What Does it Take to Break the Silence in Teams: Authentic Leadership and/or Proactive Followership?

Abstract

Leadership may help break the silence in teams, but this may not be equally true for all employees. Using behavioral plasticity theory, we propose that authentic leadership—a set of leadership behaviors through which leaders enact their true selves—reduces silence and motivates speaking up in employees low on proactive personality, but hardly affects employees who are proactive by nature, because proactive employees are less susceptible to social influences. Using data from 223 employees (nested in 45 work teams), we indeed find authentic leadership to reduce silence in employees with less proactive personalities, but not in more proactive employees. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for silence and authentic leadership.

Shared Authentic Leadership in Research Teams: Testing a Multiple Mediation Model

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“…43 Furthermore, authentic leaders express multicultural competence by creating inclusive environments where employees feel comfortable expressing their opinions. 44 Finally, authentic leaders display a great deal of emotional intelligence, especially in the dimension of self-awareness. 45 A combination of these factors may be contributing to the competence of authentic leaders above Daoist leaders.…”

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“…Careful translations were made on the basis of accepted variables that are widely used in previous studies (Botero & Dyne, 2009;Guenter, Schreurs, van Emmerik, & Sun, 2017;Kuchinke & Cornachione, 2010;Mowbray, Wilkinson, & Tse, 2015;Yuan & Zhou, 2015).…”

“…Although the design of the questions followed the procedures in previous research on the topic (Botero & Dyne, 2009;Guenter et al, 2017;Mowbray et al, 2015;Yuan & Zhou, 2015), consecutive studies may…”