From our interviews, we learned that, during a time of remote work and the use of digital communication channels, (i) motivation has become one of the most important leadership tasks, (ii) work productivity is sometimes questioned, and (iii) applying leadership skills has become more difficult. In this situation, our project is important because it aims to help leaders find out which leadership practices they need to adapt, particularly in the fields of motivating people and communicating effectively via digital channels.
One conclusion of our project is that the leadership style of empowerment is best suitable for the WFH situation because it gives the employees the freedom to manage the tasks by themselves. At the same time, empathy (powered by emotional intelligence) is needed to detect problems and other issues the team members have, which is more difficult when using digital communication channels. The directive management style that uses “micromanagement” to narrowly supervise and control employees is not regarded as useful. Instead, “Leading by objectives” and focusing on the end and not the mean could be a way to manoeuvre through the current situation.
However, this conclusion may not work for every company. In this context, one German manager raised the question of whether a Mexican national company with a high level of hierarchy would be able to introduce such an empowering leadership style successfully when it had never been practiced before. On another note, it is not straightforward to install a whole set of new communication channels and work processes. Apart from the technical difficulties, a company also needs to have an agreement with its employees that they accept to work like this, including all sorts of legal and contractual consequences.
Therefore, the learnings from this project are just a starting point to further and more systematically explore the implications of remote work on leadership. This holds even more true when considering that also after COVID it is more than likely that not everyone will return to the offices but that a large portion of the workforce will be continuing (at least partly) to work from home. As a result, at least some “hybrid” (combined remote and office-based) work processes will remain, which are then subject to the same challenges we discussed in this blog.
Moreover, for future research, it would be valuable to further examine:
- cross-cultural differences between national companies from different countries,
- the effects of intercultural relationships between people from different cultures within the same team,
- companies of different sizes and industries, particularly with respect to the age group of its employees (e.g. tech start-ups vs. large industrial corporations), and
- the effect of trainings (leading in a crisis, building up Emotional Intelligence, the effective use of digital communication channels…) on motivation and productivity.
As a final thought, we are following Antonacopoulou and Georgiadou (2020) in arguing that the challenges today also import a chance, in the sense of “co-constructing the future” (p.2) towards a human-centred leadership, with a focus on stability, equality and conflict prevention.
Comic Strip: "Can't work from home"
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