Humble leadership: A review and synthesis of leader expressed humility

Abstract

Recent academic research has proliferated around the construct of humble leadership. Humble leadership involves having an accurate view of oneself, recognizing the contributions of followers, and modeling teachability. Given the growing interest in this construct, we provide a review of the humble leadership literature. First, we clarify how humble leadership has been defined and measured in the current literature and discuss how it compares to moral-based leadership approaches. Second, we review the extant literature by examining humble leadership's theoretical and nomological network, highlighting the antecedents, outcomes, moderators, and mediators.Third, we provide an overview of key methodological strengths and weaknesses.Finally, we conclude by drawing upon our review of the literature to present directions for future research that will advance the understanding of humble leadership. In sum, our review highlights the key elements and findings of where humble leadership has been and indicates ways to drive this literature forward.

Humble Leadership Benefits Employee Job Performance: The Role of Supervisor–Subordinate Guanxi and Perceived Leader Integrity

“…Thus, drawing on attribution theory, we evidence that perceived leader integrity can serve as a useful information which employees utilize to make attributions of their leader's humble behaviors. And such finding is in line with previous qualitative and quantitative research emphasizing leader sincerity in exploiting the utility of leader humility (Owens and Hekman, 2012;Ma et al, 2019;Kelemen et al, 2022). It appears from our study that perceived leader integrity exerts an immense influence on shaping employee's perception of humble leadership's sincerity and honesty.…”

“…Humility is an integrative part of organizational virtues and is vital for leaders to lead in environments full of unpredictability and turbulence (Vera and Rodriguez-Lopez, 2004). Humble leadership has been documented to contribute to a wide range of positive consequences, including increases in employee voice behavior (Bharanitharan et al, 2018;Li et al, 2018;Ma et al, 2019), proactive behavior (Chen et al, 2018;Lu et al, 2018), feedback-seeking behavior July 2022 | Volume 13 | Article 936842 Yang et al Humble Leadership and Job Performance (Qian et al, 2020), gratitude (Naseer et al, 2020), self-efficacy (Mao et al, 2018), well-being (Zhang and Song, 2020), among various others (for an elaborative review, see Kelemen et al, 2022). Despite the proliferation of humble leadership studies, research on this area is still premature and in infancy (Qin et al, 2020).…”

“…The scandal of Enron caused by leader’s hubris, uncontrolled ego and entitlement has drawn leadership scholars’ attention to the value of leader humility ( Owens et al, 2013 ). On the one hand, leaders who are over confident, narcissistic and arrogant often overlook other’s ideas and feedbacks, bringing about mistakes and scandals ( Kelemen et al, 2022 ). On the other hand, leadership scholarship recently emphasizes leaders’ role in facilitating employee growth and full potential achievement ( Cho et al, 2020 ).…”

“…Despite the proliferation of humble leadership studies, research on this area is still premature and in infancy ( Qin et al, 2020 ). One scarcity lies in the exploration of the underlying processes that humble leadership influences important positive outcomes and the boundary conditions in which humble leadership is more or less effective ( Carnevale et al, 2019 ; Cho et al, 2020 ; Kelemen et al, 2022 ). Investigating mediation mechanisms is crucial to the theoretical advancement of the humble leadership literature because it makes it possible to reveal a larger nominal network of this leadership style.…”

Developing and validating Japanese versions of Psychological Safety Scale, Knowledge Sharing Scale, and Expressed Humility Scale

“…For example, Oc, Bashshur, Daniels, Greguras, and Diefendorff (2015) identified nine features, and Ou, Tsui, Kinicki, Waldman, Xiao, and Song (2014) described six facets of humble leadership. However, we can narrow down the core ideas of humble leadership to the three characteristics described by Owens et al (2013), i.e., an accurate self-view and self-awareness, teachability and openness to feedback, and the appreciation of others (Kelemen, Matthews, Matthews, & Henry, 2022). Research on different perspectives of humble leadership has recently increased.…”