How to Preserve Company Culture in a Hybrid Workplace? Lead With Intention

Keep teams thriving and conflict out of your office and your inbox with a framework that helps everyone achieve without drama.

It's 9:30 am on Monday morning. Your calendar is packed with meetings and then you receive a message from the CEO checking up on a key customer who's unhappy. You're about to head into a meeting with two of your team members who can barely tolerate each other. You feel the throb of a headache brewing as someone knocks on your office door. Where do you focus?

Focus and intention are key when we lead busy lives, especially when we lead teams in fast-paced and challenging work environments.

Our intentions guide our priorities and our choices. The clearer we are on our priorities, the better we can take care of our responsibilities and ourselves. We make better decisions too.

When we work a 9-5 job and manage a team, some intentional daily prompts might include:

• What needs my attention today?

• Why am I attending these meetings? What is my role here and the desired outcome? How can I best support my team now?

• What is the value or importance of this task and to whom?

As leaders, when we work in a more intentional way our presence commands value because when we show up in this way, the people around us respect and appreciate our time and contribution more. No matter our role, we know why we’re there, what the focus is, and others can feel that too. We also feel more motivated and recognize the importance of what we’re doing, even when it's not our favorite task! It also helps us recognize what doesn’t need our immediate attention, the things that can be delegated, or that have the potential for automation.

At Nucleo Life Sciences, the pharmaceutical development company I co-founded with Mark Menning, intention allowed us to stay grounded during challenging times, take aligned risks, and make decisions focused on our core competencies.

Some key intentional decisions included:

• Equipment investments that might have seemed disproportionately high for the size of our company, but we knew were aligned with our customer’s needs. We did this even though we bootstrapped, were privately funded, and didn’t access outside funding.

• Early adoption of high-tech automation before companies 1000x our size. This allowed our technical staff to focus on higher-value lab tasks and analysis.

• Outsourcing activities that weren’t our core competency or were sparingly needed so that we could tap into expertise that takes years of experience to attain.

• Encouraging clarity around roles and responsibilities to alleviate stress, illuminate the path for growth, and empower individuals to make aligned decisions.

• Building ‘intention’ into our operations and how we interacted with our clients and staff: meetings had clear agendas, desired outcomes, and actions, with responsible parties present to ensure we achieved them.

• Holding firm to healthy habits, even when in the Bay Area leadership working late or on weekends was common and familiar. As founders, we practiced sticking to core working hours, offered a meditation room, and encouraged daily movement like lunchtime breaks and walks.

The result:

• Collaborative teams doing quality work with less rework and stress

• Satisfied customers without constant calls or check-ins and a balanced approach to change requests,

• Less equipment downtime and higher quality technical solutions,

• And motivated staff who were more likely to take care of themselves, connect with loved ones, and show up more energized for their work.

Do you want to experience results like this with your team AND become a more intentional leader without overhauling your work, life, or overspending on consulting?

Watch our FREE webinar where we talk about the four levers you can pull to:

• Boost motivation

• Increase team collaboration

• Manage difficult customers and a challenging work environment

• Implement techniques that support you AND your team.

Watch the webinar now by clicking HERE.

In 30 minutes you will learn the small shifts you can make to create a thriving team culture. Watch the webinar now by clicking HERE.