HR leaders urged to 'rethink' how leaders are supported in the workplace
More than half of leaders across the world do not consider themselves effective leading their teams in an era of distributed work, according to a new report.
The Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) surveyed over 800 global respondents and interviewed more than 200 executives early this year to look at the state of leadership worldwide.
It found that 58% of leaders consider themselves "somewhat ineffective" at managing distributed work, while five per cent said they were very ineffective.
Only 35% of the respondents consider themselves effective in leading in the age of distributed work, according to the report.
Distributed work refers to the model where employees are not all located in the same physical office, a departure from the traditional centralised office setup.
But distributed work is not only based on geographic distance, according to the i4cp report. It also covers other dimensions such as time zones, capabilities, cultural values, organisational lines, as well as socioeconomic and generational divides.
The report said the issue of improving leadership effectiveness in this era is "not surprising."
It comes at a time when leadership burnout is also exploding due to growing demands from the fast-changing pace of work, such as navigating the integration of AI in workplaces.
"Despite a continuous flow of new ideas and strategies with the promise of improving leadership effectiveness, we face a persistent leadership crisis. Something is clearly wrong," the report said.
Rob Cross, SVP of Research at i4cp and professor at Babson College, said their findings point out the changes in what is needed to be an effective leader.
"Leadership effectiveness is no longer about charisma or a one-size-fits-all model. It's contextual, specific, and increasingly networked," Cross said in a statement. "Our research shows that targeted changes—not sweeping programmes—can dramatically increase leadership effectiveness and team performance."
The report said leadership effectiveness is distinguished by six capabilities, including culture, structure, talent practices, wellbeing, boundary management, and technology.
According to the report, HR leaders should "rethink how leadership is supported."
"Not through isolated programmes or blunt mandates, but through tailored, team-enabled, and sustainable approaches that distribute leadership itself, not just work, across teams," it said.
It noted that leaders do not have to be excellent across all six capabilities, and instead proposed a "flexible set of capabilities and practices" that can be deployed based on the situation.
This means one leader could emphasise culture and wellbeing practices because a strong performance push is eroding team management, according to the report. For another leader, it could mean adapting structure and talent practices to drive efficiency amid expense reductions.
"By providing leaders a set of context-specific levers to pull, we avoid defaulting to one-size-fits-all solutions, and instead enable true agility in how work gets done," the report read. "This approach is similar in concept to situational leadership, where effectiveness derives from adapting to the context."
