Hybrid work is no longer a trend—it’s the new normal. According to a McKinsey report, 58% of Americans now have the option to work remotely at least one day a week. While this flexibility is great for employees, it has created new headaches for managers. How do you maintain team cohesion when half the team is in the office, and the other half is scattered across neighborhoods, cities, or even countries?

Let’s be honest: managing hybrid teams is hard. It’s easy for communication silos to form. Remote workers often feel left out of conversations. In-office employees sometimes carry resentment because they feel like they’re picking up the slack. And as a manager, you’re stuck in the middle, trying to hold it all together.

Check out our list of the top 10 team collaboration tools for 2025.

But what if you could lead your hybrid team with confidence instead of constantly putting out fires? That’s where TeamDynamics comes in. This isn’t just another personality test—it’s a tool for managers like you who want to understand and improve how their teams work together. Whether your team thrives on structure or prefers flexibility, TeamDynamics uncovers collective behaviors that influence everything from communication styles to decision-making.

In this post, we’ll explore practical strategies for seamlessly managing hybrid teams. We’ll also show how understanding your team’s unique dynamics can unlock higher performance, build trust, and make your job as a manager easier. Ready to get started? Let’s tackle those hybrid team challenges head-on.

Why Managing Hybrid Teams is Challenging

Hybrid work is no longer just a trend—it’s the new way of doing business. But managing a hybrid team can feel like trying to run a relay race with half your team on the track and the other half on Zoom. When some employees are in the office while others are remote, gaps in communication, decision-making, and execution are almost inevitable.

Take communication, for example. Those casual chats by the coffee machine can leave remote workers out of the loop. Meanwhile, virtual meetings often sideline in-office employees who assume decisions happen “in the room.” The result? Miscommunication and mistrust.

Hybrid teams also struggle with execution. Say one part of your team loves detailed project plans (a "Deliberate" execution style), while others prefer to make decisions on the fly ("Spontaneous"). When these approaches clash, deadlines are missed, and frustration builds.

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And then there’s decision-making. Office-based employees might assume leaders will take charge ("Authoritative"), while remote teammates expect more group consensus ("Concordant"). These mismatched expectations can stall projects.

This is where tools like TeamDynamics come into play. By categorizing your team’s communication and working styles, you can see where gaps are forming—and fix them. It’s no longer about simply managing people but understanding how collective team behaviors impact your success as a leader. Remember: a well-aligned team doesn’t just collaborate better—it wins.

Best Practices for Managing Hybrid Teams

Managing hybrid teams isn’t easy, but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. With the right approach, you can create a team that functions smoothly, whether your employees are working in the office or from home. Here’s a simple framework to help your hybrid team thrive.

1. Standardize Communication Practices Across the Team

One of the most common problems in hybrid teams is inconsistent communication. Remote employees can feel out of the loop if conversations only happen in hallways or during impromptu office chats. The solution? Define clear communication norms that everyone follows, no matter where they work.

For example:

• Use a tool like Slack for quick, informal conversations.
• Schedule structured team check-ins on Zoom or Microsoft Teams so no one misses an update.
• Keep meeting agendas and summaries in a shared space, like Notion or Google Drive, to ensure transparency.

Some teams thrive on Ordered communication—structured meetings, agendas, and processes. Others do better with more Informal, organic conversations. The key is figuring out what works best for your hybrid team and blending these approaches when needed. This is where tools like TeamDynamics can provide clarity. The test identifies how your team operates and suggests adjustments to help fix communication gaps.

2. Create Transparency in Decision-Making

Decisions can feel more opaque for remote employees than for those in the office. When people can’t physically be part of the process, it’s easy for them to feel excluded—even if it’s unintentional. Managers need to be upfront and document how decisions are made, who is involved, and the reasoning behind them.

Hybrid teams typically struggle to balance Concordant decision-making (consensus-driven) and Authoritative decision-making (leader-driven). For example, if decisions are always made by management without seeking input from the team, remote members might disengage. Likewise, a consensus-driven style can drag on productivity if there are too many voices in the mix.

Actionable advice:

• For big decisions, run brief pre-decision surveys to gather feedback from both in-office and remote team members.
• Make sure to announce decisions during team-wide syncs or via a group email so everyone has context.
• Use TeamDynamics to get insights into how your team currently makes decisions, and adjust accordingly.

3. Balance Relational and Logical Thinking During Collaboration

When it comes to teamwork, people interpret information differently. Some focus on relationships (Relational)—trust and who the information comes from matter to them. Others evaluate information based on facts and data (Logical). In hybrid teams, this divide can create tension if not addressed.

For instance, let’s say you’re rolling out a new project. Your in-office team members might be convinced simply because the CFO (a trusted source) supports it. Remote employees, however, might not feel swayed unless they see the metrics that back up the decision. To build alignment, make sure you offer both logic-based evidence and opportunities to establish interpersonal trust.

