Power vs. Presence

Daniel Goleman is author of the international best-seller Emotional Intelligence and Optimal: How to Sustain Personal and Organizational Excellence Every Day. He is a regular contributor to Korn Ferry. 

Five years post-pandemic and the debate rages on: Should employees return to the office? And if so, how often, how soon, and on whose terms?

On the surface, RTO mandates seem like an operational issue. But once you peel back the layers, the real issue emerges: a deep disconnect between what employers are demanding and what employees want. RTO isn’t a logistics issue—it’s a leadership issue and a cultural inflection point.

According to Korn Ferry’s Workforce 2025 report, 59% of global employees are now working full-time in the office, but only 19% actually want to be there. Nearly half, 48% say a hybrid model would be ideal, yet only 27% are given the option. A full quarter would prefer to remain fully remote. What’s more, these preferences aren’t evenly distributed. Cultural norms, commuting infrastructure, and work-life expectations vary dramatically by region. In Brazil, for instance, only 12% are satisfied with full-time office life. In Japan, that figure rises to 36%, perhaps because Japanese companies often try to create a community-like culture. Or perhaps it has something to do with living quarters and outdoor life—both of which impact whether employees see their cubicle as a place of respite or not.

This creates a complex dilemma for global employers: Enforce one-size-fits-all policies and risk alienating teams in entire regions, or take a tailored, market-specific approach that may be harder to execute, but easier on morale. “One-size-fits-all policies risk alienating employees, while case-by-case approaches create complexity and confusion,” the report notes. But here's the truth: The solution isn’t in the policy; it’s in the process. What matters most is how leaders engage their people and roll out change across a diverse workforce.

Like many modern debates in leadership, this issue circles back to emotional intelligence. Too many RTO decisions are being made unilaterally, driven by control, habit, or fear of losing cultural cohesion. These motivations assume culture is place-based—that it can only be created in a building. But as any culture expert will tell you, culture is really about how employees feel. It’s about behaviors and the intangible je ne sais quoi of how teams work together. In the best places to work, employees like where they work, believe in what they are working toward, and like who they work for. This felt sense of happiness and purpose directly correlates with engagement.

When asked what makes a good workplace, employees in Korn Ferry's workforce study prioritized communication, fair compensation, good training, and trust. “The best workplace policies aren’t about control,” says Daren Kemp, Korn Ferry’s president of EMEA. “They’re about clarity, culture, and making it easy for people to do their best work.”

Emotionally intelligent leaders provide these things. Instead of always dictating, they prioritize dialogue. With strong self-awareness, good organizational understanding, and consistent empathy, they solve problems with people, not just for them. These leaders don’t assume RTO mandates will lead to a more engaged workforce—they ask directly: What do you need to feel connected, creative, and supported in doing your job?

This kind of inquiry doesn’t translate to multiple-choice questions on a return-to-office survey. It requires curiosity, empathy, and an appetite for complexity and paradox. Leaders who ask deeper questions of their employees—who aim to truly know them—must have the courage to face truths, even the ones that don’t fit the organization’s policies or top-down agenda. The reality is that some of the loudest RTO pushes come from companies that yearn for what a full office symbolizes to them, regardless of the actual value it provides to their people.

According to entrepreneur Joe Procopio, despite romantic notions of “magic elevator conversations” sparking idea epiphanies, there’s no overwhelming evidence that productivity spikes with mandated office returns. In fact, when workers feel confined rather than included, they are less likely to have creative conversations, no matter where they are.

Some employers seemed to settle on a hybrid model as a way of holding on to office culture without entirely losing their workforce. In 2023, Nick Bloom, a Stanford economist and remote-work researcher, shared data suggesting most businesses were settling at three days in the office and two at home. “The return-to-office push seems to have died,” he tweeted. “The RTO wars were over. Hybrid won.” But over the past year, policy requirements for office attendance have jumped 10%, while actual attendance has increased less than 2%.

This disconnect is not without consequence. When employees feel forced back into a structure that doesn’t support how they work best, trust erodes, and “quiet quitting" emerges. Productivity drops not because people are at home, but because they feel unheard.

When trust is on the table, RTO isn’t just a workplace debate—it’s a litmus test for leaders. Five years post-pandemic, the world is still reshaping itself. Social distancing, masking, and public-health mandates taught us that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to how we build norms. People are more likely to advocate for themselves and less likely to tolerate being told what to do without being told why.

Leadership today isn’t about calling people back to some vision of the past—it’s about engaging them in defining the present. The leaders who choose connection will reap rewards like commitment, engagement, and innovation. Those who choose control may find themselves with empty chairs and a workforce that’s no longer performance ready.

Co-written by Elizabeth Solomon

Click here to learn more about Daniel Goleman's Building Blocks of Emotional Intelligence.