1 Introduction
2 Defining humility
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Accurate assessment of one’s abilities and achievements (not low self-esteem, self-deprecation)
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Ability to acknowledge one’s mistakes, imperfections, gaps in knowledge, and limitations (often vis-a-vis a “higher power”)
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Openness to new ideas, contradictory information, and advice
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Keeping one's abilities and accomplishments, one's place in the world in perspective (e.g., seeing oneself as just one person in the larger scheme of things)
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Low self-focus, while recognizing that one is but one part of the larger universe
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Appreciation of the value of all things and the many different ways that people and things can contribute to our world.
3 The importance of humility
4 Data and method
Authors | Journal | Year | Independent variable | Dependent variable | Sample | Design | Main results |
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Hu et al. (2018) | Journal of Applied Psychology | 2018 | Leader humility via Owens et al. (2013) | Team information sharing, team psychological safety, team creativity, team power distance value | Work teams and team leaders from 11 information and technology companies in a major city in Northern China 515 team members and 106 teams (Time 1); 376 team members in 79 teams (Time 2; 3 months later); 73 leaders (Time 3; 6 months after Time 1) Final matched sample consisted of 354 members from 72 teams | Data were collected via web-based surveys at three-time points over six months using the humility scale developed by Owens et al. (2013) | Humble leaders do not directly promote team creativity (b = .31, p > .05). Findings show that leader humility makes a unique contribution in explaining team creativity through information sharing and therefore contributes indirectly to team creativity In teams with low power distance, leader humility was positively related to team information seeking but had no significant relation to team psychological safety In high power distance teams, leader humility was not related to team information sharing |
Oc et al. (2015) | Leadership Quarterly | 2015 | n.a | n.a | Study 1: 25 participants [full-time MBA students, part-time students in a Ph.D. of General Management, or other full-time working Singaporeans] Non-management (n = 5), first-line supervisors (n = 6), middle-management (n = 5), and upper-management (n = 9) and were from a variety of industries: government (n = 4), service (n = 9), manufacturing (n = 2), financial (n = 5), education (n = 3), and transportation (n = 2) Study 2: 307 Singaporean supervisors (see “design” and online survey) | The first study is an inductive, qualitative study; semi-structured interviews (mean length = 28.29 min) In study 2, the online survey asked a broad, open-ended question requesting the participants to “describe what you think it means to be a humble leader, including what behaviors a humble leader may exhibit.” Answers were split into 688 separate meaningful statements for the coding process | Overall, four of the dimensions found by the authors overlap considerably with previous conceptualizations of humility. The authors also identified five relatively unique dimensions of humility across their two samples. Therefore, the authors state it is possible that previous conceptualizations of humility are deficient, or differ because of the cultural contexts In study 1, the authors identify nine unique dimensions of behaviors indicative of leader humility in Singapore: (1) “having an accurate view of self,” (2) “recognizing follower strengths and achievements,” (3) “modeling teachability and being correctable,” (4) “leading by example,” (5) “showing modesty,” (6) “working together for the collective good,” (7) “empathy and approachability,” (8) “showing mutual respect and fairness,” and (9) “mentoring and coaching In study 2, the authors replicated the nine new dimensions that emerged in Study 1 |
Owens and Hekman (2016) | Academy of Management Journal | 2016 | Leader and collective humility via Owens et al. (2013) | Collective humility, collective promotion focus, team performance | Six hundred seven subjects were organized into 161 teams (84 laboratory teams, 77 organizational field teams) in 3 studies | Study 1: Experiment: Eighty-nine undergraduate business students were taking a senior-level organizational behavior course. Participants were randomly divided into 31 work teams and assigned to one of two experimental conditions (16 teams in the humble leader condition and 15 teams in the non-humble leader condition) Confederates who conducted the experiment received leader training to act in the following roles: the humble leader, the non-humble leader, and the talkative follower Both leader and collective humility were measured by the scale (Owens et al. 2013) Study 