The Conflict Expert

You may have asked yourself the question more than once. Your team hits every deadline remotely. Productivity is fine. Morale, if anything, has improved. And yet the pressure to get back into the office keeps mounting, with no clear explanation that actually makes sense.

A landmark study published in 2026 by researchers at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, may finally have the answer. Across three independent investigations, covering 259 Fortune 500 CEOs, 359 managers, and over 500 experimental participants, the research found that the single personality trait that most consistently predicted a leader’s resistance to remote work was narcissism. Not concerns about collaboration. Not productivity data. Not culture.

Narcissism. Published in the peer-reviewed journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, the study found that narcissistic leaders oppose flexible working arrangements because remote work threatens something they value above almost everything else: their power and status.

If that resonates with you, you are not imagining it. And if you are wondering what to do about it, read on. I also have a separate piece on how to recognise narcissistic behaviour at work more broadly, which may help you put the full picture together.

What Did the Research Actually Find?

The Wharton study, led by researchers Shandell, Elliott and Grant, is significant not just because of what it found, but because of how rigorously it found it.

The first part of the research examined 259 Fortune 500 chief executives during the pandemic. Rather than relying on self-reported personality assessments, the researchers used established proxy indicators of narcissism: the prominence of an executive’s photograph in the company’s annual report, signature size, and relative compensation compared to peers. CEOs who scored higher on these measures were significantly more likely to publicly oppose remote and hybrid working.

The second study surveyed 359 managers across a range of industries. It confirmed the pattern, and crucially, found that narcissism predicted resistance to remote work even after controlling for other variables, including trust in employees, social preferences, and other personality traits including Machiavellianism and psychopathy. Of all the personality factors examined, narcissism emerged as the most consistent predictor.

The third study went further. It experimentally tested whether narcissistic thinking could directly increase opposition to remote work. Over 500 managers were randomly assigned material that encouraged self-focused, status-oriented thinking about leadership. Those in that group subsequently expressed greater resistance to remote work than those in the control group, with concerns about power and control playing a particularly prominent role.

The finding, in plain terms: the sole personality characteristic that consistently predicted opposition to remote work across all three studies was narcissism, the tendency to be self-centred, status-driven and entitled.

Why Does Remote Work Threaten a Narcissist?

To understand why narcissistic leaders dislike remote work so strongly, it helps to understand what the office gives them that a video call does not.

Loss of control. One of the most important things a physical workspace provides a controlling leader is visibility and the power that comes with it. The ability to walk past someone’s desk, call an impromptu meeting, monitor movements, use eye contact, body language and physical presence as tools of influence. Remote work takes all of that away. Research from the University of Pittsburgh found that return-to-office mandates are frequently used by senior leaders not to improve organisational performance, which the data shows they rarely do, but to reassert control over employees. The study found no measurable improvement in company financial performance or stock value following RTO mandates, yet the mandates keep coming.

Loss of the audience. Narcissists depend on what researchers call ‘narcissistic supply’, which translates to the admiration, attention and deference of the people around them. In an office environment, this is readily available: the team that reacts when they walk in, the meeting where all eyes are on them, the spontaneous moments of flattery that accumulate through the day. Remote work collapses that. Flattery loses its texture over Slack and other internal messaging systems. Being admired is harder when you are a face on a small screen among ten other faces on small screens. The Wharton study draws on media richness theory to explain this: face-to-face environments offer a far richer channel for commanding attention, projecting authority and receiving the real-time validation that narcissistic leaders depend on. You may also find it useful to read about how to recognise when you are being triggered in a conflict situation, because working under a leader like this can affect you in ways you might not immediately connect to the dynamic.

Loss of visibility and prestige. For many narcissistic leaders, the office is a place of work as well as a stage. The corner office, the commanding entrance, the packed meeting room where they hold court. Interestingly, the Wharton study found that highly narcissistic leaders were more likely to hold dual roles, such as serving simultaneously as CEO and board chair, positions that maximise visibility and influence. Remote work removes the stage. You cannot perform authority for an audience that is not there. understand what is driving the behaviour, that fragile ego searching for constant reinforcement, the patterns become much easier to recognise.

What Does This Look Like in Practice?

The research explains the pattern. But you may already recognise some of these scenarios from your own experience.

The manager who calls the whole team back to the office, then spends most of the day behind a closed door. The leader who introduces surveillance software and mandatory video check-ins for remote workers, whilst in-office employees work with full autonomy. The CEO who publicly attributes poor company performance to remote working, despite no change in the underlying financials before and after the return mandate.

Or perhaps the most telling version: the boss who was entirely comfortable with remote work during the pandemic, when everyone was in the same situation, but became increasingly controlling as employees began to thrive independently and no longer needed the office to do their jobs.

