How and When Humble Leadership Facilitates Employee Job Performance: The Roles of Feeling Trusted and Job Autonomy

Abstract

This study extends our understanding of humble leadership as an important trust-engendering leadership style that influences employee behaviors. Drawing on social exchange theory, we articulate how humble leaders’ employee-centric behaviors signal trust and facilitate a social exchange relationship between leaders and followers. Specifically, we posit that a leader’s humble leadership behaviors are positively related to employees’ task performance and organizational citizenship behavior via feelings of being trusted by one’s supervisor. We also predict that the interaction between humble leadership and employee job autonomy will influence employees’ appraisal of feeling trusted. We tested our moderated-mediation model using experimental vignette data and three-wave survey data collected from 233 employees and their supervisors working at a large Chinese internet company. Study results support our hypotheses that humble leadership, and its interaction with employee job autonomy, contribute to feeling trusted by their supervisor. Furthermore, we found that humble leadership behavior, via enhanced perceptions of feeling trusted, predicted supervisor-rated employee task performance and organizational citizenship behavior toward the organization. The implications for theory and practice are discussed.

The Cost of Repaying Trust: Examining Psychological Detachment as a Mediator in the Relationship Between Feeling Trusted and Work–Family Conflict

“…Research has indicated that feeling trusted is related to positive work outcomes for employees, such as enhanced task performance, job engagement and organizational citizenship behavior. 9 , 10 However, studies have also found that feeling trusted may have negative work outcomes. 8 , 44 We extended this research by exploring whether feeling trusted may also be related to negative outcomes in employees’ family domain (beyond the immediate workplace context).…”

“…Prior research has found that feeling trusted can benefit both organizations and employees. 9 , 10 , 25 However, focusing on the positive effect of feeling trusted can mask the underlying costs. Recently, scholars have begun to focus on the dark side of feeling trusted and to challenge the prevailing conclusion that feeling trusted is always beneficial.…”

“… 8 Research has found that feeling trusted may benefit employees by enhancing their job engagement, 9 task performance, and organizational citizenship behavior. 10 …”

The mediating effect of work motivation on the relationship between transformational leadership and employee performance

“…Leadership can determine employee's success. Hence, enhancing employee performance is inseparable from the role of the leaders (Cho et al, 2020;Kesari & Verma, 2018;Sandvik et al, 2019). Leadership is a personal ability of influencing employees to achieve company goals (Jyoti & Bhau, 2015;Zohar & Polachek, 2017) since fair leaders can transport mental support and respect which will enhance employees' performance.…”

Transformational Leadership, Knowledge Management, Work Motivation, and Employee Performance among Construction Employees in Jakarta

“…Leadership is considered an important ability to improve and motivate employees to have a commitment in achieving organizational goals (Tyssen et al, 2014). Leadership can determine employee success; hence, enhancing employee performance is inseparable from the role of the leaders (Cho et al, 2020). Leadership is a person's ability to influence subordinates to work in achieving company goals (Zohar & Polachek, 2017) because fair leaders can provide mental support and being respectful will enhance employee performance.…”