2: One hundred ninety-two undergraduate business students enrolled in three upper-level business strategy classes Teams participated in a multistage computer simulation (CarCorp) created by industry experts to reflect real auto-manufacturing market trends Study 3: Three hundred twenty-six health services employees organized into 77 work teams Time 1 included an assessment of employee-rated leader humility and transformational leadership (response rate 67%) Time 2, approximately one month later, assessed employee-rated collective humility and team collective promotion focus (response rate 54%) At Time 2, leaders rated their team’s performance (response rate 74%) | In total, the three studies suggest that leader humility is an important antecedent to team performance and influences team performance through a two-stage process of collective humility and collective promotion focus In study 1, manipulated leader humility predicts collective humility and team collective promotion focus In study 2, collective humility positively predicted team collective promotion focus and team performance. Team collective promotion focus mediated the relationship between collective humility and team performance In study 3, the authors tested their model with an organizational field sample. They find that leader humility had an indirect effect on team performance through collective humility and team collective promotion focus |
Owens et al. (2013) | Organization Science | 2013 | Expressed humility | Learning goal orientation, Team learning orientation, employee engagement, job satisfaction, voluntary employee turnover | Study 1: Five samples: Samples A, B, and C = undergraduate students (N = 164 + 236 + 124) Sample D = employees of a large U.S. health services organization (N = 511) Sample E = full-time employees from a commercial subject pool (N = 263) Study 2: One hundred forty-four students from three sections of an upper-level undergraduate management course; the students were in real, 10-week-long project teams Study 3: Employees of a large U.S midwestern health services organization Sample contained 704 employees, rating 218 leaders; 72% of the employees were female, and 70% were Caucasian | In Samples A and B, participants were asked to type the initials of an individual they knew very well on the survey and then assess this person on the expressed humility items. Sample C participants were asked to rate members of their student project teams, and Samples D and E participants were asked to rate their immediate supervisors During study 2, the class entailed completing a number of assessments throughout the quarter for which the students would be awarded course credit Each group member rated each teammate on the expressed humility items Using a five-item scale, team members rated each other on the quality of their contributions to the team project In study 3, each employee in the organization was invited through email to complete a voluntary, annual organizational assessment. Part 1 and 2 were administered online approximately one month apart, and the response rates were 67% and 54% In part 1, participants were asked to rate their immediate leader or supervisor on the nine humility items developed in Study 1. Part 1 also contained questions asking for demographic information. Team learning orientation, job satisfaction, and job engagement were measured one month after leader-expressed humility was measured | The main general results are the definition of expressed humility and the development of a robust measure of expressed humility Overall, the studies give evidence that expressed humility is an important component of effective leadership in organizations Study 1 provides initial support for the authors’ conceptualization of expressed humility by using exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis in samples A to D. The nine-item scale shows sufficient reliability In study 2, expressed humility showed a significant positive relationship with team contribution (r = 0.33, p < 0.001) and individual performance (r = 0.35, p < 0001). Expressed humility was predictive of team contribution ratings and individual performance beyond the related constructs of core self-evaluation and openness to experience and the common performance predictors of self-efficacy, conscientiousness, and general mental ability. Expressed humility appears to have a compensating effect on performance for those with lower general mental ability Controlling for constructs such as core self-evaluation and openness to experience relative to all other study constructs, expressed humility was the best predictor of performance improvement, similar to study 1 In study 3, moderate, significant positive correlations can be found for job engagement, job satisfaction, and team goal orientation |
