How Much Do We Trust Remote Managers? Examining Follower Trust, Construal, and Performance

With the widespread shift to remote and hybrid work, followers of leaders who telework are more distant from their leaders and may develop different judgments of their leader's trustworthiness. Drawing upon construal level theory (CLT), we investigate the effect of a leader's teleworking on trust followers have in their leader and suggest that higher level construals associated with the leader's distance help explain this effect. Moreover, we investigate the moderating role of a leader's monitoring behavior. Study 1, a longitudinal field study using matched data from 314 followers, 108 leaders, and 218 projects in a large corporation, finds leader teleworking is negatively associated with follower affect-based trust, which in turn is associated with project financial performance. Study 2, a 3-wave study of employed adults (n = 262), finds evidence that follower construal mediates the relationship between the extent of leader teleworking and follower trust. Study 3, a daily study of employed adults (n = 98) conducted over 10 consecutive workdays, finds support for these effects at a daily and between-person level. Across the three studies, results indicate the extent of leader teleworking is negatively associated with follower trust in the leader through higher level follower construal, with leader monitoring exacerbating this effect.