You know that manager who insists everyone comes into the office, even when the work gets done perfectly fine from home? He probably frames it as "collaboration" or "company culture." But according to new research there's a more personal reason behind it.

It's about worship.

The office is a stage. There's a corner office. There are people walking past, nodding, deferring. There's a physical hierarchy you can see and feel. For narcissistic leaders, that environment is necessary.

The Office Altar Effect

Shandell, Elliott, and Grant studied 259 Fortune 500 CEOs and found that leaders who scored higher on narcissism (measured through photo size, signature size, and relative pay) were significantly more likely to push back against remote work, especially early in the COVID-19 pandemic.

They followed this up with a survey of 359 leaders and a controlled experiment with 546 participants. The result was consistent across all three studies: narcissistic leaders resist remote work because it threatens two things they care about deeply, power and status.

Here's why: Remote work flattens hierarchy. On a video call, everyone is the same size square on the screen. The corner office becomes a background blur. The physical signals of authority, the head of the table, the larger chair, the people who stop talking when you walk in, all of that disappears.

For most people, this is a minor trade-off, but for narcissistic leaders, it feels like a threat.

Why remote work is a power problem

Narcissism is driven by two core motivations. First, the desire for control and authority over others (power). Second, the desire for admiration and recognition (status).

In person, both are easy to satisfy. You can monitor people. You can command a room. You can be visibly impressive.

Remote work makes this much harder. Communication becomes more ambiguous. You lose the richness of in-person signals. You can't "read" a room through a screen the same way. And when employees advocate for working from home, it adds another layer: it feels like a direct challenge to authority.

This triggers what psychologists call psychological reactance. When narcissists sense their control slipping, they push back harder. They "attack for control", pressuring teams to show up even when there's no good business case for it.

What this looks like in real organizations

Think about the wave of aggressive return-to-office mandates from 2022 onward. Elon Musk's "return to office or consider yourself resigned" email at Twitter. Similar hard stances from Amazon, Goldman Sachs, and others. Not all of these mandates come from narcissistic leaders, but the research suggests that where you see extreme resistance to flexible work, especially when it defies employee preferences and productivity data, personality may be a bigger driver than strategy.

The same dynamic plays out in smaller organizations every day. The team lead who insists on daily in-person check-ins. The director who never approves remote days for their department, even when other departments do it freely. The executive who frames office presence as "commitment."

If the policy doesn't seem to follow logic, it might be following ego instead.

When this dynamic shows up most

The effect is strongest in industries that don't rely on frontline workers. When everyone can theoretically work remotely, the decision becomes discretionary, and that's exactly when personality shapes leadership behavior most. 

The effect is also stronger when leaders have more hierarchical power. The more authority a leader has over remote work decisions, the more their narcissism influences the outcome.

What you can do with this

If you're in HR or leadership and setting remote work policy, include narcissism as a variable when deciding who sits on the committee. Narcissistic leaders gravitate toward power- and status-conferring roles. If they dominate the committee, expect a policy that reflects their preferences, not the workforce's.

Build collaborative decision-making structures into your remote work policy process. When policies are determined collectively, individual personality has less room to distort the outcome.

If you're an employee trying to make a case for remote work, the research gives a clear strategic tip: don't frame it as a demand. Consult the leader for their advice, ask for their input, show respect for their authority. That’s how you reduce reactance: by not triggering the threat response in the first place. A narcissistic leader who feels validated is far more likely to say yes than one who feels challenged.

Take-home points

• Narcissistic leaders resist remote work because it reduces their ability to exercise power and receive status

• The more discretion a leader has over remote work decisions, the more their narcissism shapes policy

• Employees who advocate assertively for remote work may trigger psychological reactance in narcissistic leaders

• Organizations should design remote work policy processes that limit the influence of individual personalities