Rego et al. (2017b) | Journal of Management | 2017 | Leader humility via Owens et al. (2013) | Team performance (Team Psychological Capital as a positive, developmental state comprising the strengths of hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism) | Study 1: Ninety-seven undergraduate students (mean age = 20.92, 54.6% male) from a business school in Singapore (n = 23 teams) Second sample: Two hundred twenty-nine Portuguese students (mean age = 26.07, 64.2% female) recruited from two business schools in Portugal (n = 74 teams) Study 2: The authors recruited 83 teams (middle level; mean team size: 11.24 employees) from local branches (located in the center of Portugal) of 41 organizations to participate in this study Study 3: Participants from 10 different Chinese organizations and a variety of functional backgrounds (human resource management, R&D, and sales) The final sample consisted of 53 team leaders (response rate = 57.6%) and 203 followers (response rate = 48%) | Study 1 is an experiment manipulating leader humility All participants have been working with teams of three to five students (Singaporean sample) or two to six students (Portuguese sample) from the beginning of the semester and were asked to complete the study toward the end of the semester; team members have been working with each other for over two months In study 1, teams were randomly assigned to either a humble leader or a control condition in which a transactional leader was presented. Team members were presented with a short description of their direct supervisor and were asked to read the scenario. Then, team members collectively discussed how it would be to work with the leader for five minutes. All participants independently completed the Team Psychological Capital Questionnaire-12 (PCQ-12) at the end of the discussion In study 2, a questionnaire was delivered to all team members and leaders. Respondents anonymously reported their perceptions of the leader’s humility and team PsyCap, and directly mailed their responses to the researchers. 308 team members participated, yielding a response rate of 33% In study 3, followers rated their leaders’ humility (at Time 1). At Time 2, followers completed measures on PsyCap and task allocation effectiveness. At Time 3, leaders rated their teams’ performance (leaders did not provide any data at Time 1 and 2). Each rating was separated by roughly two weeks | The general results of this study are that the study verifies existing literature suggesting that leader humility is relevant for team performance. Moreover, the study also confirms that humble leaders do not affect performance directly; rather, they adopt behaviors and create conditions for employees and teams to perform well The findings of study 1 suggest that leader humility positively influences Team PsyCap; leader humility, influences the expectations team members to have about PsyCap Results of study 2 suggest that leader humility exerted a significant and positive indirect effect on team performance via increased team PsyCap Results of study 3 suggest the serial indirect effect model was significant (support for H3: Leader humility will have an indirect relationship with team performance, via team PsyCap and team task allocation effectiveness serially) |
Zhang et al. (2017) | The Leadership Quarterly | 2017 | CEO Humility via Owens et al. (2013) | Narcissism, socialized charisma, firm innovation culture | Study 1: Sample includes 63 CEOs, 328 TMT members, and 645 middle managers Study 2: Final sample included 143 CEOs and 190 TMT members | In study 1, survey data was collected from participants twice In the Time 1 survey, CEOs reported their own narcissism, while top management team (TMT) members evaluated CEOs’ humility. At Time 2 (two weeks later), TMT members assessed CEOs’ socialized charisma, and middle managers assessed the firm innovative culture. TMT members subjectively rated firm performance as a control variable In study 2, the authors randomly selected 200 firms from the Chinese Entrepreneur Survey System (CESS) and surveyed CEOs and TMT members | Results of study 1 show that humility and narcissism were unrelated (suggesting that the two traits were not two ends of one continuum) CEO humility was positively related to socialized charisma and the firm innovative culture, but CEO narcissism was related to neither outcome In study 2, humility and narcissism were unrelated. Neither CEO humility nor narcissism had significant correlations with socialized charisma and innovative performance Furthermore, CEO humility and firm innovative culture had a positive and significant relationship when narcissism was high, but an insignificant relationship when narcissism was low Moreover, humility and socialized charisma had a positive and significant relationship when narcissism was high, but an insignificant relationship when narcissism was low, indicating that socialized charisma is a full mediator In addition, humility and firm innovation performance had a positive and significant relationship when narcissism was high but an insignificant relationship when narcissism was low |
