How do you lead people who are physically separated from you and for whom inter-
actions are basically reduced to written digital communications? This is a question that,
to date, has received minimal attention from organizational behaviour researchers.^97
Leadership research has been directed almost exclusively to face-to-face and verbal sit-
uations. But we cannot ignore the reality that today’s managers and employees are
increasingly linked by networks rather than by geographical proximity. Obvious exam-
ples include co-workers who regularly use email to communicate with each other, man-
agers who oversee virtual projects or teams, and students who take courses online.
If leadership is important for inspiring and motivating dispersed employees, we need
to offer some guidance on how leadership might function in this context. Keep in mind,
however, that there is limited research on this topic. So our intention here is not to
provide you with definitive guidelines for leading online. Rather, it’s to introduce you to
an increasingly important issue and to get you to think about how leadership changes
when relationships are defined by network interactions.
In face-to-face communications, harsh wordscan be softened by nonverbal action. A
smile and comforting gestures, for instance, can lessen the blow behind strong words like
disappointed, unsatisfactory, inadequate, or below expectations.That nonverbal component
does not exist with online interactions. The structureof words in a digital communica-
tion has the power to motivate or demotivate the receiver.
Leaders need to be sure the toneof their email correctly reflects the emotions they want
to send. Is the message formal or informal? Does it match the verbal style of the sender?
Does it convey the appropriate level of importance or urgency? The fact that many peo-
ple’s writing styles are very different from their interpersonal styles is certainly a poten-
tial problem.
Jane Howell at the Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario, and
one of her former students, Kate Hall-Merenda, have considered the issues of leading
from a distance.^98 They note that physical distance can create many potential prob-
lems, with employees feeling isolated, forgotten, and perhaps not cared about. It may
result in lowered productivity. Their study of 109 business leaders and 371 followers in
a large financial institution found that physical distance makes it more difficult for
managers and employees to develop high-quality relationships.
Howell and Hall-Merenda suggest that some of the same characteristics of transfor-
mational leaders are appropriate for long-distance managing. In particular, they empha-
size the need to articulate a compelling vision to employees and to communicate that
vision in an inspiring way. Encouraging employees to think about ways to strive toward
that vision is another important task of the leader. Their research also indicates that
communication does not have to be done face to face as long as the vision is commu-
nicated clearly in some fashion.
This discussion leads us to the tentative conclusion that, for an increasing number of
managers, good interpersonal skills may include the ability to communicate support and
leadership through written words on a computer screen and to read emotions in others’
messages. In this “new world” of communications, writing skills are likely to become an
extension of interpersonal skills.SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS
1 What is the difference between a manager and a leader? Managers promote
stability, while leaders press for change. Leaders provide vision and strategy; man-
agers implement that vision and strategy, coordinate and staff the organization,
and handle day-to-day problems.
2 Are there specific traits, behaviours, and situations that affect how one leads?
Early leadership theories were concerned with supervision and sought to find out282 Part 4Sharing the Organizational VisionSNAPSHOT SUMMARY
1 Are Managers and
Leaders the Same?