Our friend Luis Suarez spotted this research: The surprising traits of good remote leaders.
We’ve learnt to be cautious in reacting to social science research in light of the replication crisis – but we found this useful as thought provocation. We’d be curious to know how this lands with you.
It argues that traditional charismatic leadership qualities won’t cut it for remote working:
“…the confidence, intelligence and extroversion that have long propelled ambitious workers into the executive suite are not enough online, because they simply don’t translate into virtual leadership. Instead, workers who are organised, dependable and productive take the reins of virtual teams.”
It makes intuitive sense that in the more restricted emotional bandwidth of online meetings, there may be more focus on practical actions and less opportunity for some of the dominance that may come with physical presence.
The article goes on to make a slightly different assertion which is that:
“Finally, doers lead the pack – at least remotely... Those chosen as remote leaders were doers, who tended towards planning, connecting teammates with help and resources, keeping an eye on upcoming tasks and, most importantly, getting things done.”
We think this finding might be treated with a little more caution, especially in Covid times. There may be a bit of bias in the research towards the value of doing and achieving goals, rather than focussing on care for co-workers in stressful times – something we talked about in our May 12th newsletter. This is covered when the article quotes Nataly Lorinkova of Georgetown University’s Business School:
“To me, this is half the story,” she says, pointing out that though the study data touches on interpersonal relationships, it more heavily measures task-oriented actions, which are only a portion of what drive leadership. “The next logical step is [to study] how team members manage interpersonal relations and behaviours and who emerges as leaders. We don’t really know that.”
Our own online experiences echo much of this. We’ve discovered it takes a lot more time, and attention to detail, to plan for an online facilitation – especially to make sure we uphold our principle of finishing on time. It’s also seductive to end up with a to-do list and feel that the workshop has been successful. We’re not so sure. We suspect there’s a more efficient way of managing the day-to-day tasks and using valuable online time for more connection.
(Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash)