Abstract
In an application of the personality dynamics framework, we advance understanding on the relationship between baseline leader humility and team psychological safety by exploring the roles of humility variability and attractor strength. Specifically, we examine how the (in)consistency (i.e., variability) of leader-expressed humility across team members operates as a boundary condition in the relationship between leader-expressed humility and team psychological safety. We also explore how the agreement between leader self-reported humility and leader-expressed humility (i.e., self-other agreement, SOA) operates as an attractor to predict such a consistency. We test the hypothesized model through a sample of 85 teams, rated by 354 team members. The findings suggest that consistency reinforces, while inconsistency weakens, the effect of leader-expressed humility on team psychological safety. The findings also reveal that SOA relates to the consistency of leader-expressed humility, depending on the level at which the (dis)agreement occurs. We conclude that to better understand the outcomes of humble leadership, it is necessary to take into account not only the baseline of humility expressed by the leader (as most studies do), but also his/her humility variability and the strength of the attractor.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Arjoon, S. (2000). Virtue theory as a dynamic theory of business. Journal of Business Ethics, 28(2), 159–178.
Argandoña, A. (2015). Humility in management. Journal of Business Ethics, 132, 63–71.
Bliese, P. D. (2000). Within-group agreement, non-independence, and reliability: Implications for data aggregation and analysis. In K. J. Klein & S. W. Kozlowski (Eds.), Multilevel theory, research, and methods in organizations (pp. 349–381). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Boje, D. M., Roslie, G. A., Durant, R. A., & Luhman, J. T. (2004). Enron spectacles: A critical dramaturgical analysis. Organization Studies, 25, 751–774.
Bolino, M., Long, D., & Turnley, W. (2016). Impression management in organizations: Critical questions, answers, and areas for future research. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 3, 377–406.
Bormann, K. C., & Diebig, M. (2020). Following an uneven lead: Trickle-down effects of differentiated transformational leadership. Journal of Management. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206320931584.
Bourdage, J. S., Wiltshire, J., & Lee, K. (2015). Personality and workplace impression management: Correlates and implications. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100, 537–546.
Braddy, P. W., Gooty, J., Fleenor, J. W., & Yammarino, F. J. (2014). Leader behaviors and career derailment potential: A multi-analytic method examination of rating source and self-other agreement. The Leadership Quarterly, 25, 373–390.
Brenkert, G. G. (2019). Mind the gap! The challenges and limits of (Global) business ethics. Journal of Business Ethics, 155(4), 917–930.
Carreyrou, J. (2018). Bad blood. London: Larousse.
Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (2003). Self-regulatory perspectives on personality. In T. Millon & M. J. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of psychology: Personality and social psychology (Vol. 5, pp. 185–208). Hoboken: Wiley.
Chen, G., Mathieu, J. E., & Bliese, P. D. (2004). A framework for conducting multilevel construct validation. In F. J. Yammarino & F. Dansereau (Eds.), Research in multilevel issues: Multilevel issues in organizational behavior and processes (Vol. 3, pp. 273–303). Oxford: Elsevier.
Chen, Z., Lam, W., & Zhong, J. A. (2007). Leader-member exchange and member performance: A new look at individual-level negative feedback-seeking behavior and team-level empowerment climate. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 202–212.
Chiu, C.-Y., Owens, B., & Tesluk, P. E. (2016). Initiating and utilizing shared leadership in teams: The role of leader humility, team proactive personality, and team performance capability. Journal of Applied Psychology, 101(12), 1705–1720.
Dalal, R. S., Meyer, R. D., Bradshaw, R. P., Green, J. P., Kelly, E. D., & Zhu, M. (2015). Personality strength and situational influences on behavior: A conceptual review and research agenda. Journal of Management, 41, 261–287.
D'Antonio, M. (2015). The truth about Trump. New York: Thomas Dunne.
Davis, D. E., Worthington, E. L., Jr., & Hook, J. N. (2010). Humility: Review of measurement strategies and conceptualization as personality judgment. Journal of Positive Psychology, 5, 243–252.
Dierdorff, E. C., Fisher, D. M., & Rubin, R. S. (2019). The power of percipience: Consequences of self-awareness in teams on team-level functioning and performance. Journal of Management, 45(7), 2891–2919.
Eagly, A. H. (2009). The his and hers of prosocial behavior: An examination of the social psychology of gender. The American Psychologist, 64, 644–658.
Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44, 350–383.
Edmondson, A. (2018). The fearless organization. New York: Wiley.
Edmondson, A. C., & Lei, Z. (2014). Psychological safety: The history, renaissance, and future of an interpersonal construct. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 1, 23–43.
