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It’s nice to have you back at the educated leadership blog! This week we’re going to look at a style of leadership called “remote transformational leadership.” Can transformational leadership be felt across distances?

Our reading was a research article called “Remote transformational leadership.” (E. Kelvin Kelloway, 2002) The researchers noticed that most previous studies of transformational leadership had focused on face-to-face interactions. With the advent of globalization, extended spans of control, and advanced communication technology, leaders are frequently tasked with leading employees that work in remote locations, or with leading so many employees that direct face-to-face contact on a regular basis is difficult (E. Kelvin Kelloway)

The researchers hypothesized that this imposed distance was requiring leaders to communicate more via electronic means, such as e-mail. There were studies that determined the geographical distance had a negative impact on the leadership’s ability to impact performance. (E. Kelvin Kelloway, 2002)

The researchers wished to determine if leadership styles could be transmitted and received via e-mail. They also wanted to see if receiving a positive message, as opposed to a negative one, was perceived to be associated with positive outcomes.  The first study was done via reading vignettes to groups of students. As a second study, they wanted to see if they could get even better results via a lab based study of the same questions and actually using e-mails. (E. Kelvin Kelloway, 2002)

The overall questions drive back to whether people can be lead via e-mails and what the impact of those types of communication could be.

The researchers recruited college students to listen to readings of e-mails that attempted to demonstrate either, transformational leadership style, management by exception style, or laissez-faire style. They were asked what style they heard.

The result of the first study was related in this way, “The results of this study show that individuals can indeed differentiate between different leadership styles within e-mails. Second, consistent with our expectations, e-mails containing transformational leadership messages were associated with greater interpersonal justice and satisfaction compared to messages based on the management-by-exception or laissez-faire styles.”(E. Kelvin Kelloway, 2002)

In study two, instead of having the messages read to groups or individuals, the subjects were actually given e-mails to read.  The researchers 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 did not contain these aspects of transformational leadership.” (E. Kelvin Kelloway, 2002)

Again, the subjects were found to be able to identify the leadership style being represented in the e-mail. They also documented that the subjects that received the transformational leadership style communication performed better on a problem solving task than those in a control group!

These results will be of value to a majority of those in management positions, not just those with employees more than a stone’s throw away. The main reason is that this study reflects upon basic communication. Even managers who see their employees daily end up communicating via e-mail at some point. This study indicates that the message sent carries more impact than just the words on the screen may convey. The reader picks up on the voice of the writer, so care must be taken when authoring the memo or letter.

My current job gives me the opportunity to practice this skill every day. Whether I am writing a note to a peer that is 20 meters away or to one of my employees 6000 miles away, I have to be cognizant of the mood or tone of the correspondence. Even with painstaking efforts being made, it is still difficult to ensure how your message will come across to the reader. My experience is that it is important to spell out what you are trying to get across. If any room for interpretation is left, rarely will the reader come to the conclusion you hope they will. Also, sarcasm doesn't work in an e-mail.

This research is also important because it demonstrates the power of this type of communication. The term “e-mail” is commonplace and as banal at the word “television”. However, this study reminds us there is gravitas in each message we send, especially in our roles as leaders.

E. Kelvin Kelloway, J. B., Elizabeth Kelly, Julie Comtols, Bernadette Gatien. (2002). Remote transformational leadership. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 24(3), 163-171. doi: 10.1108/01437730310469589