Hybrid working isn’t the problem. Five leadership habits that need to change

With companies such as Boots, John Lewis and Lloyds Banking Group ending remote working policies or setting tighter restrictions, UK office attendance hit its highest levels since the pandemic at over 44% this year, with some of the loudest voices in business such as Lord Stuart Rose, still claiming that working from home is “not doing proper work.” 

But hybrid working has already won employees’ hearts and minds. 83% of employees say working from home makes them more productive, and 71% of people agree that a flexible working pattern is important when considering a new role.

So, we spend lots of time debating hybrid working, from how much time do people spend at home versus their normal place of work? How often do teams need to come together? Does flexibility improve productivity or weaken culture?

I’m increasingly convinced we’re focusing on the wrong questions.

Hybrid working has not created most of the leadership challenges businesses are experiencing. It has just exposed them. The problems are much broader than home versus office. People can be working from a head office, retail outlet, factory, distribution centre, workshop or client site. Leaders may also be managing teams across multiple locations, countries, time zones and cultures. This changes the leadership challenge. We should actually be asking is how do we manage entire ways of working?

Regardless of the ‘where’ an employee is working, if ownership, expectations and accountability aren’t clear, things quickly start unravelling. People duplicate effort, decisions slow down, time is wasted and results suffer. When communication lacks clarity, people fill in the gaps themselves. And when feedback only happens once something has gone wrong, people miss valuable opportunities to develop.

In our work with thousands of leaders across hundreds of organisations, one message comes through strongly. The conversation needs to move beyond where people work and towards how people are led wherever they work.

For fast-growing businesses, I see five leadership habits becoming increasingly important.

1. Stop managing activity. Start managing outcomes

One of the easiest traps in hybrid working is equating visibility with performance. Someone can be physically present at work all day and still not create enough value. Equally, somebody working elsewhere may be delivering exactly what the business needs.

The more useful question is, what outcome are we trying to achieve?

People need clarity about what matters, what success looks like, what they own and how progress will be measured. This matters even more when teams operate across different locations or countries and leaders cannot simply see what is happening.

As businesses scale, founders and senior leaders cannot remain involved in every decision. Managers need to prioritise and create accountability without becoming the control centre for everything. The goal is not greater oversight, but greater ownership.

2. Stop communicating more. Communicate with greater intention

Most organisations do not have a shortage of communication. Messages, meetings, emails and calls can fill an entire day, yet people still finish it unsure of what the real priorities are. Multi-location and global working add another layer. People may be operating across different time zones, working patterns, cultures and communication preferences.

That calls for more intentionality. What genuinely needs a conversation? What can happen asynchronously? When will being face-to-face add real value? Who needs to be part of a decision, and who simply needs clarity afterwards? The aim is not constant connection. It is shared understanding.

3. Stop rescuing. Coach more

This is one of the biggest capacity drains I see in managers. Someone brings them a problem. The manager is busy and knows the answer, so they solve it. It feels efficient. But when that keeps happening, the manager becomes the bottleneck, with the people around them increasingly dependent on their solutions.

A coaching style changes the dynamic. Instead of immediately supplying the answer, ask: What do you think? How could you solve it? What options have you considered? What will success look like?

This helps people grow their confidence, judgement and ownership. For a scaling business, that has direct commercial value. It develops talent while releasing leadership capacity.

4. Make performance conversations continuous

Hybrid working can expose weak performance management quickly. When managers do not see someone every day, feedback becomes easier to postpone. A small performance issue goes unmentioned. Developmental feedback waits for the next review and months later, a difficult performance conversation arrives as a surprise.

People need timely, specific feedback. That means recognising great performance while it’s fresh, addressing issues early and helping people understand how they can improve next time.

Performance management works best as part of the normal rhythm of leadership, not something that appears only when performance has deteriorated. In multi-location and global teams, leaders have fewer informal opportunities to observe, coach and develop. That makes timely developmental feedback even more important.

5. Stop developing capability without developing capacity

Most managers I meet already know a lot about good leadership. They understand the importance of listening, delegating, coaching, giving feedback, managing performance and developing people.

The harder question is whether they can still do all of that well when the pressure rises.

Their diary is full. Priorities keep changing. AI is changing how work gets done. Their team spans different locations and time zones. There is another difficult conversation they need to have. Their capability has not disappeared. Their available capacity may have.

Under pressure, thinking narrows. Curiosity reduces. Patience shortens. Leaders become more reactive. They solve problems themselves because it feels faster and difficult conversations get pushed into tomorrow.

This is why I believe leadership capacity is becoming such an important business issue.

Can leaders still create clarity when complexity rises? Can they build trust across locations and cultures? Can they stay grounded and enable others to perform when pressure increases?

Across our work, we repeatedly see eight conditions underpinning high-performing hybrid teams: outcome-based leadership, communication and alignment, clear accountability, intentional culture, trust and psychological safety, connection and belonging, manager capability, and team and leadership capacity.

Notice what’s not on that list. The number of days somebody spends in a particular building. Location matters. Some work can only happen effectively in a particular place, some conversations are better face-to-face and some teams need more physical time together than others. But location cannot compensate for weak leadership.

The bigger question for CEOs and founders is: Are our managers equipped to create clarity, trust, accountability, development and performance across locations, cultures and time zones, wherever their people happen to be working?

That, for me, is where the hybrid working debate needs to go next.