MODELING HOW TO GROW: AN INDUCTIVE EXAMINATION …leeds-faculty.colorado.edu/dahe7472/Owens and...

MODELING HOW TO GROW: AN INDUCTIVEEXAMINATION OF HUMBLE LEADER BEHAVIORS,

CONTINGENCIES, AND OUTCOMES

BRADLEY P. OWENSState University of New York, Buffalo

DAVID R. HEKMANUniversity of Colorado, Boulder

Although a growing number of leadership writers argue leader humility is importantto organizational effectiveness, little is known about the construct, why some leadersbehave more humbly than others, what these behaviors lead to, or what factorsmoderate the effectiveness of these behaviors. Drawing from 55 in-depth interviewswith leaders from a wide variety of contexts, we develop a model of the behaviors,outcomes, and contingencies of humble leadership. We uncover that leader humilityinvolves leaders modeling to followers how to grow and produces positive organiza-tional outcomes by leading followers to believe that their own developmental journeysand feelings of uncertainty are legitimate in the workplace. We discuss how theemergent humility in leadership model informs a broad range of leadership issues,including organizational development and change, the evolution of leader-followerrelationships, new pathways for engaging followers, and integrating top-down andbottom-up organizing.

Sense shines with a double luster when it is set inhumility. An able yet humble man is a jewel wortha kingdom.

-William Penn

Within the last ten years, leadership thinkershave increasingly focused on the importance ofhumility in the context of leadership. The servantleadership (Greenleaf & Spears, 2002), level 5 lead-ership (Collins, 2001a, 2001b), and participativeleadership (Kim, 2002) perspectives specificallypinpoint the virtue of humility as being critical forleader effectiveness (cf. Weick, 2001). Calls forleader humility have intensified in the wake ofcorporate scandals attributed to the unbridled ego,hubris, sense of entitlement, and self-importance ofthe corporate executives involved (Boje, Roslie, Du-rant, & Luhman, 2004; Knottnerus, Ulsperger, Cum-mins, & Osteen, 2006), and because leader arro-gance and narcissism have been identified asreasons why leaders make bad decisions (Chatter-jee & Hambrick, 2007; Dotlich & Cairo, 2003). As

organizational environments become more dy-namic, uncertain, and unpredictable, it becomesincreasingly difficult for any one leader to “figure itall out at the top,” (Senge, 1990: 7); thus, emphasishas shifted to leaders engaging in more “bottom-up,” humble approaches to leadership (Kerfoot,1998; Morris, Brotheridge, & Urbanski, 2005; Vera& Rodriguez-Lopez, 2004; Weick, 2001). Indeed,the word humility itself comes from the Latin hu-mus, meaning “earth,” and humi, “on the ground”(per the Online Etymology Dictionary, accessed in2010), and thus the term “humble leadership” lit-erally means “leading from the ground” or “bot-tom-up leadership.”

Notwithstanding this call for greater humility inleadership, researchers currently have only a vagueunderstanding of how humble leadership might op-erate in organizations. Leader humility is stillviewed as a rare personality trait that somewhatmysteriously produces favorable organizationaloutcomes. It is simply not known what humbleleadership looks like in terms of an overall leader-ship posture and way of being, what behaviors itinvolves, what personal and situational factors de-termine the effectiveness of these behaviors, or howthese behaviors might influence important workprocesses and outcomes. Lack of clarity about hu-mility in leadership inhibits both further theoreti-cal and empirical inquiry and any potential practi-tioner application. Because leader humility is new

We would like to thank Jane Dutton, Bruce Avolio,Terry Mitchell, Jim Moats, and Belle Rose Ragins for theirhelpful comments on drafts. We are also grateful to PeterBamberger and three anonymous reviewers for theirguidance in enhancing the contribution of this study.

Editor’s note: The manuscript for this article was ac-cepted for publication during the term of AMJ’s formereditor-in-chief, R. Duane Ireland.

