RTO Isn’t the Strategy. Relationship-Fabric Is.
Desired outcomes for senior leaders look pretty similar today: faster execution, better collaboration, more innovation, and a culture strong enough to engage great people. Return to office (RTO) has become one of the most visible levers being pulled in pursuit of those outcomes.
But RTO isn’t the strategy. It’s a proxy.
The real goal is something deeper: the fabric of trusting relationships that makes great work possible. The kind of work where teammates rely on each other, challenge each other, and make something better together. The moments where a problem gets solved in a quick conversation, ideas get tested before they become initiatives, and people actually feel proud of what they built.
The Problem
Many senior leaders grew up in workplaces where relationship-building was a byproduct of time together. Familiarity happened naturally. Trust built over repeated interactions. People knew who to call. They also knew how to read a room and reset after friction, because they had human context.
Today’s operating reality is different.
COVID accelerated distributed work. Companies hired beyond geographic boundaries. Teams became dispersed and have stayed dispersed. Many leaders stepped into roles inside this new reality, and many employees bring different expectations about how much of themselves belongs “at work.”
So when organizations mandate time in the office, they’re often hoping the old byproduct returns. Sometimes it does. Often, it doesn’t—because presence does not automatically produce connectedness.
Here’s what “RTO as proxy” can look like in real life:
A long-tenured leader sits in traffic, arrives at the office, and closes his door to spend the day on Zoom with a geographically dispersed team. He emerges briefly for the kitchen or the bathroom, then repeats. He’s physically near people, but not meaningfully connected to them—more microwave buddies than colleagues.
That day doesn’t rebuild culture. It builds resentment.
And there’s another dynamic worth naming gently: for some leaders, truly acknowledging the erosion of workplace connectedness can feel overwhelming. If you admit the fabric has frayed, the fix won’t be a memo. It will require skill-building, new manager expectations, and structural change. That can feel expensive and hard — especially when leaders are already carrying too many urgent priorities.
But ignoring it doesn’t remove the cost. It simply turns it into opportunity cost.
The Impact
This issue rarely shows up on a weekly scorecard. It shows up in how work flows, how decisions get made, and how much energy it takes to accomplish what should be straightforward.
When relationship-fabric is weak, three patterns show up:
Escalation Replaces Resolution.
A decision that should get made two levels down keeps climbing—one more email, one more meeting, one more “can you weigh in?” Not because the team can’t handle it, but because lateral trust is thin, and cross-functional handoffs feel risky. The result is slower decisions and more load on senior leaders.
Ideas Get Less Tested—and Less Practical.
A team brings an idea forward, and it sounds promising. But there’s no real back-and-forth with peers who see different risks, constraints, and customer realities. Without that pressure-testing, ideas are either undercooked or overconfident. Either way, decisions are less vetted, and execution suffers.
Culture Becomes Programming.
Wins get acknowledged in scheduled ways—slides, shout-outs, planned recognition. What you don’t see as often are the spontaneous high-fives, quick celebrations, and informal moments of pride that signal real belonging. When those fade, discretionary effort fades with them.
When the fabric is thin, it frays—quietly at first, then all at once.
Telltale Signals
If you want to assess whether relationship-fabric is fraying, look for signals like these:
- Workplaces are quiet—few unplanned problem-solving conversations.
- Hybrid meetings feel like camera-off holding patterns until a senior leader joins or kicks things off.
- Cross-functional execution depends on a few “hero connectors” who keep everything moving.
- People don’t know who to call outside their immediate team to unblock work.
- Issues escalate upward because lateral trust is too weak to resolve them at the right level.
- Recognition is mostly formal and scheduled, with little spontaneous celebration.
None of this is about blaming people or criticizing a generation. It’s about acknowledging that the system no longer produces connectedness as a byproduct.
So, if you want the outcomes connectedness creates, you have to weave it deliberately.
What To Do
The encouraging news: relationship-fabric can be rewoven and strengthened. Not through slogans—through capability, expectations, and design.
1) Build Relationship Skills Like You Build Any Critical Capability
Relationship-building is not a personality trait. It’s a set of skills: curiosity, listening, reciprocity, clear communication, inclusion, and the ability to reset after friction.
What this can look like:
- Treat relationship-building as a leadership capability that can be practiced and coached.
- Normalize the idea that relationships are not “small talk.” They’re how trust forms—and trust is the substrate of innovation, feedback, and speed.
- Give leaders specific behaviors to practice, not just encouragement to “connect more.”
2) Ready Managers to Create Real Connection in Hybrid and Distributed Teams
Many managers were promoted into a reality where their teams are dispersed—and then judged as if connectedness should happen naturally. It won’t.
What this can look like:
- Set simple, consistent operating norms that make human connection more likely (and less awkward): how meetings start, how voices get included, how peer-to-peer interaction happens, and what “participation” means.
- Support managers with toolkits and structures so connection doesn’t depend on charisma.
- Pay attention to what you measure and reward. Managers can hit near-term targets while quietly eroding trust and belonging.
And when teams do convene live, treat that time as relationship-building time—not just agenda time. The highest ROI moments are the ones that deepen trust: peer coaching, shared problem-solving, and honest conversation that doesn’t fit neatly into a status update.
3) Create Structures That Give Every Employee Purposeful Community
When people come in only to spend the day on Zoom, they can feel more disconnected than they would at home—because showing up didn’t create any real connection.
Instead, consider designing community on purpose so people have more than one “home” across the organization—some virtual, some local. One client of ours did this by aligning individuals to multiple types of groups:
- a project team for the work they’re delivering,
- a community of practice (center-of-excellence) for their craft and development, and
- a local/geographic community that can meet in person to build relationships, address site-specific issues, and create shared moments (meals, celebrations, even service) that strengthen belonging.
The goal isn’t complexity. It’s clarity: every true community has a purpose, a rhythm, and a reason that connection matters.
The Bottom Line
If you’re counting on RTO to rebuild culture and connectedness on its own, you’re expecting a policy to accomplish what only human relationships can.
RTO can be part of the solution—but only when it’s paired with the real work: strengthening relationship capability, equipping managers to create connection across distance, and designing structures that make community inevitable rather than optional.
If you want help operationalizing this—developing leaders who can build trust, strengthening hybrid leadership, and designing structures where RTO delivers real value—Pathbuilders can help.
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