Mao et al. (2018) | Journal of Management Studies | 2018 | Leader humility via Owens et al. (2013) | Follower self-expansion, Self-efficacy, task performance | Data was collected from 11 companies in China Fifty-seven leaders (middle- or first-level managers) and 256 followers (their immediate subordinates) from these companies participated in the study | Two questionnaires were sent. First questionnaire with assessments about leader humility and follower self-expansion Six weeks after the first survey, followers were asked to complete a survey measuring self-efficacy, and the leaders were asked to report their own gender and age and their followers’ task performance | Leader humility is significantly related to follower self-expansion, self-efficacy, and task performance Follower self-expansion is significantly related to self-efficacy and task performance. In addition, self-efficacy was significantly related to task performance The demographic similarity in gender and age between leader and follower moderated the relationship between leader humility and follower self-expansion |
Ou et al. (2018) | Journal of Management | 2018 | CEO humility via Owens et al. (2013) | TMT integration, vertical pay disparity, ambidextrous strategic orientation, firm performance | Data was collected from 105 largely privately held (92%) firms in the computer hardware and software industry in the United States focused on small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs; 81%) with annual sales of less than $5 million and no more than 500 employees One hundred seventy-one executive pairs (CEOs and CFOs) showed up at Time 1 and completed surveys (69.0% response rate), among which 105 pairs completed Time 2 surveys (61.4% response rate) | The authors surveyed the firms’ CEOs and CFOs twice during a series of executive consortiums that were established to allow senior executives to network, share information, and learn from speakers and panelists At Time 1, a researcher explained the research project's purpose, promised to keep individual answers confidential, and supply an executive summary of the findings CFOs were asked to complete a survey to evaluate their respective CEOs’ humility and charismatic leadership style (as a control variable), while the pair (both CEOs and CFOs) assessed TMT integration and provided their own demographics At Time 2 (6 months later), CEOs and CFOs responded to survey items measuring ambidextrous strategic orientation. After Time 1, the consortium organizers provided objective vertical pay disparity, firm and TMT demographics, and quarterly financial data from 1 year before Time 1 to 1 year after Time 2 from their own participant database | CEO humility correlated positively with TMT integration and negatively with vertical pay disparity. TMT integration correlated negatively with vertical pay disparity and positively with ambidextrous strategic orientation. Ambidextrous strategic orientation was positively associated with firm performance Authors find those humble CEOs contribute indirectly to the pursuit of ambidextrous strategies and firm performance, and they manage to do so through TMT integration and pay equality |
Petrenko et al. (2019) | Strategic Management Journal | 2019 | Humility: Video metric approach for measuring personal characteristics | Analysts’ earnings per share (EPS) expectations, actual EPS relative to analysts’ expectations, market performance | Final sample includes a total of 185 CEOs and 1,256 firm-year observations based on control and year lag data availability from S&P 500 firms for the years 2000 to 2013 Models of analyst evaluations include 122 CEOs and 881 firm-year observations | Archival study; Analyst characteristics data comes from the Institutional Investor database, and CEO characteristics data were collected through Video metrics, a video survey methodology To measure CEO humility, authors use a metric video approach for measuring the personal characteristics of difficult to access individuals through third-party ratings using the HEXACO scale on a sample of CEOs’ public video records | Authors argue and find that the low expectations humble CEOs produce for their firms are actually beneficial to organizational market performance Authors find that analysts’ earnings per share expectations are lower for organizations with more humble CEOs. This results in significant market performance effects for their firms. The firms meet or beat analysts' expectations, which results in improved market performance for firms lead by humble CEOs |