� Academy of Management Journal2012, Vol. 55, No. 4, 787–818.http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amj.2010.0441

787

Copyright of the Academy of Management, all rights reserved. Contents may not be copied, emailed, posted to a listserv, or otherwise transmitted without the copyright holder’s expresswritten permission. Users may print, download, or email articles for individual use only.

to the organizational landscape, in this study wetook an inductive approach and asked organizationmembers for humble leader behaviors that they hadobserved or personally enacted (Edmondson & Mc-Manus, 2007). Our approach was to discover the“lived meaning” of leader humility by learningfrom organizational leaders themselves about howleader humility operates in organizations.

We seek to piece together the facts obtained fromour participants’ eyewitness and personal accountsinto a conceptual framework of how leader humil-ity is manifested in organizations. We are not at-tempting to reconstruct every instance of leaderhumility our participants reported, nor are we pro-posing a definitive theory of leader humility.Rather, we carefully sampled leaders from manydifferent contexts in hopes of providing a founda-tional understanding of the meaning organizationmembers attach to the idea of humble leadership.We also seek to determine what they see as impor-tant outcomes of this approach to leadership, andthe situational contingencies that determine the ef-fectiveness of humble leader behaviors. Thus, wedo not see this article as the last word on the topic,but rather actively seek to inspire, call for, andshape future inquiry regarding humble leadership(cf. Payne & Williams, 2005). We begin by provid-ing a brief, general review of the literature on hu-mility as a virtue and then review what has beensaid with regard to humility specific to the role ofleader.

THE VIRTUE OF HUMILITY

Humility has been identified as one of the coreorganizational virtues proposed to provide thefoundation for moral action in the workplace and tofoster positively deviant behavior (i.e., exceptionalperformance, altruistic/prosocial behavior (Cam-eron & Caza, 2004). Virtues literally connote “moralstrength, valor, excellence, and worth” (from theLatin virtutem); and in the context of organizations,virtues such as humility have been generallyviewed as that which is good, human, and pro-duces social betterment (Bright, Cameron, & Caza,2006: 251). Because humility often entails the rec-ognition and appreciation of knowledge and guid-ance beyond the self, it is a foundational principlein all major world religions—including Bud-dhism,1 Judaism/Christianity,2 Hinduism,3 and Is-

lam.4 Philosophers have also identified humility asa “meta-virtue” that is foundational to other virtuessuch as forgiveness, courage, wisdom, and compas-sion (Grenberg, 2005: 133; see also McCullough,2000). Humility may be foundational to other pos-itive characteristics because, as a “temperance vir-tue” that guards against excess (Park & Peterson,2003), it may temper other virtues, keeping themwithin the Aristotelian “golden mean” (Crisp,2000), Buddhist “middle way” (Marinoff, 2007),and Confucian zhong yong (“doctrine of the mean”(Confucius, 2006); it prevents other characteristicsfrom becoming extreme. Though some view humil-ity as merely low self-esteem or an inferior sense ofworth or importance—a view that has led at leastone prominent philosopher to question humility’sworthiness to be called a virtue (Hume, 1994: 219),this conception fails to capture the historically heldview of humility as a “classical source of strength”(Tangney, 2000: 70) that captures a person’s properself-perspective (For more extensive reviews of thehumility literature, see Exline and Geyer [2004],Grenberg [2005], Owens, Rowatt, and Wilkins[2011], and Tangney [2000]).

Humility in Leadership

Increasingly, scholars and practitioners have ar-gued the need for today’s (and especially tomor-row’s) leaders to approach their roles with morehumility (Kerfoot, 1998; Morris et al., 2005; Vera &Rodriguez-Lopez, 2004). For examples, owing toincreasing general workplace complexity and re-quirements for adaptability (Weick, 2001), recentleadership theories have begun to place greater em-phasis on the bottom-up aspects of leadership.Some even argue for a need to change “the veryidea of leadership—what it is and how it works andeven how people even know it when they see it”(Drath, 2001: 124). Researchers have suggested thatleaders should move beyond the hero myth or“great man” perspectives on leadership (Murrell,1997), show their humanness by being open abouttheir limitations in knowledge and experience(Weick, 2001), and focus more on how followersinfluence the process of leadership (Uhl-Bien,2006). Leadership writers have increasingly

1 From a Buddhist perspective, humility is a result ofenlightenment and nirvana (Snelling, 1991; Wil-son, 2009).

2 Exemplars of humility in Judeo-Christian religious

texts include Moses from the Old Testament (Num. 12:3),Jesus Christ from the New Testament (Mark 10:45; Phil.2:7), and King Benjamin from the Book of Mormon (Mo-siah 2:17, 26).

