Managers, get a clue! How supervisors need to value hybrid talent

(Note: This is part two of a three part series to share my thoughts on what leaders, managers, and HR teams need to know, consider, and implement when it comes to recruiting, hiring and retaining hybrid talent. Read part one here)

Part 2: Managers, Get a Clue

Being seen feels good.

Imagine if no one ever knew you for the way you wanted to be seen in your work. 

Pretend you saw yourself as a comic book artist, but everyone else saw you as a program assistant, or you were a talented speech writer but your teammates always asked you to be the note taker since you were great at capturing thoughts in an organized way. There’s a disconnect. Eventually, you feel neglected, undervalued, underappreciated, and stuck in a box.

That’s where managers come in.

Hybrid professionals aren’t the only type of worker who get typecast, miscast, or feel unseen. Experts and generalists have these issues too. Although, hybrids seem to suffer from an additional ailment of not being understood for their hybridity, so they experience a double bind.

In the management side of organizations, two things need to get cleared up. First, professional identity needs to be addressed and understood as a construct that matters to running strong, high performing teams. Second, hybrid professionals deserve their own set of management strategies in order to feel supported and remain in their roles. The focus here is on hybrid professionals since the awareness of this group is much lower, but experts and generalists deserve their own special management love too. 

In the near future, a measure of employee success and retention might be how well a company tracks how an employee wants to be seen as opposed to what an employer wants them to be.

8 ways managers can support hybrid professionals in their organization:

MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AROUND PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY

1. Get trained on the professional identity framework: Everyone who manages people should know the basic framework of three types of professional identity: singularity, multiplicity, and hybridity. This framework should be baked into key tenets of management practices because it matters to understanding humans, human development, and how to motivate people to reach their potential. Just as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a widely known philosophy, so too should be the three types of professional identities.

2. Run a professional identity retreat: Managers hold retreats on strategy, host team building exercises to strengthen trust, and ask employees to take assessments on personality and work styles, so why not hold a professional identity workshop? Seriously. The point of a professional identity retreat is to understand who each member of a team is beyond their job title. Part of that time may include an overall identity survey, but mainly it should focus on the professional identities each team member feels he/she/they bring to their role. By letting go of job titles, it releases hierarchy and creates an inclusive playing field. This kind of workshop reveals how each person sees themselves and how they want to be seen. It shows who they are within their role, beyond a skills-based assessment. Allowing team members to see each other without job titles is empowering and a way to build more shared understanding and connection as individuals.

3. Have 1:1’s to understand WHO your staff really are: Identity is a gigantic conversation that can go in many directions. At a minimum, managers should get comfortable with talking to their staff about how they see themselves in their roles. They should talk about professional identity. Some questions managers might ask staff members are: What does professional identity mean to you? Beyond your job title and job description, how do you see yourself in your role? What would you call yourself here if we didn’t use job titles? What are your core professional identities you want to be known for? Do you feel you get to use your professional identity(ies) enough in your role? Why or why not? Which of your professional identities would you like to be recognized for more or utilize more? How might we make that happen? What needs to change?

4. Place professional identity within performance management and reviews: It’s one thing to measure someone against KPI’s, and it’s another to understand how those KPI’s connect to an employee’s professional identity. Employees need to perform and demonstrate competency, and it should align to how they see themselves. For instance, one time I was in a performance review, and I was reporting the increase in website traffic to show the success of a new program. In that moment, I wasn’t seen for my professional identity as a creator, I was seen as a marketer and program leader. I didn’t want to be a marketer, and program leader was my job title. I was forcing myself into an identity to meet the performance goal of the role. Instead, I should have pointed out ways my creator identity had helped redesign the program which resulted in more web traffic. Without having an identity conversation with my boss, my boss started to seeing giving me more projects that were tailored to marketing. My reputation was going in the wrong direction, and this is often how it happens.

MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AROUND HYBRID PROFESSIONALS

1. Realize generalists and hybrids are not the same. DON’T assign the wrong work to the wrong type of professional: You wouldn’t give an expert task to a generalist, so be weary of that same mistake with hybrids. Generalists are good at doing many things and so are hybrids (that’s usually how their hybridity formed in the first place). However, a generalist is good at taking on different tasks, but not at weaving them together or developing cross-functional/inter-categorical thinking on the best way to incorporate all the different elements together. It might take a little testing to see where a generalist reaches their limits. Managers will notice their mistake after assigning a hybrid project to a generalist. The generalist won’t be able to execute it well.

2. Just because a hybrid can do, doesn’t mean they should do: Managers need to be careful of overstretching hybrids. Hybrids can, and do, take on a lot. That doesn’t mean it’s in the highest and best use of their hybridity. Hybrids have a zone of three to four primary areas where their professional identities shine. If a manager can stay in that zone and keep duties within that realm of integration, hybrids will flourish. The more additional identities a manager asks a hybrid to add into the mix, the more watery and less effective their hybrid vigor will be.

3. Know the proportion of professional identity types on a team: Depending on what a manager is managing, they’re going to need a different ratio of experts, generalists, and hybrids. It’s up to the team to figure out the right mix. The first step is knowing how many of each a manager has and why, and then course correcting. Most teams will need at least one of each.

4. Not every hybrid professional is created equal: Managers should know there are different types and flavors of hybrid professionals just as there are different types of experts and generalists. Some are more hybrid than others, some are more technical than non-technical, some are more creative and less scientific. Pay attention to how hybrid a person’s professional identity is.

NOTE: As you read the tips, notice if you found yourself cringing or questioning. Does it sound strange for managers to talk about professional identity with their staff? Until recently, organizations have been laser focused on what humans can do and how well they can do it as the unit of measure. So, it might look and sound a bit different to value employees for who they are as well as what they can do. When a workplace values people for their full worth, this is what it might look like.

What else do you think managers need to know or do to serve hybrid professionals? Share your comment.