Leading remote and hybrid teams: writing, rituals and inclusion

Leading a team you rarely see in one room changes the job. The informal signals an office provides (who looks stuck, who is overloaded, what got decided at the coffee machine) mostly disappear. Managers who try to replace them with more meetings and more monitoring tend to end up with tired teams and little extra insight.

The teams that work well remotely tend to share a few habits: they write things down, they choose deliberately between live and asynchronous communication, they run meetings that are fair to everyone, and they build connection on purpose. This guide draws on GitLab’s public handbook (GitLab has worked all-remote for years and documents its practices openly), Microsoft’s research on hybrid work, and UK guidance from Acas and the CIPD.

The trust problem in hybrid work

Microsoft’s 2022 Work Trend Index report, “Hybrid Work Is Just Work”, surveyed more than 20,000 knowledge workers in 11 countries. It found a sharp gap: 87% of employees said they were productive, while only 12% of leaders said they had full confidence their team was productive. Microsoft called this “productivity paranoia”. Hybrid managers were also more likely than in-person managers to say they struggled to trust their employees (49% against 36%).

The same report found that 81% of employees valued help from their manager with prioritising, but only 31% said their manager had given clear guidance on it in one-to-ones. The lesson for managers is to stop trying to see activity and start making priorities and outcomes clear.

Write it down and default to async

GitLab’s guide to asynchronous communication describes async as work that moves forward without everyone being present at the same time. Its advice includes:

• Make documentation the foundation. Keep a shared, up-to-date source of answers so people do not have to wait for someone to come online.
• Write for low context. Include enough background that a reader can act without a follow-up question.
• Check before you send. Does the message have the right format, enough context and clear next steps?
• Record outcomes. After any live discussion, write the result somewhere shared and searchable.

GitLab is clear that async is a strong default, not a rule. It recommends switching to a live conversation for urgent issues, troubleshooting, creative brainstorming, complex technical topics, building relationships, and any time a written thread has stalled or people are talking past each other.

Run meetings that work for everyone

GitLab’s guidance on all-remote meetings is specific:

• Attach a shared agenda document to every invite, with context and the desired outcome. Its motto is “No agenda, no attenda.”
• Take notes live in the agenda and turn action items into tracked tasks.
• Record meetings so colleagues in other time zones can catch up, and confirm time-sensitive decisions over the following day or two.
• Ask whether a meeting is needed at all, mark non-essential people as optional, and cancel meetings without a clear purpose.
• Avoid hybrid meetings where some people share a room and others dial in. If they are unavoidable, everyone joins from their own device, even when in the same office.

The last point matters most for inclusion. When a few people share a meeting room and others join on a screen, the remote participants miss side comments, struggle to interrupt and are easier to forget.

Build connection on purpose

In an office, relationships form by accident. Remotely, they need structure. Microsoft found that 51% of employees said their relationships outside their immediate team had weakened. GitLab’s handbook on informal communication lists practices that include:

• Short coffee chats with anyone in the company, with new starters expected to have at least five during onboarding.
• A bot that randomly pairs people for a coffee chat every other week.
• Regular team social calls with no agenda.
• Co-working calls where people work quietly together.
• Starting work calls with a short personal check-in.

You do not need all of these. Pick two or three that suit your team and protect them when workloads rise, because that is when they get cut first.

Keep it fair

Hybrid teams can split into those who are seen and those who are not. To reduce that risk:

• Judge work by agreed outcomes, not hours online or office attendance.
• Share information in writing in the team channel, not only in corridor conversations.
• Rotate meeting times if your team spans time zones, so the same people do not always join early or late.
• Track who gets stretch assignments and visible work, and check it is not skewed towards office regulars.

In the UK, employees have a statutory right to request flexible working, including hybrid arrangements. Acas guidance says an employer can only reject a request for a genuine business reason, and must confirm any agreed change to contract terms in writing within one month. The CIPD notes that the Employment Rights Act 2025 is expected to change flexible working rules from 2027, so check current guidance before making policy.

A worked example

An example (illustration only). Nadia leads a seven-person marketing team: three in London, two in Pune and two fully remote. Decisions keep getting made in the London office and the others find out later. Nadia makes four changes. Every decision is posted in a team channel with a short reason. The weekly meeting moves to a time that works for both London and Pune, everyone joins from their own laptop, and the agenda lives in a shared document. A fortnightly 30-minute social call has no work topics. And she sets quarterly outcomes for each person and reviews progress against them in one-to-ones, instead of asking for daily status updates.

Common mistakes

• Replacing the office with more meetings. Calendar overload leaves no time for focused work.
• Monitoring activity. Tracking online status signals distrust and measures the wrong thing.
• Relying on memory. If it is not written down, remote colleagues effectively did not hear it.
• Letting social time lapse. Connection fades quietly until it shows up as conflict or resignations.
• Treating hybrid meetings as normal meetings. Without care, the people in the room dominate.

When these habits matter most

These practices matter most for teams spread across sites or time zones, new teams, and teams with new joiners who have never met colleagues in person. Fully co-located teams benefit too: written decisions and clear outcomes help everyone. Start with the two changes that will fix your biggest current friction, and add more once they stick.