In their New York Times opinion piece (The Secret Reason Bosses Want Everyone Back in the Office, Every Day of the Week), Adam Grant, Marissa Shandell, and Courtney Elliott offer a sharp explanation for why many bosses want employees back in the office full-time. Their argument centers on narcissism: some leaders who crave attention, status, and control may prefer workplaces where employees are physically present, visible, and available. The office becomes a source of validation. The boss walks through it and sees proof of authority.
Anyone who has worked for a status-conscious executive can recognize the pattern. Some leaders do not simply want work done. They want their importance affirmed, and a full office affirms it. Empty desks feel like rejection. Remote work can feel like a loss of relevance.
But narcissism may not tell the whole story; the push to return to the office also reveals a broader failure of leadership.
Remote and hybrid work require managers to do what good leaders should have been doing all along: set clear expectations, define success, communicate priorities, measure outcomes, and hold people accountable. When those disciplines are weak, the office becomes a substitute for management.
A leader who cannot articulate expectations may prefer a workplace where everyone stays within sight. A leader who cannot judge performance by results may rely on visible effort. A leader who has not learned to delegate may feel calmer when employees remain within reach. The office serves less as a place for collaboration and more as a tool for reassurance.
Why should leaders step back?
I learned this lesson the hard way. In the late 1990s, I led a successful department. People wanted to join it. The team was engaged, the work was strong, and the business was highly profitable. I did not think of myself as a micromanager, and by the usual definition, I was not. But my hands were in almost every project.
When senior management asked me to attend a leadership retreat run by the Center for Creative Leadership, I was initially offended. Why send me? No department seemed more energized, and none was delivering stronger financial results.
The experience changed my view. A team can be successful yet still be constrained by its leader. My close involvement had helped build the department, but it could also limit its growth. The business would only expand so far if every major decision, risk, or opportunity still passed too closely through me.
I became a champion of letting go. That did not mean abandoning standards or disappearing from the work. It meant trusting the people I had chosen carefully. It meant giving them more autonomy, more accountability, and more room to take risks, while making sure they knew I would back them up. The result was no less control in any meaningful sense. It had greater capacity. More initiative. More opportunities for the team and the business.
How anxiety and control influence office decisions
That lesson applies directly to today’s office mandates. Trust is at the center of the debate. Remote work requires leaders to trust adults to act responsibly. Trust does not mean neglect.
Employees who miss deadlines, avoid responsibility, or perform poorly should face consequences. But treating an entire workforce as suspect because some managers fear abuse is not leadership. It is anxiety turned into policy.
Anxiety also undermines delegation. Leaders who cannot trust employees outside their line of sight tend to hoard decisions, second-guess work, and create bottlenecks. They ask people to take ownership, then pull authority back the moment work occurs outside their direct line of sight. A return-to-office mandate gives leaders a sense of control without requiring them to share power.
Presence can be valuable. Some conversations and brainstorming sessions work better face-to-face. Mentorship matters, and new employees often learn by watching experienced colleagues navigate clients, meetings, setbacks, and internal politics. Plus, creative work can benefit from time spent together in the same room.
Those are arguments for purposeful office use, not blanket mandates. A well-led company can decide which tasks benefit from proximity and which do not. A weaker company defaults to a rule.
The result is corporate theater. Desks are occupied, conference rooms are booked, and hallways are busy. Executives can walk through the office and feel reassured, but movement is not progress. A crowded office can still yield shallow work, weak decisions, and slow execution. A quiet home office can yield focus, judgment, and results.
Empty buildings lead to empty reasoning
Another motive deserves candor: real estate. Many companies signed costly long-term leases. Headquarters became monuments to ambition, status, and permanence. After the pandemic, empty floors made those choices look wasteful. Bringing workers back helps leaders justify the cost to themselves, their boards, and their shareholders.
That does not make office space worthless; it means office space should serve work, not the other way around. Leaders should ask which teams need shared days, which meetings require in-person attendance, how mentoring will be conducted, and what employees gain from commuting. “Because we have the space” is not a strategy. A lease is not a leadership strategy, and sunk costs should not dictate employee policy.
Grant and his co-authors are right to highlight narcissism among some executives. For some bosses, the office is a stage, and employees are the audience. But the deeper problem may be less theatrical and more pervasive.
Many bosses want employees back because they have not learned to lead with trust, clarity, and results. The office can support good leadership, but it cannot replace it.
