use to successfully manage a flexible team on the slide in front of you you'll see the key skills for managing flexible teams this list isn't comprehensive and there will be more skills you'll need to use as you begin to manage flexible teams but this list is a really good starting place we'll go through these one by one in a minute but i also want to point out that we have a quick guide to managing flexible teams which covers all of these skills and has links to more supporting resources you can find the quick guide on your action sheet or by going to z.umn.edu qg managing flexible teams defining a clear purpose and describing success is all about providing your team with direction and helping them start off on the right track in traditional circumstances this looks like clearly defining the purpose of your team or the results they need to achieve as well as communicating what does success look like the challenge that supervisors often run into when doing this in a flexible team is that team members may feel isolated especially those who work virtually when there's a large presence in an office or vice versa team members who work in person may feel isolated if most of the team is virtual because of these feelings of isolation team members can feel disconnected from the purpose of the team additionally and i'm sure many of you have experienced this over the last year and a half when you're working in a flexible arrangement it's really easy to feel like every task and priority is urgent even when it isn't or you may see a larger volume of communication in the form of email chat or meetings as well as an implicit expectation for multitasking like checking or answering emails while you're in a meeting the solution for all of this is to be proactive about communicating the team's purpose and describing what success will look like for each team member be clear about your team's priorities don't make assumptions that everyone is on the same page if you think team members know the purpose explain it again and explain their role in it by explaining the purpose of the team and how each individual's work connects to the bigger picture team members will feel more connected and more engaged and have less confusion and stress about what's actually urgent and what isn't at this point again you can pause the webinar and answer some self-reflection questions which are listed on your action sheet so next you'll want to clarify roles and responsibilities for your team members in a way that aligns their skills knowledge and abilities with the work this involves making sure individuals know what's expected of themselves and of their team members some of the challenges with this skill in flexible teams is that isolated individuals can often fall into independent work patterns which affects work that relies on interdependence additionally there may be perceptions of uneven workload distributions with some team members thinking others aren't getting work done or that they're for some reason getting assigned more work in all teams but especially a flexible team you'll need to make sure team members know what they're expected to do and how they're expected to do it so again it's not just for flexible teams but it's especially inflexible teams it's also a good idea to manage the perceptions of team members by making sure everyone knows what others on the team are doing clarifying what people are responsible for and helping team members prioritize will help mitigate some of the challenges you might face in a virtual team at this point you can pause the webinar and answer some more self-reflection questions which are listed on your action sheet another thing you'll need to do to manage a flexible team is to establish norms that foster psychological safety establishing norms that foster psychological safety is a critical part of making any team engaged in their work together a team with psychological safety allows team members to take risks and communicate in accordance and coordinate effectively and you can see that that under that underscores so much of what we've been talking about today in a flexible team building team trust can be challenging zoom meetings and other online interactions can often feel task oriented meaning that team members can feel pressure to stay on task and get to the point even if that pressure wouldn't have been felt in a physical office we'll talk more about what norms you can set in a minute but the good news is that there are some things you can do set aside time to discuss norms for your team how much risk can people take is it okay to chat or if you're off task in a meeting an explicit norm for these things will be critical especially for new employees you can also lead by example and show the team that it's okay to check in or chat for a few minutes in a meeting model behaviors like asking for feedback and also of course welcoming different perspectives at this point you can pause the webinar and answer more self-reflection questions which are listed on your action sheet you may be starting to notice a bit of a pattern to all of these skills and that's that communication is key it's true a lot of these different skills that you may have done naturally in a fixed in-person work arrangement may be overlooked once your team becomes flexible so as a supervisor in addition to establishing norms for psychological safety you should revisit and be explicit about communication norms too because employees may be working in different locations or at different times flexible teams can easily fall into siloed work patterns another thing that happens is that team members can be hesitant to reach out for support or feedback because they're unsure of others workload without the in-person signals that someone is busy or feeling stressed really the main thing you need to do as a supervisor is just to be explicit about what team members can expect around communication with that we invite you to think how are you communicating moving to a flexible team is an opportunity to rethink how the work can drive the purpose of communication you don't need to always default to zoom or even to a meeting instead ask yourself what's the purpose of your communication the table in front of you is an example of a simple tool that can help you think through this process it's also listed on your action sheet and on the managing flexible teams quick guide it's not a comprehensive list and you can add your own rows and columns depending on what works for