3 “Hospitality and humility are of the most importantvalues of Hinduism” (Das, 2005: 40).

4 “The first requirement of worship in Islam is to beutterly humble” (Engineer, 2003: 72).

788 AugustAcademy of Management Journal

honed in on the virtue of humility as being at thecore of many of these bottom-up approaches toleadership (Collins, 2001b; Matteson & Irving,2006; Weick, 2001).

More recently, many fields have called for pro-fessionals and leaders to approach their roles withmore humility. For lawyers and judges, humility isargued to be important for effectively interpretingthe law and balancing the ideals of justice andmercy (McConnell, 1996; Nava, 2010; Scharffs,1998). In medicine, competence and humility aresuggested as the two essential dimensions of med-ical professionalism (Butler et al., 2011; Gaughan,2001; Lauer, 2002). Humility has also been spot-lighted as important for political (Obama, 2008)and military leaders (“Humility is in style in to-day’s military” [Ruggero, 2009]; see also Hughes,2010; Meyer, 1997). In the management literature,most of the discussion of humility has also been inthe context of leadership. Although a growing num-ber of leadership writers have argued that leaderhumility is important to organizational growth andsurvival, it is not totally clear what exactly leaderhumility is, what it produces, and what influencesits effectiveness (e.g., Collins, 2001; Greenleaf &Spears, 2002; Kim, 2002). This lack of clarity aboutleader humility is due in part to the fact that theexisting literature on this topic is speculative; evi-dence (qualitative or quantitative) supporting writ-ers’ ideas regarding leader humility is lacking. Be-low we briefly review the existing perspectives inthe management literature about the dimensions ofleader humility, its outcomes, and its potentialmoderators that shaped our working hypotheses orsubstantive theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967;Suddaby, 2006) about humility in leadership priorto our data-gathering effort.

In existing perspectives on humble leadership,humility is mainly an innate virtue, or stable per-sonality trait, rather than a set of behaviors thatleaders can enact. For instance, some writers havesuggested that leader humility involves self-aware-ness, openness to new ideas, and the tendency tolook past, or “transcend,” oneself (Morris et al.,2005). Similarly, others have argued that humilityentails a willingness to understand the self(strengths and weaknesses) and an orientation to-ward others more than self (Nielsen, Marrone, &Slay, 2010). In the servant leadership perspective,leader humility involves the “ability to learn fromand gratefully receive the gifts of the less powerful”(Greenleaf & Spears, 2002: 320), and the level 5leadership perspective suggests that leader humil-ity involves a lack of charisma, a sense of calmnessand quietness, and a baseline assumption that suc-cess comes in part from good luck (Collins, 2001b).

In stark contrast with narcissism, which is oftendescribed as entailing volatile swings from grandi-ose to self-abasing self-views (Rhodewalt & Morf,1998; Rosenthal & Pittinsky, 2006), humility hasbeen labeled as a temperance virtue that has a sta-bilizing or grounding influence on self-perceptions(Park & Peterson, 2001). Thus, though humility andnarcissism are likely to be negatively related, ahumble leader is not merely the opposite of a nar-cissistic one. In addition, since the strong negativeemotions of envy and jealousy often hinder theability to make accurate self-appraisals, scholarshave suggested that effective emotional manage-ment and awareness are associated with humility(Morris et al., 2005).

Although a great deal of disagreement about theprecise leader behaviors that are associated withhumility exists, there is some consensus that hu-mility generally involves how leaders tend to viewthemselves (more objectively), others (more appre-ciatively), and new information or ideas (moreopenly) (Exline & Geyer, 2004; Owens, 2008; Ow-ens, Johnson, & Mitchell, 2012; Tangney, 2000;Templeton, 1997). We used this general, virtue-based definition as an initial understanding of hu-mility going into our study and examined howleaders’ and followers’ personal theories of humbleleadership overlap with or differ from this virtue-based definition.