Here’s an idea: Pair employees—one relational thinker and one logical thinker—on collaborative tasks. Over time, this builds mutual understanding and improves how your team operates.

4. Use Technology for Seamless Execution

Execution is where hybrid teams either shine or stumble. Some teams thrive with Deliberate execution, carefully planning every detail and working methodically through a project. Others lean toward Spontaneous execution, preferring flexible plans and adapting as they go. Hybrid teams often struggle when these two styles clash.

Imagine a situation where your remote workers are waiting for precise instructions, while your in-office staff is already experimenting and taking action. This mismatch slows projects down and breeds frustration.

To fix this, lean on tools like Trello or Asana to ensure visibility into who’s doing what and when. Use shared calendars and timelines to keep everyone aligned, even if they prefer different working styles. For insight into how your team handles execution, TeamDynamics can pinpoint whether your approach is deliberate, spontaneous, or somewhere in between—and then offer tips to bridge the gap.

By developing habits around communication, decision-making, collaboration styles, and execution, you’ll set your hybrid team up for success. Every team has a unique rhythm. The key is finding it—and with tools like TeamDynamics, you’ll get the perspective you need to lead with confidence.

Quick Wins for Managing Hybrid Teams in 2024

Managing hybrid teams doesn’t have to feel like herding cats. While long-term strategies are important, sometimes you just need a few quick wins to get things moving in the right direction. Here are four practical tips you can start using today to improve communication, collaboration, and overall team performance:

1. Schedule Weekly Team Syncs with a Rotational Agenda

Hybrid teams need consistent check-ins to avoid falling out of sync. Set up a weekly team meeting with an agenda that rotates across team members. For example, one week might focus on project updates, while the next could handle brainstorming sessions. Giving everyone a chance to lead the agenda keeps engagement high and creates more balanced participation between in-office and remote employees. This simple habit ensures both groups feel equally involved.

2. Use Technology to Bridge Communication Gaps

No hybrid team can function smoothly without the right tools. If Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Google Chat aren’t already part of your tech stack, make it happen. But here’s a twist: don’t just use them for work updates. Encourage your team to create channels for non-work topics, like sharing pet photos or weekend plans. Why? Because in hybrid work, casual connections build trust and camaraderie—the stuff you’d naturally get from lunch table chats at the office. Virtual watercoolers aren’t just nice to have; they’re non-negotiable.

3. Run a Quarterly TeamDynamics Assessment

You wouldn’t run a project for months without checking its status, so why manage a hybrid team without evaluating how it’s functioning? Set a recurring quarterly checkpoint to assess your team’s collective working style using TeamDynamics. Let’s say your team leans “Ordered, Logical, and Deliberate.” That might explain why brainstorming sessions feel painfully slow—they thrive on structure and aren’t built for spontaneous ideas. A quick test can uncover these dynamics and guide you on how to adjust workflows, communication, or even meeting setups to achieve better outcomes.

4. Mix Up Collaborative Projects with Remote and In-Office Pairing

Assign projects that deliberately pair remote and in-office employees together. Why? Because hybrid teams can fall into “us versus them” mentalities when silos form. For example, have a remote team member partner with an in-office peer to develop a presentation. Better yet, rotate these pairings every few months. This breaks cliques, spreads knowledge across locations, and pushes your team to collaborate across boundaries—skills they’ll need in every hybrid environment.

Make These Wins Even Bigger with TeamDynamics

Implementing these tips is a great start, but the real magic happens when you understand the “why” behind your team’s behaviors—and that’s where TeamDynamics comes in. By using this tool to identify your team’s communication, decision-making, and execution styles, you’ll discover insights that can supercharge these quick wins and turn them into long-term solutions.

The key to managing hybrid teams in 2024 isn’t just about juggling schedules or fancy software. It’s about knowing what makes your team tick, then using that knowledge to create an environment where everyone—remote or in-office—feels connected and valued. Ready to take the next step? Test your team’s dynamics today at www.TeamDynamics.io.

Building Trust and Cohesion in Hybrid Teams

If you’ve ever managed a hybrid team, you know trust can make or break collaboration. But here’s the catch: trust doesn’t form the same way for remote employees as it does for in-office ones. In the office, trust builds naturally through quick chats at the coffee machine or catching up over lunch. Remote workers don’t have that luxury. Their trust comes from intentional gestures—consistent communication, follow-through on promises, and opportunities to connect beyond work tasks.

For hybrid managers, it’s your job to create opportunities for both types of trust to flourish. Sounds easier said than done, right? Let’s break it down.

1. Bridge the In-Office and Remote Divide

Picture this: Your in-office employees have a spontaneous brainstorming session, and by the next day, a decision is made. But your remote team members? They had no clue it even happened. This is a recipe for resentment and misalignment.

