How effective are you in leading your remote and hybrid employees? How can you promote employee engagement and well-being in today’s rapidly shifting work environment?

The world of work has been transformed. The pandemic accelerated a shift that was already underway—propelling organizations into remote and hybrid models that continue to redefine how teams connect, collaborate, and perform. While these new arrangements offer flexibility, autonomy, and access to a broader talent pool, they also introduce profound challenges: isolation, burnout, uneven communication, team misalignments, dwindling engagement, and the erosion of workplace culture.

Employee engagement has never been more essential. It is not only a core leadership capability—it is a strategic imperative that drives performance, innovation, retention, and organizational resilience. In this new environment, leadership must evolve. Managers can no longer rely on visibility, proximity, or traditional command-and-control methods. Today’s leaders must intentionally cultivate trust, clarity, connection, and wellbeing across distance.

Our first book, Lead, Motivate, Engage: How to INSPIRE your Teams to Win at Work (2019), introduced the INSPIRE model: seven research-based strategies for building engaged, high-performing teams. These interconnecting components emerged from our extensive review of psychological theory and business/consulting research. For each of these components, we offer self- and team-assessments, tips and tools for employees and teams, and organizational best practices.
Our latest book, Lead, Motivate, Engage: How to INSPIRE Employees in Remote and Hybrid Teams (2025), shows leaders how to apply the INSPIRE framework in today’s dispersed workplace. We have culled the most recent research and best practices on the issues, challenges, and recommendations from the academic and consulting literatures and our client’s experiences to share new tools and best practices that leaders can apply to effectively manage and motivate employees who are working in various modalities, whether in-person, remote or hybrid.

Together, these books equip leaders with practical strategies, tools and mindsets to cultivate trust, connection, motivation and performance—anywhere work happens. We do recognize that each manager, team and organization is unique, and ultimately, it is up to you to figure out what specific strategies and actions will work effectively with your own people. What are you already doing right, and what can you leverage to have the highest impact on your team’s engagement and performance?