Contingencies and Outcomes of Leader Humility

Leadership styles or approaches can be effectiveor ineffective depending upon the situation (seeHersey, 1985). We anticipated that there may becircumstances or contexts in which behaving hum-bly as a leader may be less effective. Because oftheir absence in the literature, one major aim of thisstudy was to uncover some of the boundary condi-tions for the effectiveness of humble leader behav-iors and to learn when and in what settings partic-ipants report humility as associated with weak orineffective leadership.

Leader humility may foster a less self-interestedleadership approach, which is argued to increasefollowers’ liking toward and trust of a leader(Nielsen, Marrone, & Slay, 2010). Likewise, othershave suggested that leader humility may engendersupportive leader-follower relationships, an unself-ish use of power (Morris et al., 2005), and betterdecision making (Kim, 2002). The literatures onservant leadership (Greenleaf & Spears, 2002) andself-sacrificial leadership (De Cremer, Mayer, vanDijke, Bardes, & Schouten, 2009) suggest that lead-ers engaging in bottom-up behaviors such as ser-vice and self-sacrifice results in followers who are

2012 789Owens and Hekman

better equipped and more committed and organiza-tions that are financially better off (cf. Graham,1991; Greenleaf, 1977; Spears, 1998). Since fewspecific outcomes of leader humility have beensuggested or empirically examined, we consideredexploring the perceived outcomes of leader humil-ity to be an important priority for this study.

This review of the literature provided us withimportant priorities for examining humility inleadership. Specifically, scholars still only have avague idea about what leader humility looks like inorganizations and do not really understand howleader humility influences followers and work pro-cesses and what the boundary conditions are forthe effectiveness of humble leader behaviors. Thus,these priorities shaped our inquiry and interviewprotocol. By asking participants to report specifichumble leader behaviors and their perceived out-comes, we sought to gain a richer understanding ofthe leader humility construct in organizational set-tings. In this article, we also seek to identify theconditions in which humble leader behaviors arethought to be more or less effective. To that end, weinterviewed leaders from a wide range of organiza-tions and leadership levels to examine whether thereported effectiveness of humble leader behaviorsdepends on the organizational context and othersituational factors.

METHODS

Context

Because leadership is a highly complex phenom-enon steeped in contextual and symbolic interpre-tations (Conger, 1998) and because new organiza-tional topics benefit from a qualitative foundation(Edmondson & McManus, 2007), we chose a qual-itative research design. Along with other interpre-tivist researchers, we view leadership as a sociallyconstructed phenomenon. It is actively createdthrough social interchange (Walsh, Henderson, &Deighton, 1988) and over time yields a collectiveframe of reference (Daft & Weick, 1984) that be-comes a dominant logic or reality for collectives(Gephart, 1984). As leaders engage in their ownleadership roles, they become careful observers ofhow other leaders behave and experiment with theleadership behaviors and approaches they observe(Armstrong, Allinson, & Hayes, 2002). Becausemost leaders are simultaneously followers (i.e.,they are both “senders” and “receivers” of leader-ship behaviors), leaders are ideally positioned togain insight about humble behaviors, enacted orobserved, and the effects of these behaviors in theworkplace.

What we view as sorely lacking from the litera-ture on humble leadership are rich, “real-life” ac-counts of what leader humility looks like and theboundary conditions for leader humility. We wereinterested in exploring not only what leader behav-iors are viewed as humble, but also the meanings(i.e., mental models or personal theories) of thesebehaviors and their observed outcomes in differentleadership contexts. Thus, in line with Eisenhardt(1989), we employed a case study approach withfollow-up interviews from multiple contexts be-cause it offers the prospect of producing results thatare less likely to be deemed to be idiosyncratic toone case and allows for richer theoretical infer-ences. Though the approach of drawing from mul-tiple contexts is the most common qualitative ap-proach in leadership research (Bryman, 2004), itis not employed for purposes of generalizability,but because it allows researchers to observe moreinteresting differences among contexts and bound-ary conditions.

