Is Your Leadership Mindset Blocking Flexible Work Success?

Are you finding yourself navigating a world of flexible work arrangements and expectations?

What are your beliefs around where and how your team are most productive?

If you support flexible work, do your actions reinforce your words, or are unconscious biases shaping your leadership behaviours?

Flexible work has become a workplace expectation, not just a perk. Yet despite organisations offering flexible work arrangements, many employees still hesitate to fully embrace them. Why? Because as leaders we can, often unintentionally, create barriers through our deeply ingrained beliefs about work, productivity, and commitment.

If you believe “hard work means long hours” or “face time equals dedication,” your leadership mindset may be sending mixed signals, making employees feel guilty or hesitant about using flexibility. 

So, how do our unconscious biases impact flexible work success—and what can we do as leaders to tune into and shift our thinking.

Our  Leadership Filter: How Ingrained Beliefs Shape Perceptions of Flexibility

Our personal experiences and work habits shape how we lead. Many current leaders built their careers in environments where long hours, physical presence, and immediate availability were seen as signs of dedication (think responding to emails after hours and answering calls on the weekends or even holidays, sound familiar?). These beliefs—often formed unconsciously—can create subtle resistance to flexible work.

Do any of these thoughts sound familiar?
“If I can’t see them working, how do I know they’re productive?”
“I had to work long hours to get ahead—why should it be different now?”
“If I allow too much flexibility, people might take advantage of it.”

These aren’t conscious attempts to block flexibility, but they shape how we behave, from who gets the best opportunities to how performance is assessed. Leaders who unconsciously value presence and availability over outcomes may unintentionally reward those who stay late, respond instantly, or show up in person more often.

Then there’s the Flexibility Guilt: When Employees Feel the Need to ‘Prove’ They’re Working

Many team members fear that using flexible work options will be seen as a lack of commitment or taking too much time out. This can drive a whole set of counterproductive thoughts and stories we tell ourselves, have you ever caught yourself doing these?

• Overcompensating – Working longer hours or responding to emails at all hours to “prove” you are working.
• Presenteeism – Showing up at the office or staying online unnecessarily to be seen as engaged.
• Unequal Flexibility – Some employees feeling more comfortable using flexibility than others, creating division in the team.

If they feel they must “earn” or justify flexibility, it’s a sign that the culture doesn’t fully support it, even if the policy exists. 

Leaders play a critical role in normalising flexible work by being aware of how you respond to flexible work requests, role-modelling and reinforcing that outcomes, not hours, define success.  

The Trust Shift: How We Can Change Our Mindset and Actions

To truly support flexible work, we need to consciously shift from ‘seeing work’ to ‘seeing results’. If you are outcome focused, here’s how to get started:

Audit Your Assumptions – Challenge your own biases by asking, “Do I value visibility over impact?” and “Am I making assumptions about productivity based on where and when work happens?”

Redefine What Productivity Looks Like – Set clear expectations around deliverables and outcomes rather than time spent at a desk.

Role Model Flexibility – If leaders never use flexible options themselves, employees may feel it’s not truly supported. Take breaks, leave on time, and be open about how you integrate flexibility into your role.

Measure Fairness – Are all employees equally comfortable using flexibility? Is it applied consistently, or do some teams feel more pressure to be ‘always on’? Regularly check in with your team to identify and address flexibility gaps.

The success of flexible work is not defined by you as the leader, its defined by those around you and if they truly feel its accessible to them.

The Leadership Challenge: Shaping a Culture Where Flexibility Thrives

Just because a flexible work policy is in place, doesn’t mean you will have a workplace or a culture that is seen to support flexible work.

Flexible work success starts with our leadership mindset shifts. If leaders view flexibility as a performance enabler rather than an exception, we create a culture of trust, fairness, and high performance, where our team feel empowered to work in ways that drive results, not just visibility.

So, as a leader, ask yourself: Are your beliefs and your behaviours supporting or silently sabotaging flexible work in your team?