Which soft skills become more important in a permanent hybrid work model?

I would say:

Communication.- If you use Google Meet, Zoom or else be mandatory to have always cameras on.

Resilience.- If people struggle by any chance and they are away, they won’t have the sense of the human touch, so print in them ( And you as well ) resilience so they can make it well.

Team work and collaboration.- An individual will arrive faster to the goal, a team will go farther.

I think the Communication, and the Digitalization. 

Influencing a positive TRUST within the team and across the organisation will be more important in a HYBRID model.  

I think some leaders and teams have soft skills and can apply them appropriately no matter the work environment or model. 

However, with recent, abrupt, and accelerated changes around how we work, it's critical that leaders and teams establish, adopt and agree on some fundamentals. 

One of these is around soft skills (areas below), and I believe it applies whether teams are working remote, in the office, or in some sort of hybrid model.

Communication- Individuals and teams stay aligned and updated as needed. During video or voice calls, have good notes so that everyone knows what was discussed, keeping everyone in the loop if they missed a meeting or other discussion. Whether it is Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zoom, Email, find the set collaboration tools which work for those real-time and pre or post-discussions where teams may consume or update information at different times throughout a given day.

Self-Awareness- Each person and team is a bit different, focusing on what brings us each energy throughout our days can be helpful. Some of us have different energy or focus levels in the morning compared to the afternoon, evening, or night.     

Time Management - Whether it's blocking out time slots on our calendar, writing down tasks, and crossing them off when complete. We are all multitasking today, it's so easy to forget to do something, or get sidetracked and run out of working hours on any day. For me, I need to have my entire day booked out on my calendar, which also includes lunch, breaks to get up and move around, and other periods of focus or planning time. As I work on tasks throughout the day, I also have a notebook to keep notes on what I did that day. I often need to go back to a specific day, having some extra context around the tasks can be very helpful.  

Flexible- I think this is still really difficult for many organizations, this is where having agreed and adopted policies and processes, expectations can be extremely helpful. It gets really difficult when you have different teams and individuals all doing their own thing and each in their own way. Have the core working hours set, maybe that's 7:30 am to 4:30 pm for example. Is the expectation for teams and individuals to be in front of devices and available at all times during core work hours, or is there some flexibility there? If the focus is on getting your work done, maybe that also means in a way that suits you. For many of us, both prior to and during the pandemic, working remotely was about delivering outputs. The focus wasn't on when you took lunch, a break, a walk, a phone call, or some errands during the day. The focus was on internal and external customers, and on getting the work done, including the expectations, requirements around timelines, quality, budget, security, etc.

 

 

Holding people accountable—both internal and external.