To fix this, prioritize inclusivity. Every team member—whether remote or in-office—should have equal access to key conversations and decision-making processes. For example, if an idea gets traction during an in-office meeting, summarize it in Slack or during a team-wide standup. Give remote employees a chance to weigh in. People can’t trust what they’re left out of.

2. Incorporate Both Relational and Logical Trust-Building Exercises

Some team members trust people they’ve gotten to know personally (Relational thinkers). Others value proof of competence and reliability (Logical thinkers). Hybrid teams need to balance both.

Here’s a quick example:

• For Relational Thinkers: Create virtual team-building opportunities like icebreakers at the start of meetings or casual coffee chats over Zoom. One manager even started a “show-and-tell” segment where team members share something non-work-related, like a hobby or a favorite travel photo.
• For Logical Thinkers: Build trust through shared performance metrics. Use tools like Asana or Notion to track progress on projects and give public shoutouts for great work.

When team members see both relationship-building and professional integrity being valued, trust becomes mutual—and stronger.

3. Set Ground Rules for Hybrid Friendships

Here’s a hot take: Hybrid teams aren’t failing because of technology gaps—they’re failing because remote workers feel second-class. While your in-office employees are bonding over lunch breaks, remote team members may feel isolated or even invisible.

Level the playing field with simple rules. If your team celebrates a work milestone in person, host a virtual celebration for remote employees—maybe an e-gift card for coffee or a shared Uber Eats meal for everyone to join. Likewise, encourage in-office employees to involve remote team members in spontaneous Slack chats or informal brainstorming channels.

Small gestures like these create camaraderie across the physical distance. They also prevent the “us vs. them” mentality that plagues many hybrid teams.

4. Know Your Team’s Unique Trust Dynamics with TeamDynamics

Not every team builds trust the same way. Some teams thrive on formal processes (Ordered, Deliberate), while others prefer informal collaboration and flexibility (Informal, Spontaneous). Similarly, the mix of Relational and Logical thinkers on a team heavily influences which trust-building strategies will work best.

This is where TeamDynamics can be a game-changer. By analyzing your team’s behavior patterns, TeamDynamics can help you identify where gaps in trust might be forming—and how to address them. For example, you might discover your team’s decision-making style leans Authoritative, which could alienate Relational thinkers who value group consensus. Knowing this helps you proactively adjust.

Why guess when you can measure? Tools like TeamDynamics give you the insights you need to personalize your approach to trust-building.

Building trust isn’t a one-and-done task for hybrid managers—it’s the foundation of sustainable collaboration. By recognizing and addressing the different ways trust forms for remote and in-office employees, you can unite your team behind shared goals.

Want to turn your hybrid team into a cohesive, high-performing unit? Start by understanding your team’s collective behavior with TeamDynamics.

How TeamDynamics Can Help You Manage Hybrid Teams

Managing hybrid teams can feel like solving a puzzle when all the pieces keep changing. Traditional personality tests—like MBTI or StrengthsFinder—may help you understand individuals, but they miss a critical factor: how your team as a whole operates. That’s where TeamDynamics can make all the difference.

TeamDynamics is built specifically for professional team environments like hybrid teams. It doesn’t just focus on individual traits but instead looks at how your team works together across four key dimensions: Communicating, Processing, Deciding, and Executing. Let’s break that down with a real-world scenario to show how it works.

Imagine you manage a hybrid team split between in-office and remote workers. Here’s what TeamDynamics might reveal:

• Your team communicates in an Informal way (quick chats, random Slack messages) but executes in a Deliberate style (carefully planned and structured).
• This mismatch could explain why your team struggles to keep everyone on the same page. Information is shared too loosely for team members who rely on structure to move forward.

By identifying this gap, you can adjust your management style. For example, you could create a shared knowledge hub (like a Notion wiki) to collect and formalize the team’s communication, ensuring that everyone—remote or in-office—has access to the same information.

Here’s another situation. Say your team processes information in a Relational way (they trust data more when it comes from certain people) and makes decisions through Concordant processes (relying on consensus). TeamDynamics can help you see that your team might waste time in endless discussions, especially with hybrid dynamics where not everyone is physically present to participate.

In this case, you could set clear boundaries for when consensus is necessary versus when leadership needs to make quick calls. For instance, use asynchronous tools like Loom for sharing updates and empowering team members to weigh in, while reserving live meetings for key discussions.

Unlike other assessments, TeamDynamics doesn’t just tell you what your team is like—it tells you how to improve it. For example, a team that’s Authoritative in decision-making and Spontaneous in execution will need flexibility in planning workflows, whereas a more Concordant, Deliberate team may need structured tools like Asana or Trello to stay focused. The bottom line? TeamDynamics helps you adapt to what your team actually needs instead of applying generic “one-size-fits-all” management hacks.