Edwards, J. R. (2002). Alternatives to difference scores: Polynomial regression analysis and response surface methodology. In F. Drasgow & N. Schmitt (Eds.), Measuring and analyzing behavior in organizations: Advances in measurement and data analysis (pp. 350–400). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Ewing, J. (2017). Faster, higher, farther: The inside story of the Volkswagen scandal. New York: Random House.
Fleenor, J. W., Smither, J. W., Atwater, L. E., Braddy, P. W., & Sturm, R. E. (2010). Self-other rating agreement in leadership: A review. The Leadership Quarterly, 21, 1005–1034.
Funder, D. C. (2012). Accurate personality judgment. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 21(3), 177–182.
Gardner, W. L., Avolio, B. J., Luthans, F., May, D. R., & Walumbwa, F. (2005). “Can you see the real me?” A self-based model of authentic leader and follower development. The Leadership Quarterly, 16, 343–372.
González-Romá, V., Peiró, J. M., & Tordera, N. (2002). An examination of the antecedents and moderator influences of climate strength. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 465–473.
Henderson, D. J., Liden, R. C., Glibkowski, B. C., & Chaudhry, A. (2009). LMX differentiation: A multilevel review and examination of its antecedents and outcomes. The Leadership Quarterly, 20, 517–534.
Hendin, H., & Cheek, J. (1997). Assessing hypersensitive narcissism: A reexamination of Murray’s narcissism scale. Journal of Research in Personality, 31, 588–599.
Hirak, R., Peng, A. C., Carmeli, A., & Schaubroeck, J. M. (2012). Linking leader inclusiveness to work unit performance: The importance of psychological safety and learning from failures. The Leadership Quarterly, 23, 107–117.
Hu, J., Erdogan, B., Jiang, K., Bauer, T. N., & Liu, S. (2018). Leader humility and team creativity: The role of team information sharing, psychological safety, and power distance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 103, 313–323.
Hur, Y., van den Berg, P., & Wilderom, C. (2011). Transformational leadership as a mediator between emotional intelligence and team outcomes. The Leadership Quarterly, 22, 591–603.
Islam, G. (2020). Psychology and business ethics: A multi-level research agenda. Journal of Business Ethics, 165, 1–13.
Jin, S., Seo, M.-G., & Shapiro, D. (2016). Do happy leaders lead better? Affective and attitudinal antecedents of transformational leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 27(1), 64–84.
Kraus, M. W., Chen, S., & Keltner, D. (2011). The power to be me: Power elevates self-concept consistency and authenticity. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47(5), 974–980.
Kreibich, A., Hennecke, M., & Brandstätter, V. (2020). The effect of self-awareness on the identification of goal-related obstacles. European Journal of Personality, 34(2), 215–233.
LeBreton, J. M., & Senter, J. L. (2008). Answers to 20 questions about interrater reliability and interrater agreement. Organizational Research Methods, 11, 815–852.
Lee, S., & Dalal, R. S. (2016). Climate as situational strength: Safety climate strength as a cross-level moderator of the relationship between conscientiousness and safety behaviour. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 25(1), 120–132.
Lee, A., & Carpenter, N. C. (2018). Seeing eye to eye: A meta-analysis of self-other agreement of leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 29, 253–275.
Lee, H. W., Choi, J. N., & Kim, S. (2018). Does gender diversity help teams constructively manage status conflict? An evolutionary perspective of status conflict, team psychological safety, and team creativity. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 144, 187–199.
Li, A. N., & Tan, H. H. (2013). What happens when you trust your supervisor? Mediators of individual performance in trust relationships. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 34(3), 407–425.
Lin, X., Chen, Z. X., Herman, H. M., Wei, W., & Ma, C. (2019). Why and when employees like to speak up more under humble leaders? The roles of personal sense of power and power distance. Journal of Business Ethics, 158, 937–950.
Liu, S. M., Liao, J. Q., & Wei, H. (2015). Authentic leadership and whistleblowing: Mediating roles of psychological safety and personal identification. Journal of Business Ethics, 131(1), 107–119.
MacIntyre, A. (1983). Why are the problems of business ethics insoluble? In B. Baumrin & B. Freedman (Eds.), Moral responsibility and the professions (pp. 350–359). New York: Haven Publications.
McKee, R. A., Lee, Y. T., Atwater, L., & Antonakis, J. (2018). Effects of personality and gender on self–other agreement in ratings of leadership. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 91, 285–315.
Men, C., Fong, P. S., Huo, W., Zhong, J., Jia, R., & Luo, J. (2018). Ethical leadership and knowledge hiding: A moderated mediation model of psychological safety and mastery climate. Journal of Business Ethics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-018-4027-7.
