Leadership Research Summary:
- Leadership has been found to be linked with team innovation. Based on social information processing theory and substitutes for leadership theory, this paper examines the influence of leader humility on team innovation. Results from 90 teams showed that leader humility will enhance team innovation by fostering team voice climate. Further, task interdependence substitutes the effect of leader humility on team innovation through an indirect way via team voice climate.
Leadership Research Implications and Findings:
- The research has contributed to leader humility literature by answering the calls for examining how leader humility influences team outcomes and by clarifying the team-level mechanisms related to voice climate underlying the relationship between leader humility and team innovation. Although the significant effect of leadership on team innovation has been examined, different leadership styles emphasize different influence tactics on team innovation. For example, transformational leadership fosters team innovation by sharing the same vision and goal with team members (Dong et al., 2016; Li et al., 2016). Paulsen et al. (2009) found that charismatic leaders promote team innovation by supporting a sense of team identity and commitment, and encouraging team members to cooperate through idea articulation. However, our study showed that, without shaping a shared vision, leader humility would have a significant effect on team innovation by fostering team voice climate.
- Thus, the research provides evidence for DeRue’s (2011) argument about shaping a vision or a collective goal is not necessary for leadership. Moreover, although voice behavior has been receiving much attention over the last few decades (Detert and Burris, 2007; Ng and Feldman, 2013), it is not long before voice climate is regarded as a kind of team climate (Morrison et al., 2011). Although Morrison et al. (2011) proposed the concept of team voice climate and pointed to its unique value in team, how to foster team voice climate is still under discovered. Extending their work, we have explored the antecedents of team voice climate to uncover its mediating role in the relationship between leader humility and team innovation. Thus, the research both contributes to leader humility literature by revealing its team-level mechanism and expands the work of West and Wallace (1991) about the important role of team climate on team outcomes.
- In the past, a leader was perceived to be a strong-willed individual with the personality characteristics of dominance, ascendancy, and aggressiveness. By contrast, the research has found that leader humility positively impacts team climate and team innovation. Therefore, leaders should foster their humility to direct their organizations in increasingly dynamic and turbulent environment. Nielsen et al. (2013) have pointed out same exercises for leaders to cultivate humble leadership, such as embracing a vision larger than oneself, adopting a humble stance, keeping a learning diary, and practicing self-sacrifice. Following Nielsen et al. (2013)’s suggestions, companies can train leaders to express humility in focused training programs and leaders themselves should learn how to express humility. Through much effort, organizations should be able to benefit from high-quality innovations.
- Although the results have shown that leader humility is positively related to team innovation, this relationship may vary in different work conditions. The findings of the research has found that task interdependence can act as a substitute for humble leaders’ positive effect on team climate and team innovation. Thus, organizations may arrange humble leaders with some specific teams. For example, organizations may choose humble leaders to manage teams of low task interdependence in order to foster team voice climate and team innovation. Meanwhile, our results also act as a reminder to leaders that humility may not always produce positive effects. Under some specific conditions (i.e., high task interdependence), the positive effect of leader humility on some team outcomes (e.g., team innovation) may disappear.