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 1. 
 2. Blog
 3. World of Work
 4. What the last five years have taught me about managing a global hybrid sales
    force across 120 markets

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WHAT THE LAST FIVE YEARS HAVE TAUGHT ME ABOUT MANAGING A GLOBAL HYBRID SALES
FORCE ACROSS 120 MARKETS


16 Dec 2022
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With business leaders increasingly focused on how to enrich the experience of
their employees in the hybrid model, IWG Chief Commercial Officer Fatima Koning
reflects on her own experiences and leadership lessons learned.

Two and a half years on from the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s clear
there’s been a profound, permanent change in how people want to work. This
period has proved that companies can adopt hybrid working policies without
affecting their productivity - and this model is now the preferred option for
millions of people and businesses around the world. 

In the past year alone, we’ve welcomed 2 million new customers to our flexible
workspaces. IWG now empowers 8 million people around the world to work in this
way, giving the best of themselves professionally while maintaining healthier,
happier home lives. 

As Chief Commercial Officer at IWG, I see the difference that hybrid working
makes to companies and their employees and, as a mother, I experience these same
benefits every day.

As head of a global sales force with teams in 120 markets across the globe, I’ve
learned that leadership in a hybrid world is different to traditional
people-management. Hybrid leadership is a skill to be honed - and one that can
boost employees’ job performance, as well as their happiness at home. 

Consider human relations, not ‘human resources’

People brought more of themselves to work than ever during the pandemic. Living
through national lockdowns and long periods of forced remote working inspired a
new level of honesty about our physical, mental and emotional health, and this
kind of authenticity is powerful. It allows for the building of strong,
nurturing relationships between leaders and their teams.

Leadership is about looking for what I can bring out in someone and becoming a
mother undoubtedly helped shape my perspective. I realised that when a child is
learning to read, you don’t worry about what they can do today - you think
forward to what they’ll be able to do tomorrow, next week, next year, if you
support them now. 

Our teams are based in a huge variety of locations, so I’m acutely aware of how
different cultures and norms affect attitudes to work. As a leader, I’ve had to
cultivate an appreciation for the different cultures of the individuals I’m
working with that extends beyond recognising an array of different time zones.
It’s the difference between simply translating our training materials and
policies into lots of different languages and shifting them as necessary to suit
the markets we’re working in. This is the kind of situational, people-centred
leadership that’s needed in a hybrid world.

A leadership style that’s fundamentally open, that’s built around kindness,
honesty and encouragement, is also a shield against the phenomenon of ‘quiet
quitting’ that’s been hitting headlines lately. By valuing people’s
contributions and investing in them, you keep them motivated and engaged.
Businesses keen to build strong, committed teams need to think about their
people not as ‘resources’, but as individuals they have to get to know, value
and appreciate

Encourage a healthy work-life balance 

There’s been a fundamental shift in attitudes to work-life balance in the wake
of Covid-19. People’s focus on wellbeing has tightened, and they want to fit
work around life - not the other way around. 

Business leaders who don’t focus on the wellbeing of their employees do so at
their peril. They should realise it really is a case of enlightened
self-interest. A better work-life balance makes for happier, more engaged and
productive employees who will stay with a company for longer and perform at much
higher levels.

IWG’s latest research shows that 88% of employees regard hybrid working as a key
benefit they’d expect in a new job role, while more than 50% wouldn’t even
consider applying for a position that didn’t offer it. 

Building a hybrid working policy that enables people to draw clear lines between
their home and professional lives is now vital. Combining opportunities for home
working with access to local, flexible workspace is key, as is a continued
emphasis on regular ‘face time’ at the company HQ. 

In my own life, everything from co-parenting my daughter to eating well and
exercising regularly is made easier by the hybrid model. It also allows me to do
the job I love at a level of seniority that - without the flexibility hybrid
offers - would be impossible. 

Our team is happier and healthier working in the hybrid model, and so are those
in many other companies. Research from Accenture shows 63% of high growth firms
have embraced ‘productivity anywhere’ models of working, underlining the
relationship between employees’ wellbeing and commercial success. 

Build trust, but keep employees accountable 

Hybrid working requires a huge amount of trust. There’s arguably a re-balancing
of responsibility, which means individuals are more accountable for their job
performance than they might have been five or ten years ago. 

Great leadership in this new world of work is about loosening the reins while
still finding ways to make sure targets are met and the business performs. In my
team, this has meant establishing clear KPIs and finding new ways to stay
connected. When it comes to training and coaching sessions, we now operate a
‘little and often’ approach, as opposed to holding long workshops a couple of
times per quarter. 

Yet trust cuts both ways. To be a great hybrid leader, you have to inspire trust
as well as offer it. I’m very committed to what I call ‘active listening’:
giving people my undivided attention when they need it, looking for feedback
from all levels of the business and always following up on those ‘grass-roots’
insights, wherever and whoever they come from. 

Foster a culture of learning

There are hundreds of flavours of hybrid working - and it takes time, as well as
learning from mistakes, to define the model that works best for you and your
team. IWG has been a hybrid organisation for decades, but we’re still adapting
and evolving. 

One major adjustment we’ve made is in how we train our staff. We’ve created a
new induction programme that combines the best of face-to-face and virtual
interactions. Likewise, the six-step sales process we used for years has been
overhauled so that it’s now a three-step process - a change that was shaped by
input from employees around the world. 

Keep bringing people together  

While remote working has many benefits and disparate teams can do brilliant
work, it’s vital to keep bringing people together. Regular, quality interactions
are invigorating for teams: they fire creativity, strengthen bonds and inspire
people to learn from one another. 

With so many people working in so many markets, it isn’t always possible for me
to bring my teams together physically - but when people are able to spend time
face-to-face, we make sure those moments really count. 

We hold curated meetings and workshops, get together in local flexspaces and
hold regional and global sales conferences.

In a hybrid world, offering clear incentives for great work is another key way
to maintain your teams’ momentum. I make sure that monthly and annual awards, as
well as prizes such as dinners out and team-building days, celebrate success. We
also offer what we call ‘WOW!’ prizes for truly outstanding work, such as trips
to Château de Berne in France.

Lead by example 

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it’s become clear to me over the past
five years that leaders have to be at the centre of whatever cultural shift
their business is trying to achieve. 

You can’t expect middle managers and the people who report to them to master
driving performance in a hybrid environment if you, as a senior leader, are not
lighting the way.

Becoming a great hybrid leader isn’t an optional extra for those at the top of
business – increasingly, it’s now an essential skill that must be mastered if
you want to achieve success. More than this, it's an incredible opportunity to
rehumanise the workplace, moving away from presenteeism and micro-management
into a modern era where employees’ productivity, professional development and
personal happiness are paramount.

Find out how IWG can help your business make the shift to hybrid, with advice on
a people-centric workspace strategy and access to 3,500 flexible workspaces
worldwide.

 

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Category: World of Work
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