Edition #2 | Clarity with Kindness Newsletter
If you’ve followed my posts before, you’ll know I am a football fan – and specifically a Port Vale fan, for my sins. I refuse to call it soccer, even living in New Zealand. Born into Stoke-on-Trent football, optimism was surgically removed early. But if you watched any of the English game over the weekend, you’ll have noticed a trend: VAR (Video Assistant Referee) dissecting every frame, ref cams tracking every whisper, and studio pundits analysing every square inch of the pitch.
We have more visibility into the game than at any point in sporting history.
And yet, ask any supporter leaving the ground or sitting down at the pub, and they’ll tell you: all that extra slow-motion footage hasn't magically improved the quality of the game. Half the time, staring at endless replays just creates more debate, halts the natural flow of play, and distracts everyone from what actually matters: the score on the board.
In executive boardrooms, leadership teams are falling into the exact same trap with their Return-to-Office (RTO) mandates.
The Line-of-Sight Illusion
Over the past year, executive teams have been calling staff back to physical desks three, four, or five days a week. The underlying narrative driving these decisions – often unspoken, but very real – is simple:
"If I can't physically see my team working, how do I know they aren't slacking off?"
Worrying about unseen staff isn't a culture problem; it is a clear sign that management doesn't know how to track results. When I first became a remote manager, I knew that checking up on people constantly was a dead end. Instead, I set clear targets and expectations. If the team missed those targets, we had a performance issue – which is exactly the same problem you face in a physical office.
It takes more effort as a manager to communicate clearly and hold people accountable from a distance. But if you get that right, your team's output will soar without you needing to watch over their shoulders.
When companies fail to build that clarity and default to blanket office mandates instead, employees spend two hours commuting, arrive at a desk, put on headphones to block out room noise, and spend six hours on video calls with colleagues in other cities anyway.
We’ve effectively added VAR surveillance to office jobs. Seeing someone sat at a desk at 4:30 PM gives management a false sense of comfort, but it tells you nothing about whether useful work is actually getting done.
Here’s the reality: Seeing someone work is not the same as getting results.
What the Research Actually Tells Us
When we look closely at how offices function, traditional open-plan spaces are often engines of constant distraction rather than deep focus.
Consider research by Dr. Gloria Mark at the University of California, Irvine. Her studies into workplace behaviour revealed the 11-Minute Focus Window: on average, office workers spend just 11 minutes focusing on a task before getting interrupted or pulled away.
Even more fascinating is what Dr. Mark terms the Interruption Paradox: the deeper and longer you focus on a complex task in an open office, the more likely you are to be interrupted, and the longer that interruption lasts.
Conversely, landmark research led by Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom showed that working from home boosted employee productivity by 13%. Why? Because quiet home environments allow staff to protect their focus, avoid commute exhaustion, and actually finish important work.
If a manager's main way of judging value is watching someone sit at a desk, that isn't a lazy employee problem; it’s a management skills gap.
Kindness is Clarity: 3 Actions for Executive Leaders
True kindness to your team isn't forcing expensive, tiring commutes just to ease management anxiety. High-care leadership means setting high standards, being clear about what success looks like, and trusting capable adults to deliver.
Here are 3 concrete steps you can take with your leadership team this week:
1. Measure Results, Not Attendance
Stop monitoring green activity dots on chat apps. Work with team leaders to set explicit, weekly deliverables for every role. If the work is completed to a high standard, the exact hours spent doing it matter far less.
2. Make Office Days Worth the Commute
If your staff come into the building just to sit alone on laptops, your hybrid model is broken. Reserve in-office days exclusively for work that benefits from being together: strategic planning, solving complex problems, and building team relationships.
3. Test Your Management Metrics
In your next 1-on-1 with a manager, ask them: "If you couldn't physically see your team for a month, how exactly would you know if they succeeded?" If their answer relies on desk time or fast email replies, help them focus on actual output instead.
The Bottom Line
Just like in football, sitting in the VAR room replaying every second doesn't win match points. Clear away the attendance obsession, focus on clear outcomes, and watch your business performance take off.
Listen to the full episode:
This article accompanies Episode 8 of Clarity with Kindness (The Corner Office Myth – Unpacking Remote Work Productivity), dropping tomorrow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and drlyndaconsulting.com.
If your executive team is relying on physical attendance to measure performance, you have a blind spot that is costing you money and losing you top staff. Reach out at drlyndaconsulting.com to book a rapid diagnostic review.
Originally Published on Linkedin