Managing Remote Or Hybrid Teams? Here’s What Your Personality Says About ‘Productivity Paranoia’

Since remote working first gained traction in 2020, much has been written about work-from-home paranoia — a state of fear in which an employee thinks they’ll be forgotten or they’re doing something wrong because they’re out of sight and out of mind. 

Less has been written about the other side of the equation. Managers who lead remote or hybrid teams often struggle with productivity paranoia — a nagging suspicion that, because team members can’t be seen at their desks, they're not working as hard as they should be. If you’ve ever hovered over log-in times or refreshed the Slack app to check that your team members are online and working, you’ve already met the classic symptoms.

While 87 percent of employees describe themselves as productive at work, only 12 percent of leaders feel confident that their team is getting things done, according to a recent Microsoft survey. Clearly, there’s a disconnect between perception and reality, and one that the Big Five personality system can help us understand.

Are You Experiencing Productivity Paranoia? 

Productivity paranoia is sneaky in the sense that it sometimes appears as diligence or high managerial standards. Your job is to optimize your team’s productivity, so it makes sense that you want to keep track of their output. It’s easy to justify constant check-ins and monitoring as just doing your job but, over time, that hyper-vigilance can erode trust and undermine the very productivity you’re aiming to support. The following are signs that your scrutiny is going too far:

• You’re scheduling endless meetings and/or video calls, or insisting your team is on camera all day. If you can’t see your employees working, you might feel like you have to check in with them for updates constantly. 
• You have unrealistic work or deadline expectations. “When the work isn’t physically seen, it’s easy to assume it should have been done sooner,” says professor of behavioral science, Ayelet Fishbach (via BBC).
• You’re constantly checking for signs that your workers are busy. How quickly do they reply to your messages? How long do they spend in shared documents?
• You treat time as the only important success metric. This suggests that you’re measuring workers’ productivity by how many hours they’re tracking instead of by work quality. 

Why Productivity Paranoia is Toxic 

Productivity paranoia can lead you to fill in the blanks when someone doesn’t instantly respond to a message, assuming it’s because they're slacking off when, in reality, they might be deep in focused work or simply taking a well-deserved break. Illogical assumptions like these can cause the team’s stress to skyrocket. They might feel like they can never do enough under your watchful eye, and even develop productivity anxiety — a persistent worry that their efforts will never quite measure up, no matter how hard they work.

Ironically, the harder leaders push for visible output, the more productivity takes a hit. According to Slack’s State of Work report, employees end up spending nearly a third of their time on keeping up appearances, doing work that looks good to their manager but doesn’t necessarily move the needle. When remote team members feel pressure to prove they’re busy, energy gets siphoned into performative updates rather than genuine results.

If that’s not enough, many workers hesitate before taking breaks if they feel monitored by their managers. They might also feel afraid to take risks and be creative, because they’re so focused on busyness. If your workers are avoiding breaks and working overtime because you’re looking over their digital shoulder, productivity paranoia could become a burnout trigger. Trust, once lost, is hard to get back. In extreme cases, a manager’s productivity paranoia could nudge employees to seek employment elsewhere.

Big Five Personality Types Most Prone to Productivity Paranoia 

There hasn't been much direct research investigating which Big Five personality types are most susceptible to productivity paranoia in remote management, so what follows are correlations and informed guesses about how these traits could shape behaviour in this context. The Big Five is a widely accepted model that breaks personality down into five core traits: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. Each describes a different aspect of how people think, feel and act.

Low Openness 

Managers who score low in Openness prefer clear structures and established routines instead of experimenting with new ideas, and find uncertainty stressful. When managing remote workers, you might gravitate towards visible productivity metrics like task turnaround times or how many updates your team members have shared with you, because these measures offer the concrete reassurance and predictability that comes from sticking to tried-and-true methods.

High Neuroticism 

Neuroticism is the trait of emotional reactivity and people high in Neuroticism are quick to worry and second-guess themselves. When you can’t see your team working hard at their desks, you might jump to worst-case scenarios such as the team missing deadlines or losing a major client that puts jobs at risk. Micromanaging your team might be your go-to solution to lower your stress. 

High Conscientiousness 

Highly Conscientious managers set goals and formulate clear structures for how to achieve them. While such behavior is a strength, it could lead to setting up inflexible workflows or adopting time-tracking tools that can make your team members feel monitored. 

High Extraversion 

Scoring high on Extraversion means you thrive on interaction, and will seek opportunities to bounce ideas off others and think out loud, using team members as your sounding board. Since remote work conditions can make you feel left out of the loop, you might fill the workday with “quick chats” and check-ins that interrupt your workers’ flow. 

High Agreeableness 

People with high Agreeableness prioritize harmony and cooperation. They dislike conflict, and the steps they take to avoid it could feed productivity paranoia — checking in too often, swooping in to “rescue” tasks, or worrying work won’t get done unless you step in. 

How to Stop Productivity Paranoia in its Tracks 

While remote work will also pose challenges, it’s entirely possible to stop irrational suspicion in its tracks and start showing your team the trust they deserve. 

• Reframe your check-ins. Approximately 70 percent of meetings keep employees from completing their tasks, and the hangover employees get from bad meetings can last for days. Only have meetings when they serve a real purpose. 
• Set up project management tools. Tools such as Clickup and Trello make deadlines and project progress visible to everyone on your team, so you don’t feel out of the loop or have to engage in productivity paranoia to gain information. Make sure everyone on your team knows how to update their progress consistently. 
• Focus on outcomes, not hours. When people focus on achieving results, they’ll be geared to optimize their time, so concentrate on what needs to get done instead of how many hours it will take. For hourly or billable work, agree on expectations with your team to reduce uncertainty and stress.
• Give your remote workers some control. Features like flexible start and end times can help your remote workers feel trusted by you and have more autonomy. But, combine this with clear expectations, such as by specifying what tasks have fixed deadlines, so they know exactly what’s expected of them.  

While being on top of team performance and attuned to goings-on can be a managerial advantage, it has the opposite effect when taken too far. As working from home settles into a more permanent hybrid model, there needs to be a shift towards trust-based management that focuses on outcomes rather than activity. Your team members are different people with different work styles and energy patterns. The managers who learn to lean into their team's strengths will see better results than those who continue to hover over digital shoulders.