Data Collection

Theoretical sampling. When selecting our initialsample in which to begin to explore humble lead-ership, we took cues from our review of the leaderhumility literature, which suggests that a morehumble approach to leadership might be fosteredby a leader going through significant adverse chal-lenges, feeling powerless or not in control, andmaking mistakes (Collins, 2001a; Exline & Geyer,2004). When we began our study in the summer of2007, the housing bubble was bursting, as homesales and prices experienced historic declines (Tre-jos, 2007). The regional mortgage bank whose em-ployees we sampled was facing significantly low-ered financial success, and the entire industry wasfacing a social stigma for being seen as contributingto an economic recession via irresponsible lendingpractices (Poirier, 2007). The industry was de-scribed as “humbled” by current circumstances(DeSilver, 2008; Goodman & Morgenson, 2008).Leaders confirmed that they had feelings of uncer-tainty and lack of control amidst “unprecedentedchanges” (interview no. 2) and that their businesswas “being tested as much as you can be tested . . .with competitors going down every day” (interviewno. 2).

The adverse changes, uncertainty, and feelings oflack of control prevalent in the industry led us toview a large, northwestern United States mortgagebanking firm as a theoretically meaningful contextin which to begin exploring humble leadership. Atthis firm, we interviewed 17 leaders from four dif-ferent hierarchical levels (from regional president


to branch manager); visited the corporate headquar-ters and 14 outlying offices; recorded and tran-scribed roughly 200 single-spaced pages of fieldnotes about observed leader-follower interactionsin meetings, contextual artifacts, and musings be-fore and after each interview; and held multipleface-to-face interviews with an outside leadershipconsultant who had been training the firm leadersfor over a year prior to the interviews. We wereexposed to leader training meetings, discussions of“360 degree feedback,” day-to-day interactionswith employees, and leaders’ collaborations withtheir peers to work to overcome common chal-lenges. Since we had access to the 360 degree eval-uation scores, which contained questions such as“demonstrates personal humility,” we paid partic-ular attention to the perspectives of those who wererated highly by others on this item. We also re-viewed archival leader assessments and financialperformance data for a two-year period. Though theleader interview data gave us the richest view of thephenomenon, the other forms of field data shapedour interpretations of the first round of interviewsand our emerging theory about humble leadership.

Our ongoing analysis of the first round of inter-views and field notes yielded the insight thatpower significantly influenced humble leader be-havior. Level of power centralization is a core di-mension of organizational culture (Burns & Stalker,1961; Cameron & Quinn, 2005), and power is abasic underlying dimension of human relation-ships (Fiske, 1993). Because humility represents abottom-up type of leadership, we wanted to exam-ine whether it operated differently in power-cen-tralized versus power-decentralized organizations.Thus, our subsequent sampling decisions wereshaped by our desire to know how humble leaderbehaviors differed in organizations in which powerwas generally more centralized and those in whichit was typically more evenly distributed. In oursecond round of interviews we interviewed leadersfrom organizations in which power is traditionallymore centralized (seven military leaders and threemanufacturing/industrial leaders); leaders fromother organizations in which power is traditionallymore spread out (five high-tech firm leaders andeight hospital leaders); and yet others from organi-zations in which the power distribution is typicallysomewhere in between the two more extreme types(seven leaders in financial and retail service com-panies). Religious organizations were also an in-triguing context to us, as they typically have morehierarchical structures (Brinkerhoff, White, Ortega,& Weitz, 2007), while also promoting virtues suchas humility. Thus, we interviewed eight leadersfrom religious contexts in hopes of documenting

important insights about the boundary conditionsof leader humility.

The first author approached leaders from eachorganizational type and used a snowball samplingtechnique to secure further interviews in each or-ganization, until theoretical saturation wasreached. In all interviews, we sought to sampleleaders from different levels (16 CEOs, presidents,high-level executives; 20 midlevel leaders; and 19frontline leaders) to observe any differences inhumble behaviors and their impact based on factorssuch as leader visibility and the degree to whichthe leader’s influence was symbolic (usually seenat higher levels of leadership [see Conger, 2000]) ormainly interpersonal. Because most organizationalleaders are male, only nine of our participants werefemale (16%). By the seventh interview with a fe-male leader we began to feel we were reachingsaturation with regard to differences in perceptionsacross leader gender. We sought out two more in-terviews with female leaders to make sure. On av-erage, our participants were 44.20 years old, hadworked 4.40 years for their current organization,and had 17.05 years of experience in their industry.A summary of demographic information for thegroups of participants is given in Table 1.

