The fight over where people work has always sounded like a fight over productivity. It is increasingly clear that it is also a fight over power.
New research on remote work resistance argues that some leaders do not simply prefer the office because collaboration is easier there — they prefer it because the office gives them an audience, a hierarchy and a stage.
That distinction is important, because return-to-office mandates can be made to look rational in press releases even when they serve a much less flattering purpose in practice. When leaders say they want energy, culture and accountability, employees should ask whether the policy solves a business problem or feeds an executive need to be seen, obeyed and admired.
The study, by Marissa Shandell, Courtney Elliott, and Adam Grant, does not claim every office advocate is a narcissist, of course. But narcissistic leaders are more likely to resist remote work, because remote arrangements interfere with their pursuit of power and status. Across Fortune 500 CEOs and multi-wave surveys of leaders, the pattern held. Leaders higher in narcissistic personality traits showed stronger opposition to remote and hybrid work, and power motivation consistently helped explain why.
That finding, however, sharpens a debate stuck in the wrong vocabulary. Many executives describe the office as the home of office culture, and there is evidence that fully remote work can make collaboration networks more siloed. But culture is not the same thing as leader visibility. A healthy office helps employees coordinate, learn and build trust. An unhealthy office turns presence into tribute.
The difference determines whether people are gathering for work that benefits from proximity or being summoned to reassure a boss that the hierarchy still holds.
The office gives high-control leaders rich signals that remote tools dilute. They can read the room, interrupt, summon, stare, praise, punish and perform authority in real time. Video calls flatten that drama. Everyone becomes a square. Chat messages can be answered later. Cameras can be turned off. Employees gain more discretion over when and how they respond. For leaders driven by their own narcissistic personality traits, that discretion can feel less like flexibility and more like insubordination.
The case for flexibility is not a fantasy built by employees who dislike commuting. The best evidence is more nuanced — and more threatening to simplistic office mandates. In a randomized trial published in Nature, hybrid work-from-home two days a week improved job satisfaction, reduced quit rates by one-third, and did not damage performance reviews over the next two years.
That should have changed the burden of proof. Leaders who demand five days in the office now need evidence that the extra days create value beyond managerial comfort.
Workers are not asking for isolation as a lifestyle. Pew Research Center hasfound that many remote-capable employees prefer hybrid arrangements. Gallup reports that a majority of remote-capable employees favor a hybrid work strategy. The real employee demand is not disappearance but agency. People want enough shared time to collaborate but enough private control to avoid wasting their lives in commuting and performative attendance.
That is why rigid mandates can backfire. Research on workplace flexibility finds that companies issuing return-to-office mandates can face higher turnover, especially among senior, skilled and female employees, while taking longer to fill vacancies. Those findings do not prove remote work is always superior. Rather, they show that coercive office policies carry real human capital costs.
Fully remote work has costs too. A Science study on remote work and isolation found that remote work can increase time spent alone and worsen mental well-being, especially for people who live alone. That evidence strengthens the case for intentional hybrid design, not blanket office worship. The lesson is balance, not backlash.
The best leaders do not ask, “How do I get people back where I can watch them?” They ask, “Which work improves when we are together, and which work improves when people have focus and control?” That question turns flexible work policies from a perk into an operating system. It forces organizations to define the purpose of office days, the norms for remote days, the rituals for learning, and the metrics that actually matter.
It also exposes weak leadership. If a manager depends on physical presence to know whether people are working, the problem is not remote work — the problem is unclear goals, poor measurement or low trust. If an executive needs a crowded floor to feel important, the problem is not culture. The problem is ego. A workplace built around employee autonomy does not eliminate accountability. It makes accountability more explicit because employees are judged by outcomes rather than proximity.
Boards and executive teams should treat extreme anti-remote rhetoric as a governance signal. The leader who frames flexibility as laziness may be revealing more about control needs than employee performance. The leader who can name which meetings require presence, which mentoring moments need proximity, and which tasks require quiet focus is doing real management. The leader who simply says “culture” may be asking for applause.
The future of work should not be decided by the loudest person in the conference room. It should be designed around evidence, roles, customer needs, collaboration patterns and retention risks. Leaders who want a practical roadmap can learn from a thoughtful hybrid work model that treats flexibility as a business discipline rather than an ideological trophy.
The office still matters. So does remote work. The mistake is letting status-hungry leaders turn a management choice into a loyalty test. The healthiest organizations will stop asking employees to worship at the office altar and start asking a better question: where does the work work best?
Gleb Tsipursky, Ph.D., serves as the CEO of the future-of-work consultancyDisaster Avoidance Experts and wrote “The Psychology of AI Adoption at Work: From Resistance to Results” and “ChatGPT for Leaders and Content Creators.“
Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