The Connection Between Team Dynamics and Hybrid Team Success

Here’s the truth: A hybrid team is only as strong as its ability to function as one cohesive unit. This is where understanding team dynamics becomes make-or-break. Managers often overlook a key challenge—hybrid work doesn’t just create physical separation; it creates behavioral gaps that widen over time. These gaps silently affect how your team communicates, makes decisions, and gets work done.

Let’s break this down using the four dimensions of TeamDynamics:

1. Communication Styles: Ordered vs. Informal

Imagine this: Your in-office employees follow structured agendas for meetings, while your remote team prefers spontaneous Slack threads. The result? Misunderstandings, missed updates, and frustration. To fix this, managers need to set clear rules on how information should flow. For instance, you could standardize all project updates to happen on a shared Trello board but allow casual chats to stay on informal channels like Microsoft Teams.

Hot take: Hybrid teams thrive when everyone agrees on one primary communication method. Hybrid managers who enforce this consistency will see fewer dropped balls and wasted time.

2. How Teams Interpret Information: Relational vs. Logical

Here’s another example: Your remote developers rely on data and hard facts to make decisions, but your in-office sales team leans on gut instinct and relationships with clients. Both approaches have value, but they can cause conflicts when not addressed.

Team-building can bridge this gap. A brainstorming session where each group explains their process can help the other side see its value. In a hybrid setting, encourage video calls for face-to-face connection while presenting shared dashboards for data-driven transparency.

Hot take: When managers help teams balance facts and relationships, hybrid collaboration stops feeling like a tug-of-war.

3. Decision-Making: Concordant vs. Authoritative

Ever struggled to get decisions finalized? Hybrid teams often do because remote workers may feel left out of the in-office discussions. A hybrid team favoring Concordant (consensus-driven) decisions will delay progress as they try to involve everyone in every choice. But swinging too far into Authoritative (leader-driven) decisions can make remote employees feel voiceless.

The key is setting boundaries. For big-picture projects, open it up for input from everyone. For day-to-day tasks, empower team leads to make quick calls. It’s not about pleasing every individual—it’s about clarity and efficiency.

Hot take: Hybrid managers need to stop trying to make everyone happy and start focusing on decision clarity.

4. Execution: Deliberate vs. Spontaneous

Picture this: Your in-office engineers spend hours meticulously testing a new product feature, while your remote marketing team pivots to a new campaign every week without warning. It’s frustrating for both groups.

Striking a balance between Deliberate (methodical) and Spontaneous (agile) execution styles is critical. For instance, you can schedule planned touchpoints (team check-ins, project milestones) while leaving room for flexibility in between. This keeps everyone aligned without stifling creativity or agility.

Hot take: Think of hybrid teams like jazz bands—masterpieces happen when structure and spontaneity work together.

How TeamDynamics Unlocks Success

Most managers focus on individuals. The smart ones focus on how the team works as a whole.

If you’ve struggled with unproductive meetings, misaligned goals, or decision-making bottlenecks, it’s time to stop guessing. Take the first step to building a high-performing hybrid team by using TeamDynamics.

Actionable Insight for Managers: Take the guesswork out of managing your hybrid team by running a TeamDynamics assessment today. It’s the ultimate shortcut to understanding how your team thinks and acts—and how to lead them to success.

Understanding your team’s unique behavioral profile is the first step to smoothing out these gaps. Tools like TeamDynamics don’t just label people; they uncover how your collective team operates. Imagine knowing your team is an “Ordered, Logical, Authoritative, Deliberate” group. You’d instantly know to focus on efficient decision-making and avoid bottlenecks caused by over-analyzing.

👉 Click here to take the TeamDynamics test now and get actionable insights on how to manage your team’s behaviors, boost cohesion, and achieve better results—starting today.

Conclusion: The Future of Hybrid Teams is Here

Hybrid work isn’t going away—it’s the new normal. But managing a hybrid team doesn’t have to feel messy or overwhelming. The key is to focus on your team’s behaviors, not just your individual players. Once you understand how your team communicates, decides, and executes work collectively, you can make changes that drive real results.

Start by standardizing communication, balancing decision-making styles, and using tools that support both planning and flexibility. Build trust intentionally, knowing it can look different for your remote and in-office employees. And don’t try to guess what your team needs. A tool like TeamDynamics gives you clear, actionable insights into how your team operates so you can lead with confidence.

The best managers don’t take a one-size-fits-all approach—they adjust, refine, and pay attention to what works. Now’s the time to step up your game. Try the TeamDynamics test today and unlock new ways to transform your hybrid team into a cohesive, high-performing unit. Your team—and your career—will thank you.