EP. 57 How Leaders Can Actually Have an Effective Return-to-Office Conversation

Team Anywhere Leadership Podcast

In today’s episode, we interview Liane Davey, a New York Times bestselling author and contributor at the Harvard Business Review.

Some of the nicest, most empathetic, most wonderful managers are making the biggest mistakes in planning their back to the office agenda. They're trying to be empathetic and nice and wonderful. They're asking their employees, “what are you thinking about return-to-office?” The only problem is that trying to be nice and fair just isn't working. How can you be fair to everyone? You can't.

In the podcast that you all have been waiting for, Liane Davey deals with the top three problems of the return to office conversation. Number one is going in with no boundaries or guidelines. Number two is getting all hung up on fairness; and number three is optimizing for individuals rather than optimizing for the team overall. Spoiler alert: you need to have an established baseline of non negotiables before you just let everyone decide.

Prepare the Conversation
At the senior leadership level, leadership teams need to discuss and identify boundaries and non-negotiables to guide the conversations. Such guidelines prevent pitfalls as plans and conversations with employees are rolled out. The guidelines provide a win/win--flexibility for employees while also meeting the needs of the organization.

Without such preparation, conversations can become confusing and too open-ended.

Identify Organization and Team Boundaries
If you’re in a senior leadership team, you will likely be creating (or have created) boundaries in your strategy meetings. It is prudent that leadership teams spend time digging into these boundaries--the reasoning and all implications. Those just below the top team need to check-in and make sure communication is flowing from the top and from HR so they can successfully hold conversations throughout the organization. In this way, they can identify what is true versus the story they’ve been telling themselves or what employees have been assuming.

This is the time to be mindful and identify the guiding principles that are going to be at the core of these difficult conversations. Once again, identify at least a few non-negotiables that are going to be true for the entire organization. When identifying boundaries and non-negotiables, leaders need to stay customer-focused and consider the impact on culture.

Stay Customer Focused

The customer should be in the center of tailoring clear boundaries and non-negotiables. Get clear on what your customers need and when your team needs to be physically together to achieve customer success. Ask yourself, “Will the customer experience change in different scenarios regarding the amount of time our teams will or should spend in-person?”

Consider the Impact on Culture Consider how culture is affected by whether your team spends more time together in person or not.

When it comes to this, companies are going in very different directions. Some companies are saying, “Look, there’s culture, there’s collaboration, and then there's the sparks of innovation that we believe won't happen if people aren't physically together. So, we're going back to the office most of the time.”

Other companies are saying, “Roughly 20% of what we do is beneficial to do in person. The rest of our work can be done just as easily or even more productively at home because of in office distractions and long commutes. So, we are going to go hybrid and only get together for gatherings and special projects.”
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