Workplaces are changing – and with America adjusting and adapting to the new realities of COVID-19, how teams are managed and how leaders are portrayed is also in a state of evolution.
Georgia Southern’s Steven Charlier was recently interviewed by the BBC – and was featured in an article that focused on the differences between leadership skills and how they come across in-person and on-line.
“Fifteen years ago, Steven Charlier, chair of management at Georgia Southern University in the U.S., had a hunch that in-person charisma and leadership skills don’t translate virtually. “Before I became an academic, I worked for IBM for a number of years on a lot of virtual teams,” he says. “I had a boss who was a wonderful guy and great manager, and he drove me crazy trying to communicate. He was incredibly slow and unresponsive.” This seed of professional vexation has borne fruit, with new data showing that the confidence, intelligence and extroversion that have long propelled ambitious workers into the executive suite are not enough online, because they simply don’t translate into virtual leadership. Instead, workers who are organised, dependable and productive take the reins of virtual teams. Finally, doers lead the pack – at least remotely. Georgia Southern’s Charlier is not surprised to find a wide gulf between the behaviors of in-person and remote leaders. “In any leadership role, you’ve got to establish that trust. It’s trusting that the person is going to do things,and trusting that they’re telling the truth and being up front and honest. But how you go about doing that virtually is a little different – it’s a different skill set.” This is a fascinating topic and one that will be top of mind as America begins a new era of remote working. And if you are a journalist looking to follow up on this topic – then let our experts help.
Steven Charlier is an expert in project management and virtual teams on project-based work and how technology influences how we work and lead within organizations. He’s available to speak with media about this very interesting topic – simply click on his icon to arrange an interview.
Media
Social
Biography
Steve Charlier is an associate professor in the Department of Management at Georgia Southern University. He holds degrees from the College of William and Mary (BBA/Finance), the University of Denver (MIM/e-commerce) and the University of Iowa (Ph.D./Management). Steve has held a variety of managerial positions in the information technology/consulting, automotive, and entertainment industries. He has been a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) since 2003, and has consulted with a number of organizations, including various federal government agencies and non-profit organizations. His research interests are focused on the modern work environment, and include virtual teams, e-learning, leadership in a virtual world, and management education. His work has been published in several leading international academic journals, including The Leadership Quarterly, Human Resource Management, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Academy of Management Learning & Education, and Human Resource Management Review. He also serves on the editorial board for Academy of Management Learning & Education, and holds an appointed executive board position within the OB Division of the Academy of Management. Steve is a member of the Academy of Management, Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Society for Human Resource Management, and the Project Management Institute. He is currently an Associate Editor for Human Resource Management and Academy of Management Learning & Education, and serves on the editorial board for Organization Management Journal. Steve is a member of the Academy of Management, Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, and the Project Management Institute.
Areas of Expertise
E-Leadership
Virtual Teams
E-Learning
Accomplishments
William A. Freeman Award for Outstanding Professor
Fifteen years ago, Steven Charlier, chair of management at Georgia Southern University in the US, had a hunch that in-person charisma and leadership skills don’t translate virtually. “Before I became an academic, I worked for IBM for a number of years on a lot of virtual teams,” he says. “I had a boss who was a wonderful guy and great manager, and he drove me crazy trying to communicate. He was incredibly slow and unresponsive.”
Georgia Southern's Steve Charlier: How to Intergrate the Younger Generation into the Workplace
Metro Atlanta CEO
2018-07-01
Georgia Southern University Department of Management Associate Professor Steve Charlier gives some advice to businesses on how they can attract the younger generation, and how millennials are transforming the workplace.
Want to Be Perceived as a Leader? Improve This Basic Tech Skill.
Entrepreneur
2017-07-03
Afterwards, the participants answered a series of questions, including one in which they rated the leadership abilities of their colleagues. The researchers observed that those with a stronger typing ability (taking into account both speed and accuracy) were more likely to be perceived as leaders.
"One explanation is that individuals who can type fast are simply able to communicate more information within a given period of time," said study leader Steve Charlier, who is now an associate professor at Georgia Southern University, in a summary of the findings. "In turn, adept users of electronic communication are more likely to set strategy, drive conversations and influence work teams as a whole."