Meyer, R. D., Dalal, R. S., & Hermida, R. (2010). A review and synthesis of situational strength in the organizational sciences. Journal of Management, 36(1), 121–140.
Moore, G. (2005). Corporate character: Modern virtue ethics and the virtuous corporation. Business Ethics Quarterly, 15(4), 659–685.
Morrison, E. W. (2011). Employee voice behavior: Integration and directions for future research. Academy of Management Annals, 5(1), 373–412.
Munshi, N. & Sevastopulo, D. (2016). White House countdown—in the name of the father. Financial times. Retrieved July 13, 2020, from https://www.ft.com/content/0665b542-3802-3ccd-ab97-22ba2dbd80c7.
Newman, A., Donohue, R., & Eva, N. (2017). Psychological safety: A systematic review of the literature. Human Resource Management Review, 27, 521–535.
Newstead, T., Macklin, R., Dawkins, S., & Martin, A. (2018). What is virtue? Advancing the conceptualization of virtue to inform positive organizational inquiry. Academy of Management Perspectives, 32(4), 443–457.
Newstead, T., Dawkins, S., Macklin, R., & Martin, A. (2019a). The virtues project: An approach to developing good leaders. Journal of Business Ethics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-019-04163-2.
Newstead, T., Dawkins, S., Macklin, R., & Martin, A. (2019b). We don't need more leaders–we need more good leaders. Advancing a virtues-based approach to leader(ship) development. The Leadership Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2019.101312.
Nielsen, K., & Daniels, K. (2012). Does shared and differentiated transformational leadership predict followers’ working conditions and well-being? The Leadership Quarterly, 23, 383–397.
Nowak, A., Vallacher, R. R., & Zochowski, M. (2002). The emergence of personality: Personal stability through interpersonal synchronization. In D. Cervone & W. Mischel (Eds.), Advances in personality science (pp. 292–331). New York: Guilford Press.
Nowak, A., Vallacher, R. R., & Zochowski, M. (2005). The emergence of personality: Dynamic foundations of individual variation. Developmental Review, 25(3–4), 351–385.
Ou, A. Y., Tsui, A. S., Kinicki, A. J., Waldman, D. A., Xiao, Z., & Song, L. J. (2014). Humble chief executive officers’ connections to top management team integration and middle managers’ responses. Administrative Science Quarterly, 59, 34–72.
Ou, A. Y., Waldman, D. A., & Peterson, S. J. (2018). Do humble CEOs matter? An examination of CEO humility and firm outcomes. Journal of Management, 44, 1147–1173.
Owens, B. P., Johnson, M. D., & Mitchell, T. R. (2013). Expressed humility in organizations: Implications for performance, teams, and leadership. Organization Science, 24, 1517–1538.
Owens, B. P., Wallace, A. S., & Waldman, D. A. (2015). Leader narcissism and follower outcomes: The counterbalancing effect of leader humility. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(4), 1203–1213.
Owens, B. P., & Hekman, D. R. (2016). How does leader humility influence team performance? Exploring the mechanisms of contagion and collective promotion focus. Academy of Management Journal, 58, 1088–1111.
Owens, B. P., Yam, K. C., Bednar, J. S., Mao, J., & Hart, D. W. (2019). The impact of leader moral humility on follower moral self-efficacy and behavior. Journal of Applied Psychology, 104, 146–163.
Qin, X., Liu, X., Brown, J. A., Zheng, X., & Owens, B. P. (2019). Humility harmonized? Exploring whether and how leader and employee humility (in)congruence influences employee citizenship and deviance behaviors. Journal of Business Ethics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-019-04250-4.
Ramamoorthy, N., & Flood, P. C. (2002). Employee attitudes and behavioral intentions: A test of the main and moderating effects of individualism-collectivism orientations. Human Relations, 55, 1071–1096.
Rego, A., Owens, B., Leal, S., Melo, A., Cunha, M. P., Gonçalves, L., et al. (2017). How leader humility helps teams to be humbler, psychologically stronger, and more effective: A moderated mediation model. The Leadership Quarterly, 28, 639–658.
Rego, A., Cunha, M. P., & Simpson, A. (2018). The perceived impact of leaders’ humility on team effectiveness: An empirical study. Journal of Business Ethics, 148(1), 205–218.
Rego, A., Owens, B., Yam, K. C., Bluhm, D., Cunha, M. P., Silard, T., et al. (2019a). Leader humility and team performance: Exploring the mechanisms of team psychological capital and task allocation effectiveness. Journal of Management, 45, 1099–1033.
Rego, A., Yam, K. C., Owens, B., Story, J., Cunha, M. P., Bluhm, D., et al. (2019b). Conveyed leader PsyCap predicting leader effectiveness through positive energizing. Journal of Management, 45, 1689–1712.
