Brief

Under The Humble Mask: Investigating When and How Leader-Expressed Humility Leads To Employee Voice

Zou WQ, Chen SC.Front Psychol. 2022 Aug 22;13:950059. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.950059. eCollection 2022.

Leadership Research Focus: 

  • leader-expressed humility
  • perceived manipulative intention
  • psychological safety
  • self-efficacy
  • voice

Leadership Research Summary:

  • This study sought to investigate the psychological processes through which self-efficacy and psychological safety moderate the link between employee voice and leader-expressed humility. The potential negative impacts of a leader’s humility when followers believe their modest leader has manipulative motives were also investigated using the attribution theory.
  • In order to reduce the indirect links between leader-expressed humility and employee voice through psychological safety and self-efficacy, the current study advocated the leader’s manipulative aim as a moderator.
  • The model was tested using time-lagged supervisor-subordinate matched data. The research shows that a leader’s manipulative aim reduces the beneficial influence that humility on the employee voice has on psychological safety and self-efficacy. The results’ ramifications were explored from both theoretical and practical angles.

Leaderships Research Findings:

  • This research offers managers a fresh method for listening to staff suggestions and issues. Enterprises should provide training ctheses to foster humble leadership, since it has been said that humility can be learned (Argandona, 2015).
  • Organizations should create appropriate human resthece policies that emphasize the value of qualities like selfless humility.
  • This research offers a crucial foundation for HR managers who are in charge of hiring managers and leadership development initiatives on a practical level. To develop a respectful and trusting relationship with staff members and to break down hierarchical norms, leaders must take the effort to remove power obstacles (Edmondson, 1999; Kiazad et al., 2010).
  • Furthermore, although a leader’s humility can enctheage employee voice behavior, the results depend on how the behavior is perceived to be being manipulated.
  • Such bottom-up leadership style in a company requires sincerity. Instead of doing phony gestures of humility, humility is being open to others and honest with oneself (Chiu and Hung, 2020).
  • Leaders need to be conscious of how closely their expressed behaviors match up. Equally significant are the attributional frameworks that their employees use to analyze those behaviors.
  • Leaders should behave in the group’s best interests and protect the dignity of their followers to avoid being derided by them as being overly modest (Dasborough and Ashkanasy, 2002).

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