Millions of people all around the world are starting their workday and deciding whether to have one more cup of coffee and whether to even get dressed for the day. Many will have a teleconference from their home office or kitchen. But, there will be some days when they will have to get up, get dressed and travel to their workplace. On those mornings, they will likely spend two hours getting ready for work then drive 45 minutes to an hour in heavy traffic and repeat the same process on the way home. That’s more than three hours of time that could have been spent working.

I’m not saying that every telecommuter works constantly during that extra three hours, but many get a lot done during those times. They aren’t exhausted by the need to participate in conference calls or other remote meetings. Most telecommuters get more done when they work from home. That may not be true every day or for every worker, but most of the time it is. Many companies have adopted some form of work-from-home policy. The best of those programs include some planning, some boundaries, some requirements for “face time” and so forth. Most of those leaders have been willing to do the hard work needed to make the idea work, not only for the team member but for the organization as well.

Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, sent a memo to the workforce that said, in part, “Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. Beginning in June, we’re asking all employees with work-from-home arrangements to work in Yahoo offices. If this impacts you, your management has already been in touch with next steps.”

The effect of her decision is to recall about 500 or so employees who have been working from home back to the office. So, “yahoo” or “boo hoo?” Was this courageous leadership or a step back into the past of autocratic management? The negative effects of working from home she cites are certainly arguable but for each one, there are equally compelling arguments, anecdotes, and evidence that people produce more, higher quality, and more creative work from home.

A study conducted by CTrip, a 16,000-employee travel agency, randomly assigned call center employees who volunteered for the study to either work from home or in the office for nine months. The results showed that working from home led to a 13 percent performance increase, of which, roughly 9 percent was due to working more minutes per shift (fewer breaks and sick days) and 4 percent from more calls per minute (attributed to a quieter working environment). Home workers also reported improved work satisfaction and experienced less turnover. Due to the success of the experiment, CTrip rolled out the option to work from home to the whole firm and allowed the experimental employees to reselect between the home or office. Interestingly, over half of them switched, which led to the gains from working from home almost doubling to 22 percent. This study highlights the benefits of learning and selection effects when adopting modern management practices like working from home.

There is also a cost associated with the lack of face-to-face communication. In a study on remote product development teams, Barczak, McDonough and Athanassiou found that to foster trust among team members, it is critical for project leaders to have a face-to-face meeting with the entire team at the beginning of a project. The kick-off meeting allows the leader to essentially mold the team into an effective entity. Teams that skip this step do not perform as well on quite a few dimensions, such as trust is lower, they are less creative, less productive, and so on. No team can rely entirely on electronic communication.

Working from home, however, has many benefits for the worker as well as his or her employer. A study by the American Psychological Association found that people were, in general, happier, healthier and more productive when working from home. Turnover was lower. There was less stress (a huge cost to employers). There were fewer conflicts and people felt more autonomous. The following year, CompTIA Research conducted a study that showed employees who worked from home were more productive because of the reduced commute, better diets, more sleep, fewer sick days and felt good about not contributing quite as much to polluting the environment.

But, this is not really a dichotomy. There are certain kinds of tasks, circumstances, security issues, and so on that should be taken into account when deciding if, and how often, team members should work from home. Some kinds of jobs work better by allowing team members to work from home. Some need the face-to-face interaction. Most teams need at least some physical presence from time to time. But, most jobs also have times when being away from the office without the constant stream of interruptions is highly desirable. As with any major change in work place policies or procedures, there are no simple “one-size-fits-all” solutions.

In addition to the potential benefits of allowing team members to work from home, an across the board decision that “no one can now work from home” also brings with it the costs of taking away a benefit that people already have. Such a sweeping change is bound to be seen as an arbitrary slap in the face of the team member who has been productive and making a substantial contribution while telecommuting. Any conceivable gain in the number of hours put in or the number of possible chance encounters will be overwhelmingly outweighed by the lack of trust communicated by such a move. The leadership issue raised here is not whether working from home is better than going into the office or whether teams need face-to-face communication, but how do you go about making such decisions.

So what do you do if you are an organizational leader and you are worried that a team member is not performing well while working from home? Or what if you are concerned that your team is not functioning well together because so many team members are working solo while telecommuting? Do you punish everyone because one team member is not meeting deadlines? Do you make the decision for the team rather than including all the team members in the problem solving? We should have enough experience by now to know better. If your objective is to create a high performance team, there are several principles that apply whether the team member is working from home or in the office, permanent or temporary, a new hire or a long-time employee, a man or a woman, technical or support, no matter who he or she is.

• Organizations (and teams) are systems. All organizations are groups of people with a function to perform. The organization will perform its function to the degree that those relationships work or don’t work. Anything that you do to reduce trust will diminish the system’s performance. Arbitrary decisions invariably damage relationships and lower trust.

• When people have a voice in making a decision, they will have more motivation to implement it. People respond well to being trusted and treated like adults. A top-down edict to banish telecommuting will result in less motivation to achieve the organization’s goals, not more.

• Human beings are purposeful. Most human behavior can be explained by understanding what need it satisfies. Those needs are typically discovered by listening carefully rather than by making assumptions. When people’s needs are not respected or understood by their leader, they seek other ways to meet those needs. Often, those “other ways” are less productive and less likely to help the organization meet its objectives. Working from home often helps meet many of those needs.

• If a leader is concerned about a team member who is working from home and not meeting his or her goals, the leader should confront that behavior directly, not take away a potentially powerful tool from those who are using it effectively. It is an act of respect to speak directly to the person whose behavior is unacceptable rather than making sweeping generalizations about all of the team members.

• When needs are in conflict, the leader should seek mutually acceptable solutions.The arbitrary use of power always creates a backlash of resentment and subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) resistance or even retribution.

On the surface, Mayer’s decision seems to violate all of these principles. Often, the negative impact of such decision-making is masked by temporary surges in organizational performance, or level of activity. When the boss uses her power to force a policy that does not meet the needs of the team members, it is often met with a series of coping responses that make it hard to objectively evaluate the impact of the decision. People withhold information. They put in more hours. There is a lot of activity. But the positives are often short-lived. Such bursts of energy are unsustainable without the use of even more power and vigilance. The additional power and vigilance leads to more distrust, more resistance, more subtle sabotage, more silence, requiring ever more power and vigilance. A never-ending cycle!

If a leader is concerned that his or her work-from-home policy is not working the way it should, a closer examination of the way it is being implemented and maintained should be conducted. A work-from-home policy can be a very powerful tool when done properly. Don’t just hand the team member a laptop and a dozen assignments then say, “goodbye.” It takes some planning. Involve the team in designing the process. Make the organizational needs clear. Don’t settle for less than excellent performance. Such a policy should be executed with the same care as any other policy. If there is a problem, don’t “throw out the baby with the bathwater.” Fix the problem.

Mayer said, “We need to be one Yahoo, and that starts with physically being together. To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people and impromptu team meetings.”

If that’s what she really means, she has taken one giant step backward.