Rogers, K. M., & Ashford, B. E. (2017). Respect in organizations: Feeling valued as “we” and “me”. Journal of Management, 43, 1578–1608.
Schneider, B., Salvaggio, A. N., & Subirats, M. (2002). Climate strength: A new direction for climate research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 220–229.
Schneider, B., Ehrhart, M. G., & Macey, W. H. (2013). Organizational climate and culture. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 361–388.
Shanock, L. R., Baran, B. E., Gentry, W. A., Pattison, S. C., & Heggestad, E. D. (2010). Polynomial regression with response surface analysis: A powerful approach for examining moderation and overcoming limitations of difference scores. Journal of Business and Psychology, 25, 543–554.
Sheldon, K. M., Ryan, R. M., Rawsthorne, L. J., & Ilardi, B. (1997). Trait self and true self: Cross-role variation in the Big-Five personality traits and its relations with psychological authenticity and subjective well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73(6), 1380–1393.
Sheldon, K. M., Gunz, A., & Schachtman, T. R. (2012). What does it mean to be in touch with oneself? Testing a social character model of self-congruence. Self and Identity, 11, 51–70.
Singh, B., & Winkel, D. E. (2012). Racial differences in helping behaviors: The role of respect, safety, and identification. Journal of Business Ethics, 106(4), 467–477.
Sosnowska, J., Kuppens, P., De Fruyt, F., & Hofmans, J. (2019). A dynamic systems approach to personality: The personality dynamics (PersDyn) model. Personality and Individual Differences, 144, 11–18.
Sosnowska, J., Hofmans, J., & de Fruyt, F. (2020a). Revisiting the neuroticism–performance link: A dynamic approach to individual differences. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 93(2), 495–504.
Sosnowska, J., Kuppens, P., De Fruyt, F., & Hofmans, J. (2020b). New directions in the conceptualization and assessment of personality: A dynamic systems approach. European Journal of Personality. https://doi.org/10.1002/per.2233.
Tangney, J. P. (2000). Humility: Theoretical perspectives, empirical findings and directions for future research. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 19(1), 70–82.
Tu, Y., Lu, X., Choi, J. N., & Guo, W. (2019). Ethical leadership and team-level creativity: Mediation of psychological safety climate and moderation of supervisor support for creativity. Journal of Business Ethics, 159(2), 551–565.
Uhl-Bien, M., Riggio, R. E., Lowe, K. B., & Carsten, M. K. (2014). Followership theory: A review and research agenda. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(1), 83–104.
van Kleef, G. A., van den Berg, H., & Heerdink, M. W. (2015). The persuasive power of emotions: Effects of emotional expressions on attitude formation and change. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100, 1124–1142.
Visser, B. A., Book, A. S., & Volk, A. A. (2017). Is Hillary dishonest and Donald narcissistic? A HEXACO analysis of the presidential candidates’ public personas. Personality and Individual Differences, 106, 281–286.
Wang, Y., Liu, J., & Zhu, Y. (2018). Humble leadership, psychological safety, knowledge sharing and follower creativity: A cross-level investigation. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1727.
Wu, J. B., Tsui, A. S., & Kinicki, A. J. (2010). Consequences of differentiated leadership in groups. Academy of Management Journal, 53, 90–106.
Yammarino, F. J., & Dansereau, F. (2008). Multi-level nature of and multi-level approaches to leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 19(2), 135–141.
Yu, A., Matta, F. K., & Cornfield, B. (2018). Is leader–member exchange differentiation beneficial or detrimental for group effectiveness? Academy of Management Journal, 61, 1158–1188.
Zhang, H., Ou, A. Y., Tsui, A. S., & Wang, H. (2017). CEO humility, narcissism and firm innovation: A paradox perspective on CEO traits. The Leadership Quarterly, 28, 585–604.
Funding
This work was funded by National Funds through FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia under the projects Ref. UID/GES/00731/2019, UID/GES/00315/2019, UID/ECO/00124/2019, and Social Sciences DataLab, LISBOA-01-0145-FEDER-022209), POR Lisboa (LISBOA-01-0145-FEDER-007722, LISBOA-01–0145-FEDER-022209) and POR Norte (LISBOA-01-0145-FEDER-022209).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Informed Consent
The authors obtained informed consent from all individual participants included in the study.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Appendix
Appendix
Surface analysis: team psychological safety as predicted by the (dis)agreement between leader self-reported humility and leader-expressed humility.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rego, A., Melo, A.I., Bluhm, D.J. et al. Leader-Expressed Humility Predicting Team Psychological Safety: A Personality Dynamics Lens. J Bus Ethics 174, 669–686 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-020-04622-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-020-04622-1