Our blog’s objective is how to show quality leadership skills while working with a team remotely. We will discuss what are effective methods to adjust to working remotely, and how managers should address potential challenges individuals may face on their team.
AIMS International Journal of Management. Jan2019, Vol. 13 Issue 1, p23-36. 14p.
With the increase in working remotely within the last few years, the academic journal, “Workplace Isolation Among Ethnic Employees in Remote Work Environments” by Debra Hunter and Charles Chekwa discusses the new sets of challenges both managers and employees. Working remotely can create a lack in communication and engagement, and even becoming a part of the “out-group” of a workplace. The article cites many sources as it explains the background of remote working, and that the biggest problem faced is the feeling of loneliness/isolation due to the lack of face-to-face social interaction. Remote work heavily depends on technology, but research shows that this lowers job satisfaction, identification with the organization, and commitment. It is important for managers to know the struggles employees may face when working from home, that way they are able to address these problems before it becomes a strain on the team. Communication can also be a challenge for remote workers and managers. Important information can be easily lost or not received in a timely manner. This also reinforces the isolation one feels from their team. The topics discussed in this article are relevant to our topic because in order to know how to efficiently manage a team remotely, we should first understand the core reasonings behind the problems.
Goldsby, T., & Zinn, W. (2017). Research and Researchers: The Enduring Value of Conferences to Logistics and Supply Chain Scholars. Journal of Business Logistics, 38(3), 148-150. http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.library.wwu.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=f7fd8d96-bfb8-418c-8655-67f349cbeb5c%40sdc-v-sessmgr03&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=125201525&db=bsu
This resource discusses the growing need for logistics and supply chain scholars in different disciplinary settings, as well as the CSCMP Annual Global Conference ( AGC) and its Academic Research Symposium (ARS) as the forums for advancing supply chain scholarship and reinforcing the discipline’s traditions and values. This resource will be important and useful to our blog post because it breaks down the necessity of conferences and gatherings among business professionals. This will influence our discussion on remote leadership because professionals must still have a way to hold conferences and meet remotely if the field is going to continue advancing. The resource will provide us valuable information on leadership and how it can be translated to a remote setting to organize these conferences.
Grenny, J., Maxfield, D., Knight, R., Axtell, P., & Bukholtz, A. (2018, May 14). A Study of 1,100 Employees Found That Remote Workers Feel Shunned and Left Out. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2017/11/a-study-of-1100-employees-found-that-remote-workers-feel-shunned-and-left-out
A study of 1,100 employees conducted by two social scientists for business used a poll to look into remote Leadership. 46% of the people polled said that managers working remotely appeared to be more successful if they checked in regularly and frequently with their employees. They felt that this created more personal relationships. Learning about an employee’s personal life, their families and hobbies was a successful way of creating personal connections in order to strengthen relationships. A leader that is closer to their employees is capable of creating trust, connection, and mutual purpose.
Journal of Managerial Psychology. 2015, Vol. 30 Issue 5, p582-596. 15p.
The purpose of this paper was to take a deeper look into the roles of social networking in employee engagement and the roles of leaders in improving engagement. A study was conducted through surveying leaders, directors and managers working in fortune 500 companies in the U.S about employee engagement based on the amount of time they spent on the platforms used. These participants were also asked whether they followed any type of code of conduct, organizational structure, or training. One result that came out of the report was employee engagement is positively related to time spent on internal networking platforms. Additionally, platforms that integrate code of online networking conduct and an open-organizational culture showed better engagement. The author makes a point to the fact that new leaders more and more need to adapt to working with employees online while working with methods of improving engagement. This is important especially in current times where managers, teachers, directors, etc. need to keep engagement amongst students and employees that are working from home.
Kelley, E., & Kelloway, E. K. (2012). Context Matters. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 19(4), 437–449. doi: 10.1177/1548051812454173
In the article, “Context Matters: Testing a Model of Remote Leadership” by Elizabeth Kelly and E. Kevin Kelloway a research study is done with 402 people to learn more about remote leadership. 241 were a part of the proximally managed group and 151 were assigned to the remote group. They gave participants questions on four elements to look at the difference between proximal leadership and remote leadership: regular scheduled communication with leaders, perceptions of control, prior knowledge of the leader and unplanned communication. Their findings show that unplanned communication is a significant factor in determining a good leader in both remote and in person leadership. This also reflects onto the frequency of communication factor. Participants also said that this makes them feel more important to the leader in both cases. This could therefore make them feel more satisfied with their job on how effective their leader is. Regularly scheduled meetings were shown to be effective in both, but more important in virtual team effectiveness. The structured meeting helps control the pace and create a stronger connection between leaders to employees and employees to employees. The results of the overall experiment showed that, “12% of the variance in manager trust, 31% of the variance in job satisfaction, 29% of the variance in organizational commitment, and 16% of the variance in perceptions of transformational leadership.” A manager can see from this that they will need to work a bit harder with their team in order to get the same outcome if they are working remotely. More meetings will be needed to gain trust and these meetings, especially those that are not planned will increase job satisfaction by making employees feel as if they are important to the company and the leader. The extra effort put in will show a commitment to the organization. Especially if everyone involved always shows up. All of these combined will lead to an increase in perceptions of transformational leadership because it will show employees how involved the leader is and hopefully they will be able to get their employees strongly engaged in the subject at hand.
Umoh, R. (2020, April 16). How Diversity Heads Are Steering Their Companies Through The COVID-19 Crisis. Forbes.com, Retrieved April 23, 2020, from
This article published by Forbes.com talks highly about how important diversity help and inclusion is during this time of people working at home along with those who are still working in person. Many companies are providing countless benefits to employees such as catastrophe pay, up to 30 days paid time off, care for children for free and etc. Many corporations are also focusing on having online sessions for diversity appreciation that they were going to have in-person for example TD bank held a virtual event in March for Transgender Visibility Day. These events and appreciation are being shown to boost work ethic along with mental health since studies have shown that “45% of U.S. adults are experiencing negative mental health issues as a result of the coronavirus.” Overall this article will be extremely important when building our blog post, since it talks about the struggles of working remotely and how leaders and diversity heads are dealing with it to make a safe and efficient environment for everyone. This article will be essential in order to begin our actual blog posting because it addresses all key aspects and sets a foundation for us to build off of with more focused academic journal articles
By: June Jeng, Ian Fay, Jaden Daer, Jenna Zeng, Indigo Bruno-Hopps
(All authors contributed equally)