Procedure. Drawing on our literature review, wecreated an interview protocol aimed at elicitinganecdotes or critical incidents of humble leaderbehavior and its consequences and contingencies.The bottom of Figure 1 includes a sample list ofquestions from this protocol. Interviewees sharedexamples from their own leadership and their ob-servations of those they considered to be humbleleaders. For contrast, many interviewees alsoshared examples of what humble leadership is not,accounts based on times when they or another

TABLE 1Interview Sample Information

Wave Context n

AverageTenure asLeadera

PercentMale

PercentUpper-Levela

1 Mortgage banking 17 4.36 59 352 High-tech firm 5 5.00 100 802 Hospital 8 4.17 50 252 Financial services/

retail7 9.00 86 57

2 Religious 8 4.46 88 292 Manufacturing/

industrial3 6.89 100 87

2 Military 7 7.07 100 57Total 55 5.48 16% 29%

a In years.b Reflects senior and executive positions in organizations

(i.e., above middle management).


FIG

UR

E1

Mod

elof

Dat

aR

edu

ctio

nP

roce

ss

Lea

der

Hu

mbl

e B

ehav

iors

Con

tin

gen

cies

Fol

low

er P

erce

pti

ons

Rep

orte

d O

utc

omes

Lea

der

Trai

tsC

onte

xtu

alF

acto

rsB

ecom

ing

Doi

ng

Um

brel

laC

onst

ruct

s

Con

stru

cts

Cod

ing

Th

emes

Sam

ple

Inte

rvie

wQ

ues

tion

s

Ad

mit

tin

gM

ista

kes

and

Lim

itat

ion

s

Mod

elin

gTe

ach

abil

ity

Sp

otli

ghti

ng

Fol

low

erS

tren

gth

s an

d

Con

trib

uti

ons

1. V

erba

lize

sap

pre

ciat

ion

for

con

trib

uti

ons.

2. A

ckn

owle

dge

sst

ren

gth

s of

emp

loye

es.

3. S

ays

“we”

wh

en t

alki

ng

abou

t su

cces

ses.

1. A

dm

its

mis

take

s.2.

Ver

bali

zes

gap

sin

kn

owle

dge

or

exp

erie

nce

.3.

Tak

esre

spon

sibi

lity

for

fail

ure

.

1. S

how

s op

enn

ess

tow

ard

lea

rnin

g.2.

Mod

els

foll

ower

task

s an

d s

eeks

feed

back

.3.

Lis

ten

s m

ore

than

talk

s.4.

Con

sid

ers

alte

rnat

ive

view

s.

1. H

ow w

ould

hu

mil

ity

be m

anif

est

inth

e w

orkp

lace

?

2. W

hat

exa

ctly

did

th

e le

ader

do

wh

enth

ey b

ehav

ed h

um

bly?

3. D

escr

ibe

a si

tuat

ion

wh

ere

you

obse

rved

a l

ead

er b

ehav

ing

hu

mbl

y.

Com

pet

ence

Sin

ceri

ty

Th

reat

an

dT

ime

Pre

ssu

re

Lea

rnin

gC

ult

ure

Hie

rarc

hic

alA

dh

eren

ce

1. A

ttri

buti

on o

fge

nu

inen

ess.

2. A

ttri

buti

on o

fco

nsi

sten

cy.

1. A

ttri

buti

on o

fex

per

tise

.2.

Att

ribu

tion

of

dec

isiv

enes

s.3.

Att

ribu

tion

of

con

fid

ence

.

1. P

oten

tial

ly f

atal

con

sequ

ence

s.2.

Iss

ues

of

firm

or

per

son

al s

urv

ival

.3.

Eve

ry m

inu

tem

atte

rs.

1. D

egre

e of

pow

erce

ntr

aliz

atio

n2.

Pre

sen

ce o

fou

twar

dsy

mbo

ls o

fau

thor

ity.

3. R

igid

ity

offo

rmal

str

uct

ure

.

1. C

ult

ure

rein

forc

esop

enn

ess,

exp

erim

enta

tion

and

lea

rnin

g.

1. A

re t

her

e ci

rcu

mst

ance

s w

her

e a

lead

er c

an d

isp

lay

too

mu

ch h

um

ilit

y?