Owens and Hekman (2012) | Academy of Management Journal | 2012 | n.a | n.a | Sample consists of 55 leaders from different industries and contexts: Mortgage banking (n = 17), high-tech firm (n = 5), hospital (n = 8), financial services/retail (n = 7), religious (n = 8), manufacturing/industrial (n = 3), military (n = 2) | Inductive qualitative research design: Fifty-five in-depth interviews were recorded, and roughly 200 transcribed single-spaced pages of field notes about observed leader–follower interactions in meetings, contextual artifacts, and musings before and after each interview Authors were exposed to leader training meetings, discussions of “360-degree feedback,” day-to-day interactions with employees, and leaders’ collaborations with their peers to work to overcome common challenges Authors generated 39 subthemes or codes until they had a set of themes within which each response could be categorized The coders independently coded 84 percent of incidents identically and then resolved discrepancies via discussion | Authors found several aspects of interviewing participants. In summary, it can be said that the authors uncover that leader humility involves leaders who model how to grow to their followers. They lead by accepting their followers’ feelings of uncertainty, development process, and strengths and limitations Participants of the study reported examples of leaders acknowledging personal limits, faults, and mistakes The authors also found that a leader’s humbleness is seen as helpful or effective when the leader is in a position of power, or the leader is perceived as competent They also noted that humble leaders are described as leaders who communicate the strengths of others to the organization or teams. Humble leaders were described as leaders who push others into the spotlight. The described leaders seemed to be shifting attention for positive events to others and shifting focus for negative events to themselves. But it is important to note that leaders need to provide honest compliments, describe true follower strengths, and genuinely appreciate the contributions of others One of the most attributed characteristics of a humble leader is his or her openness to new ideas and feedback and that they listen before they speak |
Ou et al. (2014) | Administrative Science Quarterly | 2014 | CEO humility | Top-Management-Team integration | Study 1: Development and Validation of a Humility Measure; participants are 276 full-time undergraduate students in China, 286 M.B.A. students in China Study 2: Sixty-three CEOs (48.4 percent response rate), 328 TMT members, and 645 middle managers in 63 private companies in China participated in study 2 | Authors generated items for the three dimensions of humility without preexisting scales; in phase 2, authors refined the new scales, combined them with existing scales (Owens et al. 2013), and assessment of the final 18-item multidimensional scale’s validity Authors collected data from multiple sources and interviewed CEOs at two time periods and used their own survey: the six-dimensional measure of humility with humility scale by Ou et al. (2014) | The authors develop six humility dimensions that constitute a coherent multidimensional construct with good content, convergent discriminant validity, and reliabilities Study 2 shows that CEO humility positively correlates with empowering leadership, TMT integration, and empowering organizational climate Furthermore, CEO humility was positively associated with CEO empowering leadership; CEO empowering leadership related positively to TMT integration; TMT integration significantly predicted empowering organizational climate, which positively relates to middle managers’ work engagement, affective commitment, and job performance |
Ou et al. (2017) | Academy of Management Journal | 2017 | Top executive humility via Ou et al.’s (2014) humility measure for top executives | TMT faultlines (age, gender, education level, education specialization, company tenure, and team tenure), middle manager job satisfaction, middle manager voluntary turnover | 43 TMTs (top management teams) in private companies in the People’s Republic of China with 313 top executives (including CEOs) and 502 MMs (middle managers) Average TMT size was 7.28 (SD = 3.25) | The dataset was part of a larger study on executive leadership At Time 1, the first author administered surveys and guaranteed confidentiality to participants. Top managers and MMs described their demographic background, while MMs rated top executives’ humility. Authors asked middle managers (MMs) to assess their immediate superior’s (i.e., a top executive’s) humility At Time 2 (two weeks later), managers received surveys. MMs reported their own job satisfaction and organizational commitment and also rated top executives’ charismatic leadership, while top executives provided MMs’ job performance, pay, and financial performance ratings At Time 3 (one year after Time 2), HR managers supplied information about top executives’ and MMs’ voluntary turnover | Authors find that when TMT faultlines are high, the humility of a TMT member doesn’t sustain middle managers’ job satisfaction any longer, and job satisfaction of middle managers no longer prevents their voluntary resignation |
Jeung and Yoon (2016) | Journal of Managerial Psychology | 2016 | Leader humility via Owens et al. (2013) | Power distance orientation (PDO), hierarchical distance, psychological empowerment | The sample consisted of 294 employees from South Korea | Five hundred paper questionnaires were distributed to employees during training sessions. In total, 303 employees participated in the survey. Leader humility was measured according to the immediate perception of subordinates | Leader humility positively predicted follower psychological empowerment, and followers’ power distance orientation (PDO) positively moderated this relationship. The results indicate that the impact of leader humility on follower psychological empowerment was strongest when both followers’ levels of PDO and hierarchical distance were high |
