Worship me at the office alter

A six-year study points to narcissistic leaders — not productivity — as the real driving force behind the hatred of remote work

“GOD, MY BOSS — what a jerk,” you might grumble to yourself as you head back into your mandated in-office days. And, it turns out, you would be right: there is a correlation between the personality of your boss and the push we’ve seen over the past year to get more workers in-office.

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According to a study that looked at data from Fortune 500 companies and their chief executives over the past six years, a team led by Wharton Business School organizational psychologist Adam Grant found a correlation not between mandates for in-office work and things like productivity, teamwork, collaboration or positive metrics. Instead, they found it correlated with personality.

“Narcissistic leaders resist remote work because it threatens their motivations for power and status,” the research team wrote in their paper. “Because in-person work offers richer channels for controlling and commanding reverence from employees, in their pursuit of authority and admiration, narcissists are likely to resist remote work.”

In an accompanying op-ed in The New York Times, the research team couched their findings a bit, but not much. “Case by case, there may be good reasons for teams to work together in person,” they wrote. “As a general rule, though, it turns out that ordering people back to the office full-time is a power and status move. It’s a signature strategy of leaders who exhibit narcissistic qualities. They see any kind of remote work as a threat to their authority and admiration. They want to be worshipped at the office altar.”

Writing about the findings, CharterWork’s Brian Elliott said he wasn’t surprised by the findings. So much of the remote work conversation seems to take place orthogonally to the actual data on costs and productivity, with vibes (about how much employees are or aren’t working) standing in for hard data.

“I’m not surprised to see this research get so much attention,” Elliott wrote. “I regularly get calls from CHROs on the pros and cons of office mandates, driven by CEOs who think people are slacking off.”

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Elliott writes that there exists a tension at the human resources level of many organizations, trying to reconcile what workers want and what leaders want. “Today, I’m hearing more leaders concede to CEOs’ demands, picking their battles as they try to reshape their organizations with AI, and manage CEOs’ push for productivity through layoffs,” he wrote, adding that many HR leaders are simply letting the ego-driven CEOs win the battle. “But the data suggests it’s still a battle worth fighting.”

The researchers behind the study (which is itself agnostic on whether remote work is actually better or not) recommend instead that organizations adjust by developing better structures to determine if, and how much, remote work is appropriate for their firm.

“Organizational policies shouldn’t be vanity projects. The responsibility of leaders is not to mould the world to their needs,” they wrote. “It’s to adapt themselves to the world’s needs, even if it means learning to live without the thrill of a live audience.” Kieran Delamont