Trading off learning and performance: Exploration and exploitation at work
Human Resource Management Review
Lindsey M Greco, Steven D Charlier, Kenneth G Brown
2018
Employees are increasingly given control over how they learn, and their choices for training are diverse and varied, yet employees must balance competing demands. On one hand, they are expected to be increasingly efficient in their current job duties – on the other hand, they are expected to develop new skills and competencies that enable them to adapt and respond to changing job demands. Drawing from the organizational learning literature, we propose a model of worker and work characteristics that inform choices between two mindsets related to learning at work. The first mindset is exploration, or the pursuit of learning outside one’s current knowledge domain; the second mindset is exploitation, the refinement/deepening of one’s existing knowledge stock focusing on the task at hand. We further propose that these strategic choices, or trade-offs, influence employee learning and performance in unique ways, with different implications for both routine and adaptive performance. Finally, we incorporate the notions of feedback loops and risk assessments that influence ongoing decisions between exploration and exploitation mindsets. Recommendations for future research and extensions of the theoretical model are also proposed.
Undergraduate Programs in the US: A Contextual and Content-Based Analysis
Teaching Human Resources and Organizational Behavior at the College Level
Steven D Charlier, Lisa A Burke-Smalley, Sandra L Fisher
2018
Given the importance of human resource management skills both in management education and business in general, an empirical review of undergraduate human resource (HR) curricula and programs is needed. In this study, the authors provide an investigative analysis of the content taught across HR programs in the U.S. and the context in which HR programs operate. Specifically, data across 179 undergraduate “SHRM-aligned” HR programs were collected and analyzed to identify common as well as unique content and contextual attributes at the university, business school, and program levels. Against the backdrop of the study's findings, the authors step back and purposefully comment on how they believe HR education can best be moved forward. In total, this study seeks to inform stakeholders in HR education through a clearer picture of the current and potential future states of HR curricula within U.S.-based undergraduate management programs.
The Wiley Blackwell handbook of the psychology of the internet at work
Steven D Charlier, Gary W Giumetti, Cody J Reeves, Lindsey M Greco
2017
This chapter proposes a holistic definition of cyberdeviance, describing it as: behavior that takes place using information and communication technologies (ICTs), which violates workplace norms, and has the potential to harm individual employees, the organization as a whole, or both. It aims to propose a new typology and framework for viewing cyberdeviance and its associated behaviors, and review the existing literature within this new framework. The typology of behaviors features three broad categories of cyberdeviance: intrapersonally focused behaviors (cyberloafing), interpersonally focused cyberdeviance (CD‐I), and organizationally focused cyberdeviance (CD‐O). Studies that examine intraindividual differences in the willingness to engage in cyberdeviant behavior, including differences in the timing and rate of the behavior, might also prove particularly useful in the effort to better understand the underlying psychological processes that drive cyberdeviance. The chapter concludes with the recommendations for future research, both from a methodological and a content‐specific perspective.
Plugged in or disconnected? A model of the effects of technological factors on employee job embeddedness
Human Resource Management
Steven D. Charlier, Russell P. Guay, Ryan D. Zimmerman
2016
Technology continues to play an ever-increasing role in both our work and private lives. In parallel with this expanding reliance on technology has been a shift in how people now view their jobs. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to provide a theoretical model that bridges these two areas—technology and employee attitudes (more specifically, work-related feelings of embeddedness). Within our model, we consider aspects of common work-related technologies and key perceptual variables related to technology, and how both areas can influence embeddedness in one’s job. We conclude the article by providing examples of how specific technologies that are commonly found in today’s work environment may influence job embeddedness perceptions, and we discuss the implications of the model on both theory and practice.
Emergent leadership in virtual teams: A multilevel investigation of individual communication and team dispersion antecedents
The Leadership Quarterly
Steven D Charlier, Greg L Stewart, Lindsey M Greco, Cody J Reeves
2016
While considerable research has been conducted on understanding why individuals are perceived as leaders in traditional work contexts, much less is known about how individual difference variables influence leader perceptions in a virtual environment. In this study, we examine this issue by investigating the effects of two communication-related constructs (communication apprehension [CA] and text-based communication ability [TBCA]) on leadership emergence in virtual teams. We also examine how leadership emergence is affected by team dispersion: specifically, overall team configuration and dyadic team member co-location. Predicated on adaptive structuration theory (DeSanctis & Poole, 1994), we propose a theoretical model that outlines the effects of the individual difference attributes and team dispersion variables on leadership emergence. Results of an experiment testing the model with 84 four-person teams of varying levels of team member dispersion suggest that CA and TBCA have significant relationships with leadership emergence, as well as team configuration and team member co-location.
