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To my beloved Lindsay
—J.C.
To Joe, Drew, and Natalie, with love
—D.D.
Preface: “The Most Obscure PhD in History”: The Story Behind This Book
“That has to be the single most obscure PhD in history.”
Those were my first words to Darleen DeRosa, when I was introduced to her in January of 2020. We were in the Stamford, Connecticut, office of Spencer Stuart, one of the world's leading global leadership advisory and executive search firms. For 27 years I've had the pleasure of working at Spencer Stuart, the worldwide leader in CEO, board, and C-suite executive recruiting and leadership, organizational, and culture advisory services, channeling my passion of connecting with and building the very best talent. Darleen had just been recruited as a core member of our Leadership Advisory Services Practice. For the prior dozen years, Darleen led a highly specialized advisory firm, OnPoint Consulting, after having served as an executive director in the assessment practice of another leading firm.
Darleen explained that she had long been passionate about the topic of virtual teams as a part of her broader interest in leadership development and succession planning. In fact, when she was doing her doctoral work in social/organizational psychology at Temple University, her subspecialty was how to build, manage, optimize, and create cultures for virtual teams.
“I think that virtual leadership will become increasingly important as remote work becomes even more prevalent in the future,” Darleen said. “Right now, about 10% of employees in the U.S. work remotely, and projections suggest that by 2025 that number could double to 20%!”
Okay, that is all fine and well, I thought at the time. But the issue didn't feel that relevant to me personally.
How the world changed! Only a couple of months later, as COVID-19 became a global pandemic, Darleen's expertise rocketed from the periphery to the epicenter of our world. In late February 2020, in a staff meeting, Darleen gave a training session on virtual leadership, including some critical basics, such as how to facilitate and lead a virtual meeting. Immediately, Darleen became a rock star and in heavy demand by our clients around the world. Within weeks, she was a keen differentiator as we were advising boards and senior executives in real time as they were navigating some of the most critical leadership moments of their careers.
Directly applying lessons from Darleen, we were able to shift much of our work at Spencer Stuart and seamlessly advise clients on virtual leadership – by then a ubiquitous challenge. Thanks to that, we were able to keep our business operating, and move our CEO, board director, C-suite executive searches, and succession planning assignments forward effectively during the early and uncertain pandemic days of March and April 2020.
That summer, knowing that I have long been a student of leadership, CEO succession, and executive success, Darleen called and asked if I would co-author a book on virtual leadership. She shared that a senior editor at John Wiley & Sons had called suggesting that she update her 2010 book, Virtual Success: A Practical Guide for Working and Leading from a Distance.
I was thrilled. From that time on, we dove in together to create Leading at a Distance. The process of researching and writing the book has been a fun and incredibly helpful learning journey. I've applied the lessons on staying connected, building trust, coaching, and innovating with our Spencer Stuart CEO Practice team, composed of Melissa Stone, Hannah Ford, Ashley Zaslav, Karen Steinegger, and Maddi Conlin. That has been the very best part of working remotely. I feel we are all more in synch and effective than ever, although I really miss our team dinners. And similarly, I was able to lead a wide variety of CEO searches and succession projects, from eBay to Virgin Galactic, completely virtually, by following all the practices outlined in this book.
Both Darleen and I hope that you enjoy this book – and more importantly, that you apply it to accelerate your own professional success and the achievements and satisfaction of your teams and organizations.
Jim Citrin, November 2020
During college at Holy Cross, I always thought that I would become a clinical psychologist. After college, I worked in a clinical setting at Yale University School of Medicine for several years and realized that I could apply the same practices in consulting, where I could blend two topics that I enjoyed – people and business. This led me to pursue a PhD in organizational psychology.
At that time, in the early 2000s, companies like AT&T and others began using virtual collaboration. I told my doctoral advisor that I wondered whether teams that worked virtually could be as effective as co-located teams. This wasn't just a theoretical question: I wanted to study real teams inside real companies. While I was conducting research for my PhD, I asked consulting firms to let me survey their clients. Eventually Steve Krupp at Right Management Consultants brought me on as an intern to conduct a global study. This internship quickly turned into a full-time consulting job, and that research became one of the first applied studies on this topic.
My fascination with virtual work continued. At OnPoint Consulting, the executive succession and leadership development firm I launched in 2008, we conducted three more global studies on virtual teams, which were by then becoming increasingly common. We strove to identify what differentiated the best virtual leaders and teams from the rest. Over the next 12-plus years, we consulted with numerous clients and helped them better equip their virtual leaders for success. After publishing my first book on this topic, Virtual Success: A Practical Guide for Working and Leading from a Distance (with Rick Lepsinger), we applied our experience to craft an array of leadership development programs for virtual leaders – which we eventually delivered in a “virtual” classroom.
When I joined Spencer Stuart in January 2020 to continue my emphasis on CEO succession, I thought my passion for virtual leadership would be put on hold. Little did I know that just two months later, we would face a global crisis where organizations had to pivot quickly to a virtual setting. On our firm's website, we published an article, “Leading from a Distance: 5 Lessons for Virtual Teaming,” and clients began asking for us to help them learn to operate in this new environment. Jim began sharing my articles on LinkedIn and inviting me to meetings with his clients to talk about their challenges working in this new normal.
When Wiley called to ask me to write a new book, my first inclination was to say no, given how busy I was with client work and the kids at home. However, I realized that this was the exact moment when leaders and companies needed these insights more than ever. What Jim referred to as “the most obscure PhD” was highly relevant to a broader audience. I
