Remote
Transformational Leadership
Think
about the organization for which you work today. How often do you interact with
your leaders directly? How about your second and third tier leaders? Most
likely, a great deal of your interaction with them happens through mediums such
as e-mail or via text messages. As technology continues to advance, the doors are
open for activities such as telecommuting and remote assignments. An employee
make work across the country or even across the globe from the hub where
his/her supervisor is. In cases like these, the leaders and managers of the
organization must still communicate with subordinates. Even in extremely large
organizations, though there may not be a geographical separation, the leaders
of the organization must be able to disseminate information down the chain. How
does a leader effectively communicate in an environment such as these?
In
1947, Weber (1947) described charismatic leadership as the ability to influence
followers not by authority but rather solely on the follower perceptions of the
leader. Transformational leadership is very similar to charismatic leadership.
In fact, transformational leaders are all charismatic leaders. The difference
is that they not only influence their followers’ perceptions of the leader but
they inspire the follower to embrace the leader’s vision as their own and drive
them to the highest possible levels of performance (Khatri, Templer, &
Dudhwar, 2012). How can this be accomplished if an employee has no direct
interaction with leadership?
Remote
leadership is defined as “leadership interactions that are characterized by
electronically-mediated communication between geographically and physically isolated
leaders” (Barling, Kelley, Kelloway, Comtois, & Gatien, 2003). Through
their study, they wanted to determine the effects of intellectual stimulation
and charisma in remote leadership situations. They hypothesized that “individuals
exposed to e-mail messages containing a charismatic or intellectually stimulating
message would express higher levels of task motivation, and demonstrate higher
levels of performance on a laboratory task than individuals who received e-mail
instructions that this not contain these aspects of transformational leadership”
(Barling, Kelley, Kelloway, Comtois, & Gatien, 2003, p. 168). They
conducted two experiments on Canadian university students in which a message
was conveyed through e-mail using three styles – transformational leadership,
leadership by exception (which is a very hands-on approach to management), and
laissez-faire leadership (which is a minimalist approach). The students were
broken into separate control groups – one group for each e-mail leadership
style - and then all asked to complete the same task which the e-mails
addressed. After completing the task, they were asked to fill out a questionnaire
to gather appropriate data. Though this research was completed in a controlled laboratory
environment, the intent was to mimic the reality of a field environment. (The
actual task that the students had to complete was to first individually rank 12
items by importance that they would need if stranded on a mountain and then to
reach a group consensus on the ranking of the same 12 items.)
After
completion of the study, they found that the results consistently showed that
both intellectual stimulation and charisma communicated through the tone of the
e-mails resulted in improved task performance. However, “there was no
significant effect attributable to the combination of intellectual stimulation
and charisma” (Barling, Kelley, Kelloway, Comtois, & Gatien, 2003, p. 169).
Though the results did not support an effect of charismatic leadership on
individual motivation, that doesn’t mean that the lack of findings is
unsupportive of their original hypothesis. It is plausible that the laboratory
setting was actually ineffective as transmitting the proper charismatic tone. They
stated that “it may be that nonverbal cues are important to communicate the
motivating aspects of charismatic leadership” (Barling, Kelley, Kelloway,
Comtois, & Gatien, 2003, p. 169). Remember, though, that charismatic
leadership and transformational leadership are not exactly the same. They still
feel that the experiments closely resembled an actual field situation and the
results still supported higher performance for those that received the e-mail
toned as that of a transformational leader. They closed by stating “the present
finding suggest that remote transformational leadership can still have the same
positive effects on performance and attitudes that occurs within face-to-face
interaction. Moreover, our findings suggest that electronically mediated
communication channels may be used to convey the same leadership “message” as
in face-to-face interaction” (Barling, Kelley, Kelloway, Comtois, & Gatien,
2003, p. 170).
As
technology continues to advance, we will continue to be exposed to situations
that require remote leadership. This is a study that directly relates to the
environment faced by any organization that has members that are geographically
separated. It also applies to large organizations that rely heavily on modern
communication mediums to convey messages. This study proves that it is possible
to still be a transformational leader for your remote followers. Leaders should
take the time to consider the message they are conveying and how it will be
received and perceived by their remote subordinates if they wish to inspire
their followers to perform at optimum efficiency.
References
Barling, J., Kelley, E., Kelloway, E., Comtois,
J., & Gatien, B. (2003). Remote transformational leadership. Leadership & Organizational
Development Journal, 24(3), 163-171. doi:10.1108/01437730310469589
Khatri, N., Templer, K. J., & Budhwar,
P. S. (2012). Great (transformational) leadership=charisma+vision.
South Asian Journal of Global Business Research, 1(1), 38- 62. doi:10.1108/20454451211205941
Weber, M. (1947). The theory of social and
economic organizations. Translated by T. Parsons. New YorkL Free Press.
Yukl, G. (2013). Leadership in
Organizations (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
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