Effects of Leader Humility on the Performance of Virtual Groups

Abstract

Personal humility contributes to leadership effectiveness in a number of situations. However, causal mechanisms linking leader humility to positive outcomes appear to vary by task and by context. The present study investigated a mediation model where leader humility was hypothesized to lead to both a sense of psychological safety in the group and an increased sense of liking for the leader when conducting a highly interdependent task in a virtual environment. In turn, psychological safety and liking for the leader were theorized to positively affect the flow of information in the group, thereby improving group performance. Findings from three experimental studies supported the idea that leader humility positively affects psychological safety in virtual groups and increases liking for the leader. However, psychological safety and liking for the leader only mediated the intent to improve the flow of information in the group. While actual information flow and group performance under a humble leader were in the anticipated direction, the results were not statistically significant, even after controlling for the age and gender of group members. Reasons for humble leaders’ lack of effect on information flow and group performance during the conduct of a conjunctive task in a virtual environment are discussed and future research directions are identified.

Humble leadership: A review and synthesis of leader expressed humility

“…Experiments are fundamental because they allow scholars to make casual claims (Antonakis et al, 2010; Lonati et al, 2018). Several different experimental designs were employed, including vignettes (e.g., Cojuharenco & Karelaia, 2020; Rego et al, 2019; Swain, 2018; Zhu et al, 2019) and experiential recall (e.g., Qin et al, 2020). These experimental studies highlight the ability to manipulate humble leadership.…”

“…In addition to impacting followers, humble leadership can similarly benefit teams and increase information flow (Swain, 2018). Finally, humble leadership also influences a leader's own subsequent behavior.…”

High involvement work practices often lead to burnout, but thanks to humble leadership

“…In line with the same reasoning, we argue that employees working under leaders who are high in humility may perceive a sense of relief from high involvement at the cost of family time. It may happen because they may feel heard of their concerns, care about their family life and observe empathetic leaders understand their issues (LaBouff et al, 2012;Swain, 2018). Employees' perception of such social support and altruistic behavior, characterized in humble leadership, is less likely to perceive an imbalance in their work and family life.…”

How Humble Leadership Influences the Innovation of Technology Standards: A Moderated Mediation Model

“…However, knowledge sharing in a team does not happen spontaneously, and leadership style affects the knowledge sharing and knowledge integration behaviors of members of an organization [48,49].The process of technology standard innovation requires engaging members from different organizations to participate in the activity to facilitate an information flow through collecting, processing, analyzing, and integrating knowledge. Swain [50] has shown that the humility of a leader can smooth the information flow in a team. This implies that humble leadership may have a positive impact on the exchange and combination of knowledge in the team, so we propose: Hypothesis 1.…”