"Technology is best when it brings people together."

- Matt Mullenweg

While there is no consensus on the magnitude of the influence of leadership on organisational performance (various studies estimate this impact at between 14% and 50%), the idea that this influence exists seems far more widely accepted. That is why American companies spend around half of their annual training and development budget on developing leadership skills. It is also why companies compete with one another to hire the most highly regarded leaders, sending their pay soaring.

But while organisations believe that leaders have a decisive impact on their performance and value that impact highly, they sometimes also overvalue their action and expect too much of them. In Portugal we call this phenomenon Sebastianism (in the literature it is known as the leadership attribution error: attributing an exaggerated impact to the leader's action). This Sebastianism can end up inadvertently undermining the leader's action. By overestimating the impact of the leader's action, we run the risk of underestimating the importance of other factors, failing to invest in those factors and failing to support the leader's action. One example of this is when the organisation does not invest in the recruitment, training and pay of the work team, forcing the leader to work harder at supporting and providing technical guidance for the team's work (less necessary with a more competent and experienced team), as well as at stimulating its motivation and satisfaction (less necessary if the team had better pay and incentives).

One factor that can make the leader's work easier (or harder, when it is absent or badly used), allowing them to be more effective, is technology. Technology can reduce the neutralising effect of physical distance and can help the leader adapt to the characteristics of their team, making it possible to collect and codify patterns of behaviour more efficiently, as well as to adapt more easily the challenges set for each team member.

Physical distance is a neutraliser of leadership. It seems obvious that a leader who is far from their team will find it harder to assess the team's social climate, motivation and satisfaction. Even if they manage to do so, their ability to intervene is much more limited. Developments in communication technologies allow ever richer interaction and the capture of a wider spectrum of information. In addition, effective management support and management information systems will allow closer monitoring of activity and better use of the rarer physical interactions, since there will be no need to waste valuable time gathering data already available in the system.

Everyone is different, and a good leader should know each member of their team in order to interact in the way that best suits their motivational and communication profile. This knowledge of team members' characteristics is what allows the leader to avoid giving people incentives that are ineffective or even counterproductive. As well as the knowledge built up through personal interaction, technology can help identify patterns of behaviour and reaction more quickly, allowing the leader to adapt and tailor the way they deal with each team member. Furthermore, gamification tools can even allow this adaptation to be made automatically, enhancing the leader's impact and freeing them up for other activities.

In short, although leadership is an activity with a strong human dimension, the use of technology, rather than dehumanising it, can enhance the leader's impact, allowing them to be more effective and efficient and to overcome some of the difficulties naturally posed by the distance from their team.

Post written by António Calheiros Lecturer in Management/Human Resources ISCAC

Written by:
Openlimits

July 07, 2016 - 10:01:01

Written by:
Madalena Duarte

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