you and what your team needs for team communication we always start with the question what's the purpose of communication all this just goes to say let the work drive the communication know that part of your work is tasks and part of it is building relationships and maintaining relationships take some time now to pause the webinar and consider how will you communicate at this point i'd like to ask ashley myuia again to help illustrate what it looks like to establish these norms with a virtual or hybrid team at the university of minnesota in their local units the norm that i'd like to talk about first is establishing communication what would you tell supervisors to start with when thinking about communication on their teams and in your experience so far ashley and maiwa what have you observed in virtual or hybrid teams so i would recommend that supervisors consider two things what are your expectations around communication and then how are you communicating so expectations might look like how often do you want your employees to check in with you or what kinds of updates should they share regularly is there a standard for how quickly emails should be responded to and then how how to communicate speaks to the modality so we have a lot of options to stay in touch with tools like zoom google chat slack text phone calls emails and other collaboration tools so as a supervisor you'll want to be explicit about which method to use when and the the tool on the previous slide is a really great way to help you organize that information so that you can communicate it clearly thank you ashley mayweather what would you tell supervisors to start with when they're thinking about communication on their teams so a few things i would ask managers to think about similar to what ashley mentioned in terms of the modality is to think about you know how do you how does the team want to connect what tools they want to connect especially when it comes to that quick check-in or if you kind of have a quick question for someone how do you want to do that and then yeah and then similarly because we cannot physically see people like we do in the office we may need to establish boundaries for when we reach out to others and then also when we can expect to hear from others so setting some boundaries around that can help people and just set their expectations because you can't just go over and knock on someone's door and ask a question and then without those impromptu moments that we can that we connect with others you may need to build in time for connectivity thanks you guys your ideas really resonate i think with will probably resonate really well with our audience so another question i have for you is um around really around psychological safety i'm just curious what kind of norms in your experience are best for helping team members feel comfortable sharing offering feedback asking for help you know all of those things that that we hope that people are talking about uh with their supervisor so um norms around psychological safety i think really look like connecting and giving space at the start of meetings for that human connection asking how everyone's day is going asking how you are at the start of one-on-one meetings and then supervisors can model giving and asking for feedback and creating that space for sharing if there are challenges that you need to overcome or sharing wins at regular intervals supervisors can sometimes overlook those norms it can feel obvious or you're just trying to get through the work and trying to get one zoom meeting done so you can move on to the other but it's really important to establish that human connection with your team and then think about how you're facilitating that among your team members as well yeah establishing psychological safety is messy and difficult and we know it won't happen overnight it's going to take time not only psychological safety something that can help create norms help teens feel more comfortable whether that's discussing mistakes sharing and offering feedback or asking for help but we know kind of through research that psychological safety also helps team be successful and helps t be more effective more collaborative etc and so we encourage all of our managers to continue to work towards fostering that space and a couple things that we've asked our managers to do includes kind of four ways to approach this the first one is to create a team environment and similar to what ashley just spoke on it's really using inclusive language um so thinking about just using using v instead of i is is a way to include everyone in the conversation and similar to what ashley mentioned inviting specific members of the team to share um that's one way to ensure that teams are speaking kind of equal amounts of time the second thing we share with our managers is to create a rationale for speaking up so having the encourage to do that one way that managers could do that is to frame the work as a learning problem not necessarily just an execution problem so manager might want to say especially if they're starting a new project they might want to say something like this is a new challenge for us there are many possibilities here so let's explore together what we can do we've got to have everyone's brains and voices in here so that we can explore every possibility the third thing that we've asked our managers to consider is to create more safety for speaking up and managers could do this by acknowledging kind of where they themselves need help so being a little bit more vulnerable with employees as well and then fourthly we've asked our managers to work on creating a necessity for voice and doing this through curiosity by using open-ended questions so asking questions like what have we not considered or how might we make this process better next time those are really great examples mayu and i think it demonstrates or it's something to think about for supervisors when there is a mistake made how are you handling it so approaching with curiosity approaching with that learning mindset rather than belittling or shaming people when they mess up goes a long way to uh fostering that sense of psychological safety and trust among the team thank you so much for your insights maiwa and ashley you've given our audience a lot to think about so thank you for being here with us today so another best practice you'll want to do is to establish a clear decision making process having an intentional and clear process for making