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Distanced Leadership
Dr. Stacey Connaughton
Department of Communication
Director, Student Leadership Development Institute
Rutgers University
Degrees and Types
 Degrees
of distance
– Dispersed teams
 Different
types of distanced work
– Telecommuting
– Virtual teams
– Remote teams
Brazil
Malaysia
Morristown
China
Ireland
Opportunities & Challenges
Reduce Costs
 Serve International
Customers/Clients
 Integrate Global Talent

Time Zone
Differences
 Varied
Communication
Norms
 Language differences
 Limited face-to-face
contact

Advantages of Geographically
Proximate Offices
(Davenport & Pearlson, 1998)
 Frequent
and Unplanned Communication
 Immediate Access to People
 Direct Access to Information
 Opportunities to Build Relationships
Leadership Theories
 Kotter
(1981)
– Plan, monitor, assess, evaluate
 Bass
& Avolio (1992)
– Transformational leadership
 Goleman
(1998)
– Emotional Intelligence
Empirical Questions Arise
 Can
we employ the same leadership
theories in a distanced work setting?
 Do we need new theories of leadership to
account for distanced work settings?
 Are there important differences in the way
that leadership gets done in a distanced
setting vs. a face-to-face/proximate setting?
 The
Distance Manager (Fisher & Fisher,
2001)
 Mastering Virtual Teams (Duarte & Snyder,
1999)
 Virtual Teams (Lipnack & Stamps, 1997)
Vinettes
Issues more pronounced in distanced
teams than in co-located ones
 Virtual
teams may form for a limited time
 Geographical dispersion makes establishing
the conditions for effective interactions and
leadership more complex
– Identification (Connaughton & Daly, 2003)
– Trust (Jarvenpaa, Knoll, & Leidner, 1998)
– Cross-cultural communication (Cascio &
Shurygailo, 2003)
“Leading from Afar: Strategies for Effectively
Leading Virtual Teams” by S. L.
Connaughton & J. A. Daly; published in
Virtual Collaborative Teams: Process,
Technologies, & Practice (S. H. Godar & S.
P. Ferris, Eds.)
“Leading from Afar…”


Semi-structured long interviews
21 leaders with global responsibilities
–
–


14 from a high-tech company located in SW
19 males; 2 females
Interviews on site and over distance
13 testable propositions emerged
1. Face-to-face communication is
critical
Why should a leader use face-to-face
communication? When?
“I need to see what contexts they work in. I
think that in order to be accepted, I need to
show my willingness to come on their turf. I
do a lot of teleconferencing. But there’s
nothing that replaces face-to-face.”
2. Personalization Matters

Use brief narratives
– Why?

Be personal
– “The frequent interactions with people you have here
[at headquarters] are often attributed to trust. And over
distance you have a complete void there. So you are
missing one of your fundamental tools. Somehow
you’ve got to overcome that. And that’s where the oneon-one calls come in…”

--What can you do with your interaction to make it more
personal?
3. Over-Communicate
 “It
is easy to under-communicate outside of
your immediate sphere of contact everyday.
And that means that people feel lost and
disconnected. When they hear about
something that everyone back here
[headquarters] knew for weeks was coming
and nobody told them they feel they have
wasted time, effort, and personal
investment.”
3. cont’d
 Use
at least 2 media for important messages
 Inform people at the same time
– Why should you avoid informing local team
members before distanced ones?
 Establish
a mechanism for info exchange
– Electronic newsletter
– Internal website
– Internal electronic bulletin board
4. Discipline is key to distanced
leadership
 Preparation
for meetings
 Less supervision
 Deadlines are real
 Continually update
5. Develop expectations and ground
rules about communication…from
the start
6. Meeting management is critical
Articulate norms for meeting prep and execution
– “What we would do to make communication
more effective is we would come up with half a
dozen issues before hand. Each of us would so
some pre-work to make the telephone call more
productive rather than just leaving it up for
grabs.”
 Ensure that meetings are regularly and publicly
scheduled

7. Cultural nuances matter
What sorts of national cultural differences
might distanced leaders encounter?
 Attend
to communication style
 Sensitivity
of time
to international members’ sense
8. Media Choices and Access Matter
--which media are used
--access to equal media
--remember the “small” things…
9. Overcome the challenge of
multiple leaders
 A functional
head, a team leader, and a
country or regional director….Who is the
“real” boss? Who should I listen to?
10. Two Stages to Distanced
Leadership
“Distanced versus Proximate Teams:
The relationships among perceived
communicative behaviors of leaders
and employee satisfaction”
S. L. Connaughton & J. A. Daly
“Distanced vs. Proximate…”
What makes employees who are geographically
separated from their managers satisfied with their
jobs and their relationship with their managers?
 Communicative properties (frequency, clarity, and
feedback)
 Relational aspects of communication (perceived
equity, information adequacy, task vs. non-task
messages, and accessibility)
 Job satisfaction and satisfaction with manager

Findings
Communicative properties & relational aspects of
communication are significantly and positively
correlated with both job and manager satisfaction
in distanced and proximate settings.
 In distanced settings, frequency of communication
with managers, information equity, and manager’s
attentiveness are more important than they are in
proximate settings

 People
co-located with managers reported a
significantly greater tendency to have early
meetings with managers than those at a
distance.
 The manager making early visits to remote
sites was positively and significantly related
to job satisfaction and manager satisfaction.
 Individuals
working from afar were more
satisfied with their jobs than those working
proximate to their managers.
 Accessibility was a significant predictor of
satisfaction with manager in the distanced
group; actual physical distance was not a
significant predictor.
Future Directions
Rise of geographically dispersed ad hoc teams that
are assembled for short-term projects
 The increasing use of contractors and consultants
who do not have loyalty to the organization—how
do you manage them from afar?
 Trends in international customer service—how do
organizations effectively serve and lead customers
from afar?

“Leading from a distance is an absolute necessity in
our industry. It will be that way in more and more
industries. It is a hard skill. People who have
never done it don’t even recognize it as a separate
skill. You’ll say, ‘Well, you don’t have any
worldwide experience’ and they’ll say, ‘Well,
what’s worldwide experience expect putting me in
a worldwide job?’ There are just so many aspects
that people don’t understand.”
Distanced Leadership