2 Challenges Facing Leaders

Remote working has proven to be an asset for most companies today as their workforce remained productive during the pandemic, whereas the movement of people was limited. Nonetheless, despite becoming a necessity, it still posed considerable challenges to leaders and business owners in different sectors, including the Meta world. According to Parker et al. (2020), managers have reported struggling with trust issues since they cannot “see” the other staff members directly. The leaders often doubt whether the employees are indeed working, which could lead to unreasonable expectations that employees are available at all times, which would ultimately disrupt the work-home balance achieved and lead to job stress (Lilian, 2014). More or less, the leaders become obsessed with leveraging the performance of all employees, leading them to micromanage their teams. Communication is also a key issue for team leaders, and there is often a need to optimise technologies to improve communication and improve collaboration among employees. Leaders have a more difficult time cultivating stronger relationships than working from the office since employees are isolated and disconnected under remote working conditions (Kniffin et al., 2021). Additionally, the leaders are not in a good position to build or reinforce the company’s culture as they would have done working on-site. Finally, performance evaluation is vital for leaders managing remote teams today. In most cases, the leaders are forced to depend on self-evaluations, which might not be more conclusive as compared to the evaluations they may conduct at the workplace (Kniffin et al., 2021).

3 Evaluation of the Traditional Leadership Traits and Practices

As various scholars have noted over the years, leadership is one of the most studied social sciences, yet it is the least understood. The need to study it crops from the fact that it is applicable to the day-to-day livelihood. This part of the research will explore the usability of traditional leadership theories under remote working conditions.

3.1 Trait Theory of Leadership

The trait theory is one of the most famous traditional theories. It is based on the presumption that a good leader is judged based on his/her innate characteristics and methods. According to Dahlgaard et al. (1997), the most effective leadership styles/traits include team builders, captain, strategies, creative, and impulsive. Therefore, the leadership profile of these leaders is composed of multiple styles, even though a leader may show a preference for one style over the other. This means that the distinguishing factors are the traits that set leaders apart from their followers, including their personality traits, skills, values, and abilities.

The leader traits theory has a number of strengths that would allow it to manage teams working remotely. According to Northhouse (2021), the theory is intuitively appealing and backed by centuries of research in the field. By providing a repertoire of syles, strengths, skills, and so forth allow managers to assess their strengths and weaknesses to the extent that they can improve their leadership effectiveness. For instance, traits like personality, skills, and knowledge are key tele-cooperation capabilities, dependability, and self-management. In fact, the traits are seen to overlap, making teams competent (Northhouse, 2021). In as much as the trait theory is strong and offers promise in virtual teams working remotely, the traits of a leader do not guarantee the overall personality of a leader. This is confirmed by the fact that the theory does not elucidate the relationship between traits, behaviour, and overall performance. Additionally, since remote working is uncharted territory for leaders today, it is important to note that there is no specific style usable in various situations (Northhouse, 2021). This means that the traits theory may not be entirely useful under such circumstances.

3.2 Contingency (Situational) Leadership Theory

The contingency theory came as a result of the recognition that the environment plays an essential role in the leader-follower dynamic. The theory proposes that leadership depends on the situation rather than traits and behaviours. Therefore, the leader assesses the context of their operation before deciding the style that fits such a situation (Northhouse, 2021). Leadership, in this case, involves solving problems based on three key concerns, including quality of the decision, degree of acceptance of the decision by subordinates, and the time frame for the decision made. Therefore, contingency would play an important role