Vries (2012) | The Leadership Quarterly | 2012 | Honesty–humility | Ethical leadership, charismatic leadership, supportive leadership, task-oriented leadership | One hundred thirteen leaders and 201 subordinates participated in this study: 35 leaders and 62 subordinates belonged to a large municipality organization, plus a heterogeneous sample of 78 leaders and 139 subordinates | Participants filled out an internet-based questionnaire; they filled out short self- and other-rating forms of the HEXACO-PI-R and answered other questions about ethical, charismatic, supportive, and task-oriented leadership | Author states that when using an instrumental variable procedure, the relations between same-source ratings of personality and leadership are generally strong for ethical, charismatic, supportive, and task-oriented leadership. Furthermore, the author observed strong direct effects of Honesty-Humility on Ethical leadership, using an instrumental variable procedure |
Rego et al. (2017a) | The Leadership Quarterly | 2017 | Leader-expressed humility via nine items by Owens et al. (2013) Team humility via nine items proposed by Owens and Hekman (2016) | Team PsyCap, Team performance | Eighty-two team leaders and 332 team members participated in this study | Questionnaires and bootstrap analyses were used in this study. Each leader was described, and was described by a single (i.e., his/her) team All team members anonymously reported perceptions of the leader's humility, team's humility, and team's Psychological Capital (PsyCap) Leaders reported their own humility and narcissism, as well as task interdependence within the team and team performance. Team members reported the leader's expressed humility, the team humility, and the team PsyCap Each team was randomly split into two subsamples (A and B); one subsample was used to measure expressed humility and team PsyCap, the other to measure team humility | The authors find that leader-expressed humility predicts team PsyCap through team humility. Furthermore, humble leaders develop team PsyCap, both directly and through team humility Leaders who are rated by team members as the humblest make more accurate descriptions of their personal humility or self-describe themselves as less humble than they are described as such by team members Finally, humble leaders are more effective in fostering team PsyCap through team humility if they are perceived by all team members as consistently humble |
Cheung and Chan (2005) | Journal of Business Ethics | 2005 | n.a | n.a | The authors engaged in dialogues with five eminent Chinese CEOs (men over 40) in Hong Kong in 2002 | Public dialogues organized by the Executive MBA Program of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Radio Television Hong Kong were the major platforms for collecting the CEOs’ views | The study finds that the CEOs practice a style of Chinese leadership synthesizing Confucian, Daoist, Mohist, and Legalist doctrines. The authors give an insight into these doctrines: Confucian doctrines advocate benevolence, harmony, learning, loyalty, righteousness, and humility which support paternalism and collectivism. Daoist doctrines emphasize flexibility and reversion, which bolster the leader’s forbearance. Mohist doctrines underpin thrift and working with the masses. And Legalist doctrines inculcate self-control and innovativeness All five CEOs wanted to use each employee's unique talents, which corresponds with the virtue of humility (Confucian doctrine) In summary, the authors find that leaders of the Chinese people need to understand and adapt the aspects of the above-mentioned doctrines. Leaders who deviate from these practices would suffer from societal sanctions |
Owens et al. (2015) | The Journal of Applied Psychology | 2015 | Leader narcissism via self-report NPI-16-item scale Leader humility via Owens et al. (2013) | Perceived leader effectiveness, follower job engagement, follower subjective performance, follower objective performance | Eight hundred seventy-six employees rated 138 leaders, and 78 leaders rated 230 followers | Employees rated leaders working in a Fortune 100 health insurance organization headquartered in North America, and vice versa. Furthermore, 116 followers of 16 leaders had objective archival performance data available | Authors find that the interaction of leader narcissism and leader humility is associated with perceptions of leader effectiveness, follower job engagement, and subjective and objective follower job performance. When leaders show humility, narcissism is associated with positive effects in terms of leader effectiveness and follower outcomes. Thereby, the narcissism of narcissistic leaders can be tempered with humility. Finally, the authors state that narcissistic leaders are not one-dimensional individuals |