In conflict terms, what we are seeing in each of these scenarios is a power-based response to a perceived threat. The narcissistic leader is not reacting to remote work itself. They are reacting to what remote work takes away from them. If you have read our post on the difference between confidence and narcissism at work, you will recognise this pattern: a fragile ego, dependent on external validation, responding to threat with control.m.

The Real Cost to Employees

If you are working under this kind of pressure, it is worth knowing that the impact is real, measurable and widely documented.

According to research by Hays covering 3,600 UK workers, 38% of employees said that even the threat of an RTO mandate — before any actual return — had already negatively affected their wellbeing. Women reported higher levels of stress than men, and younger workers were disproportionately affected, with nearly half of those aged 20 to 29 expressing anxiety about the prospect of being called back.

The wider data paints a similarly stark picture. RTO mandates are associated with lower intent to stay among top performers, reduced trust between employees and managers, and sharply increased job-search activity, particularly among those from marginalised groups who had most benefited from the flexibility of remote work.

Burnout rises significantly in organisations with enforced return policies. For those with caring responsibilities, the majority of whom are women, a forced return to the office is not just inconvenient. In some cases, it makes continued employment impossible.

When the mandate is driven by a leader’s psychological need for control rather than any genuine operational requirement, employees often sense the injustice — even if they cannot name it. That sense of being managed for someone else’s ego, rather than for your own performance or the organisation’s needs, compounds the psychological toll considerably.

Working under a narcissistic leader in any context is exhausting. But having your autonomy stripped away for reasons that have nothing to do with your output is a specific kind of harm and one that comes up regularly in conflict coaching.

How Do You Protect Yourself?

There is no perfect solution to working under a narcissistic leader. But there are things that genuinely help.

Do not internalise it. The research is clear: resistance to remote work driven by narcissism is about the leader’s psychology, not your performance, your commitment or your value to the organisation. The moment you start believing otherwise is the moment it starts doing real damage.

Document your output meticulously. Build a clear, ongoing record of your work, your results and your communication. Narcissistic leaders are skilled at deflecting blame when things go wrong and rewriting history when it suits them. Your documentation protects you.

Keep interactions brief, informative, friendly and firm. The BIFF method, developed for exactly these kinds of dynamics, keeps your exchanges professional and limits the emotional ‘supply’ a narcissistic leader feeds on. Short responses, factual in content, warm in tone, firm on substance.

Appeal to their goals, not yours. If you need more flexibility, frame the conversation around what benefits them, results they can take credit for, visibility they can leverage, outcomes that reflect well on their leadership. It should not have to work this way, but it often does.

Build your network beyond your direct manager. Narcissistic leaders often, consciously or not, work to isolate the people around them. Having strong relationships with colleagues, mentors and senior figures outside your immediate team gives you professional grounding that is harder to undermine.

Know when the situation needs professional support. If the dynamic is affecting your mental health, your career or your sense of reality, that is a conflict situation and conflict coaching exists precisely for this. You do not have to manage it alone, and trying to often makes it harder.

This is not about managing a difficult personality. It is a structural conflict and you deserve proper support in navigating it.

For practical tools on preparing for difficult conversations with a controlling leader, the resources in the conflict coaching programme can help you plan, prepare and stay grounded. You might also find it useful to explore the Narcissist Conflict Toolkit in the shop, developed specifically for situations like this.

A Note for Leaders and HR Teams

If you are reading this from a leadership or HR perspective, the research carries a message worth sitting with.

Blanket return-to-office mandates consistently reduce retention without improving performance. The data on this is clear and has been replicated across multiple independent studies. The organisations that are seeing the greatest attrition of talented people are often those with the most rigid attendance policies.

If your organisation is experiencing resistance to flexible working, particularly if that resistance is coming from the top, it may be worth pinpointing whose resistance it actually is, and what is driving it. Operational need and personal ego are very different motivations, even when they are dressed in the same language.

The solution is rarely about going fully remote. It is about ensuring that workplace decisions are made for the right reasons. Conflict specialists and mediators can help organisations identify when power dynamics are shaping policy, and facilitate healthier conversations about how and where work actually gets done. The conflict consulting and mediation services at The Conflict Expert are designed exactly for those conversations.

You Do Not Have to Navigate This Alone

Working under a narcissistic leader is one of the most common, and most quietly damaging, conflict situations I see in practice. People often arrive exhausted, confused about whether they are seeing the situation clearly, and unsure whether what they are experiencing even counts as a problem worth addressing.

It does. And it is.

Whether you are dealing with a controlling manager, an unfair workplace policy, or a pattern of behaviour that is affecting your confidence and your wellbeing, conflict coaching can help you move forward with clarity. We will look at what is actually happening, what your options are, and what a realistic path through looks like.

Book a free 20-minute discovery call and let’s start there. No pressure, no obligation just a honest conversation about where you are and what might help.