A fear‐based view of wisdom: The role of leader fear of failure and psychological empowerment

Abstract

Leader wisdom is crucial to effective organizations because it is one of the greatest human capacities. However, understanding what factors impact leader wisdom is still developing. In this paper, we rely on a fear-based view of wisdom and empirically examine through a quantitative study of 249 leaders if one of the primary regulators of human behavior (fear) is positively related to wisdom. We are specifically focused on the role of fear of failure and wisdom. Additionally, because we recognize that fear has a negative connotation and has a tipping point regarding leader effectiveness, we propose that psychological empowerment serves as a coping mechanism for fear and mediates the relationship between fear of failure and wisdom. Through structural equation modeling (SEM), we demonstrate that fear of failure does positively impact leader wisdom and that this relationship is mediated by psychological empowerment.This study contributes to the literature by advancing the fear-based view of wisdom which unites two of the most powerful concepts in human history: fear and wisdom.Although wisdom has a resurgence of interest in business literature, fear is not given much attention. By theoretically and empirically linking fear of failure with wisdom, we shed light on how fear is an important motivating mechanism. The study also contributes to practice by suggesting leaders should fear failure and avoid minimizing fears to be wise.

Fueled by a Fearful Leader: When, to What Extent and How Leader Fear of COVID-19 Promotes Employee Performance

“…Indeed, only a few studies assessed leader fear in organizations, yielding mixed findings. While some studies provided evidence for the negative effects of leader fearful states (Mohan, Voss, & Jiménez, 2017;Wisse, Rus, Keller, & Sleebos, 2019), other studies reported non-significant (Eisenberger et al, 2014;Lagios, Restubog, Garcia, & Caesens, 2023) or even positive (Solansky, Wang, & Quansah, 2023) effects. As environmental disruptions such as pandemics are tough managerial concerns (Kim, Vaiman, & Sanders, 2022), advancing our understanding of the specific relationship between leaders' fear of COVID-19 and employee performance may help derive management strategies to enable leaders to turn their negative emotional states into drivers of effective leadership and improve employee proficiency.…”

“…Eisenberger et al (2014) reported supervisor fear of exploitation in interpersonal relationships to be unrelated to subordinates' perceptions of leader-member exchange, and Lagios et al (2023) found supervisor fear or retaliation to be unrelated to supervisor undermining behavior. Finally, Solansky et al (2023) provided evidence for the benefits of leader fear of failure for leader psychological empowerment and wisdom.…”

Relationship among Aggression, Non-Suicidal Self-Injury, and Depression in Youths

“…On the other hand, they usually show various inward and outward attacking forms, such as self-injury, suicide, impulsion, agitation, and so on. Depression is likely to be a predictive factor of NSSI behaviors because not only can it hurt their bodies and threaten their lives, but may also bring threats to others ( 16 ). Depression symptoms are closely related to aggressive behaviors and boys with depression have more serious and diversified criminal behaviors ( 17 ).…”