Your Remote Culture Is Not Eroding—Your Leadership Practices Are

The narrative has become so common it barely registers as an opinion anymore: remote work is destroying company culture. Executives cite declining engagement scores, reduced collaboration, weakening social bonds, and the loss of spontaneous "watercooler" innovation. The prescribed solution is invariably some version of "get people back in the office."

I want to challenge this narrative directly, because I believe it misdiagnoses the problem—and the misdiagnosis leads to solutions that do not work and often make things worse.

The Real Diagnosis

Culture was not as strong as you thought it was. What many organizations experienced as "strong culture" before 2020 was actually proximity. People showed up to the same place at the same time, and the physical environment created a default level of interaction, social bonding, and information sharing. Leaders interpreted this as culture. It was actually infrastructure.

When the infrastructure changed—when proximity was removed—the practices that were actually sustaining culture (or the lack thereof) became visible. Organizations that had genuinely strong cultures—clear values, intentional communication, trust-based management, equitable practices—transitioned to remote work with minimal disruption. Organizations whose "culture" depended on physical presence experienced a collapse.

In New-School Leadership: Making a Difference in the 21st Century, I describe the shift from management-by-observation to management-by-outcome. This shift was already overdue before the pandemic. Remote and hybrid work simply made it urgent.

What Actually Needs to Change

Communication must become intentional. In an office, information flows through osmosis—overheard conversations, hallway encounters, lunch-table updates. In remote and hybrid environments, every piece of information that needs to move must be deliberately transmitted. This requires more documentation, more structured communication channels, and more disciplined meeting practices. It also requires leaders to over-communicate context, rationale, and strategic direction—things that were partially conveyed through physical cues in an office setting.

Trust must replace surveillance. The instinct to monitor remote employees—tracking keystrokes, requiring cameras on, mandating hourly check-ins—communicates a devastating message: we do not trust you. And it backfires spectacularly. Surveilled employees do not perform better. They perform more visibly, which is a different thing entirely. They optimize for appearing busy rather than being productive.

Inclusion must be redesigned for distributed environments. In a hybrid model, the biggest culture risk is the emergence of two tiers: in-office employees who have greater access to informal networks, spontaneous mentoring, and leadership visibility; and remote employees who are systematically disadvantaged in these areas. This is not a technology problem. It is a leadership design problem.

Building Culture Without Proximity

The organizations I advise through my Executive Advisory practice that have built thriving remote and hybrid cultures share several characteristics:

They define culture in behavioral terms—specific, observable practices—rather than in ambient terms like "energy" or "vibe." They invest heavily in asynchronous communication infrastructure. They create rituals that work across locations—shared celebrations, cross-functional project teams, structured mentoring programs. They evaluate managers on outcomes and team health, not on the number of hours their teams are visible.

And critically, they resist the false binary of "remote versus in-person." The question is not where people work. The question is whether your leadership practices are designed for the way people actually work today.

The Equity Imperative

There is an inclusion dimension to this conversation that many organizations overlook. Remote and hybrid work have been disproportionately beneficial for caregivers, people with disabilities, people with long commutes (who are disproportionately people of color), and neurodiverse employees who perform better in environments they can control. Mandating a return to office without acknowledging these equity implications is not a culture decision. It is an inclusion decision—and often, an exclusion decision.

The path forward is not backward. It is through—through the hard, deliberate work of building leadership practices that sustain culture regardless of where work happens. This is exactly what I help organizations navigate in my corporate training programs.