Leading from a distance
Maintaining Leadership Effectiveness
With the increasing size of organisations, widespread organisational change, and the current information technology revolution, it is becoming easy for leaders to become physically separated from their staff. Most obviously, this occurs with tele-working, but it also seems part of the hot-desking movement. This has important implications for staff performance, as a recent article, written in October 1999 by Howell and Hall-Merenda, emphasises the presence of an effective leader in producing results.
Past research has been characterised by two main approaches to leadership theory, by either focusing on the leader, analysing and linking specific leadership behaviours to outcomes, or focusing on the relationship between leader and follower. Briefly, these might be summarized as follows:
Leader Behaviours
Bass (1985) introduced 2 models of leader-focused leadership:
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Transactional leadership: Contingent-reward (performance rewards that are negotiated between the leader and the follower). Management by exception (a focus on mistakes and 'waiting for problems to occur'). This can be either active, where performance is actively monitored, or passive, where the leader only intervenes after problems have occurred.
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Transformational leadership: Leaders inspire and motivate their followers to exceed expectations.
Leader Relationships
Graen et al (1982) introduced an alternative, relationship-focused approach, called the leader-member exchange (LMX) theory of leadership. This theory posits that a link exists between follower performance and the quality and level of mutual trust, respect, and influence within each individual leader-follower relationship.
Howell and Hall-Merenda examined the linkages between these two leadership theories and physical distance between the leader and follower, and how they predict high or low staff performance over a 1-year period. They demonstrate that the types of leadership briefly outlined above have differential effects on follower performance, according to the proximal distance of the leader.
The main findings illustrate that:
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Leader-member exchange and active management by exception both improve follower performance over time.
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Transactional leadership is significantly more effective in predicting follower performance when physical distance between leader and follower is minimal.
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Leader-member exchange positively affects follower performance irrespective of physical distance.
It is therefore important not only to consider how managers (leaders) interact with their staff (followers), but also to consider the physical distance of the leader from his/her followers. Though leader-member exchange appears to be the most consistent highly effective management practice, transactional and transformational leadership approaches are also worth meriting, under the appropriate conditions.
Reference
Howell, J.M. and Hall-Merenda, K.E. (1999). The Ties That Bind: The Impact of Leader-Member Exchange, Transformational and Transactional Leadership, and Distance on Predicting Follower Performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 84, pp680-694.
Newsletter: 2003