decisions helps a team avoid unproductive conflict and wasted effort it also improves the quality of the team's decisions when done right decisions are made based on evidence and analysis not dominating personalities or personality clashes a good decision-making process will also have team members agreeing on and understanding the process for making important decisions there are a few things that can be challenging in a flexible team of course well first decisions can easily be made without consulting other team members that can result in pushback or defensiveness or team members feeling like they're left out of the process on the flip side another thing supervisors can run into is a pressure to consult with and inform all stakeholders and team members for every decision even when they might not need to be in the loop this can be exhausting and frustrating especially when trying to move your team's work forward if you get a sense that team members may feel left out but you need to make a quick important decision circle back with them after the decision is made to keep them informed additionally spend some time thinking about the key people you need to loop in or influence in order to best move the work forward and make decisions once you've identified these people focus your efforts on consulting with them as that will be the best use of your time so at this point again you can pause the webinar and answer some self-reflection questions listed on your action sheet the next skill we want to talk about is accountability a team with a strong culture of accountability achieves results and is engaged and motivated supervisors clearly define the behavior or outcomes they expect of team members as well as the way they should achieve them while while offering support and resources supervisors of accountable teams also rely on the results of the work to monitor progress in other words they don't need to see someone in person working in order to know the work is getting done something we hear often from supervisors is that they find it difficult to know what people are doing if they can't see them in the office and we reflected on this a little bit earlier with brandon and lovey these supervisors rely on a very traditional indicator of work being done like that in-person presence we really challenge those of you who are feeling this way to shift your focus from i can see people doing the work to i can see the work is being done is the work being done yes good okay great it sounds like people are accomplishing their responsibilities and contributing to the results that your team needs to achieve even if you don't actually physically see them in person doing the work but if the work is not being done right that doesn't sound like an in-person or a virtual work arrangement would fix that it sounds like a performance issue you should treat it as such using effective performance management and accountability skills if individuals aren't getting the work done in a flexible work arrangement it's not necessarily a good reason to scrap the arrangement your first resort should be to coach give feedback and communicate the consequences good or bad for completing or not completing the work at this point again pause the webinar and answer some of those self-reflection questions listed on your action sheet finally in any team a supervisor is responsible for conflict management while not all conflict is bad and of course some conflict can have positive outcomes it's still your responsibility to identify the conflict sources and try to resolve them so that productivity and working relationships are preserved sometimes in flexible teams conflict can feel more personal or team members may not feel as connected as they would in person so it's easier to fall into relationship conflict in addition to this it can be more challenging for a supervisor to address conflict on a flexible team depending on what communication method you're using it can be difficult to read tone body language and other cues we may be used to on a flexible team you can plan to proactively manage disruptive or unproductive conflict by using ongoing check-ins and of course building team trust in relationships when conflict does arise assess the source of the conflict to use the most effective strategy to address it to help you with this check out the quick guide to conflict sources which is also listed on your action sheet overall making sure everyone feels psychologically safe to share disagree give feedback and offer opinions will go a long way in ensuring that unproductive conflict is mitigated and instead productive conflicts or disagreements are channeled into making the work of the team better so at this point again please pause your webinar and answer some self-reflection questions listed on your action sheet i know we went through these key skills rather quickly but once you're at a point where your team is flexible these skills will help you succeed the quick guide to managing flexible team covers all of these skills and links to more supporting resources so please feel free to access it whenever you need to like we mentioned at the beginning of the webinar be sure to enter any questions you have in the q a form which you can also find at z.umn.edu flexible teams questions we'll answer them all in the coming weeks so thank you all for your attention throughout this webinar we've introduced a lot of ideas today my question to you is what's something you learned that seems important to you and then as a follow-up what will your first step be if you weren't following along with the action sheet you can download the preparing for flexible work worksheet at z.umn.edu fwa underscore worksheet go through the questions to prepare yourself for making decisions about the work and for managing flexible teams on the slide in front of you and on this webinar page you'll find a link to the evaluation to tell us your thoughts we really value your feedback the link is z.umn.edu managing flexible teams underscore evaluation so yes we were going through this content rather quickly and to learn more please explore the supervisory development website at supervising.umn.edu we have quick guides and many many other resources that you can download or view anytime for your reference thank you so much for attending the webinar and sharing your thoughts we hope you find the information useful and relevant to your supervisory experience and we look forward to being with you again soon [Applause] you