Modeling How to Grow: An Inductive Examination of Humble Leader Behaviors, Contingencies, and Outcomes

Abstract

Although a growing number of leadership writers argue leader humility is important to organizational effectiveness, little is known about the construct, why some leaders behave more humbly than others, what these behaviors lead to, or what factors moderate the effectiveness of these behaviors. Drawing from 55 in-depth interviews with leaders from a wide variety of contexts, we develop a model of the behaviors, outcomes, and contingencies of humble leadership. We uncover that leader humility involves leaders modeling to followers how to grow and produces positive organizational outcomes by leading followers to believe that their own developmental journeys and feelings of uncertainty are legitimate in the workplace. We discuss how the emergent humility in leadership model informs a broad range of leadership issues, including organizational development and change, the evolution of leader-follower relationships, new pathways for engaging followers, and integrating top-down and bottom-up organizing.

Do They Walk the Talk? Gauging Acquiring CEO and Director Confidence in the Value Creation Potential of Announced Acquisitions

“…For example, it could be possible that CEOs of family-owned firms (Gomez-Mejia, Haynes, Nunez-Nickel, Jacobson, & Moyano-Fuentes, 2007), humble CEOs (e.g., Owens & Hekman, 2012), or those with lower-thanaverage risk tolerances (Finkelstein et al, 2009) may be more (or less) likely to acquire for value enhancement, rather than private interest, motives. 4 Pursuing such extensions may prove fruitful for corporate strategy and governance scholars.…”

Servant Leadership and the Effect of the Interaction Between Humility, Action, and Hierarchical Power on Follower Engagement

“…In addition, van Dierendonck and Patterson (2015) propose that the virtuous attitude of servant leaders, based on humility, gratitude, forgiveness, and altruism, will give rise to other behaviors like empowerment, stewardship or providing direction. Owens and Hekman (2012) propose that the leader's humility can be split essentially around ''three categories: (1) acknowledging personal limits, (2) spotlighting followers' strengths and contributions, and (3) modeling teachability.'' In a later study, these three categories have been captured in a quantitative instrument of leader expressed humility, which was shown to correlate with aspects like job engagement, job satisfaction, and team learning goal orientation (Owens et al 2013).…”

“…Given also the potential interaction between power and humility (Collins 2001;Owens and Hekman 2012), we proposed to further investigate if the effect of a humble service attitude would be more salient for servant leaders in higher hierarchical positions of power in an organization. In sum, our study aims to confirm the three-way interaction between the action side of servant leadership (captured in the dimensions of empowerment, accountability and stewardship), the humble service-oriented side (captured in the dimensions of humility and standing-back), and the hierarchical rank of the leader in inducing follower engagement (see Fig.…”

Are altruistic leaders worthy? The role of organizational learning capability

“…The research on effects of broadly defined leader behaviors has limitations that make the results difficult to interpret (Yukl, 2012). In addition, other studies have moved away from the concept of the selfinterested leader, centering on specific variables that are also present in different leadership styles, such as the work of Owens and Hekman (2012) who explore the concept of humility in leaders. Thus, in our research, we concentrate on a specific behavior category of leaders (altruistic leader behaviors), rather than a leadership approach, and empirically test its relationship with organizational performance.…”