2. A

re t

her

e ot

her

lea

der

tra

its

that

cou

nte

rbal

ance

hu

mil

ity?

3. C

ould

lea

der

hu

mil

ity

be i

nef

fect

ive?

Wh

en?

Leg

itim

izat

ion

of F

ollo

wer

s’D

evel

opm

enta

lJo

urn

eys

Leg

itim

izat

ion

ofU

nce

rtai

nty

Flu

idit

y of

Org

aniz

ing

Fol

low

erE

nga

gem

ent

Con

tin

uou

sS

mal

lC

han

ge

Psy

chol

ogic

alF

reed

om

1. F

ollo

wer

s fe

elok

ay b

ein

g, “

inp

roce

ss.”

2. M

akin

g m

ista

kes

is n

orm

al.

3. F

ollo

wer

sac

cou

nta

ble

for

dev

elop

men

t.

1. A

pp

rop

riat

eto

voc

aliz

eu

nce

rtai

nty

.2.

Fee

lin

gu

nsu

re i

sn

orm

al.

3. I

nit

iati

ng

acti

on o

ver

anal

ysis

.4.

Dir

ecti

onta

kin

g ra

ther

th

an d

ecis

ion

mak

ing.

1. H

ow d

oes

lead

er h

um

ilit

y in

flu

ence

foll

ower

s?

2. H

ow d

oes

lead

er h

um

ilit

y in

flu

ence

the

wor

k en

viro

nm

ent?

3. W

hy

doe

s le

ader

hu

mil

ity

fost

erth

ese

outc

omes

?

1. W

hat

doe

s le

ader

hu

mil

ity

lead

to?

2. W

hat

ou

tcom

es r

esu

lt f

rom

lea

der

hu

mil

ity?

3. D

oes

lead

er h

um

ilit

y in

flu

ence

emp

loye

e p

rod

uct

ivit

y? H

ow?

1. R

ecep

tivi

ty t

obo

ttom

-up

an

dto

p-d

own

flu

cuat

ion

s in

fun

ctio

nin

g.2.

Su

pp

orti

ve o

fle

ader

ap

pro

ach

chan

ge.

1. O

ngo

ing

adap

tive

nes

s,ex

per

imen

tati

on.

2. P

refe

ren

cefo

r “s

tayi

ng

inm

otio

n.”

1. R

edu

ced

eval

uat

ion

app

reh

ensi

on.

2. R

elie

f fr

om s

elf-

mon

itor

ing

3. C

an “

be m

ysel

f”at

wor

k.

1. M

atch

ing

foll

ower

str

engt

hs

wit

h t

asks

.2.

Giv

ing

voic

ean

d p

arti

cpat

ive

dec

isio

n m

akin

g3.

Em

plo

yee

grow

th a

nd

lear

nin

g.

leader displayed what they viewed as the oppositeof humble leadership. All of these responses wereuseful in formulating our conceptual model. Theself-reported examples provided more insight intothe intrapersonal processes of humble leadership(i.e., beliefs underlying humble behaviors) and thepersonal outcomes resulting from a leader behavinghumbly (i.e., psychological freedom), and the ob-served examples provided more insight into howthese behaviors were interpreted (i.e., follower per-ceptions) and the interpersonal results of humbleleader behaviors. Though generally we observed alot of convergence of self-reported and other-re-ported perspectives of humble leadership, therewere some key differences, which we discuss be-low.

Because past research suggests some associatehumility with humiliation and self-contempt (Ex-line & Geyer, 2004; Grenberg, 2005), in the courseof the interviews we felt it was important to pro-vide a common frame of reference for participantsby giving each leader the general, strengths-baseddefinition of humility noted in the introduction.However, to ensure we were not unduly primingrespondents’ descriptions of leader humility, weexperimented with not mentioning the definitionuntil the middle or end of the interview, and insome interviews withholding the definition alto-gether. We also couched the definition in the ques-tion “This is how academics define humility, butwhat does humility mean to you in the context ofleadership?” We did not observe any significantdifference in the frequency with which interview-ees mentioned each of the humility behaviors weuncovered in these interviews. We also found tri-angulated evidence for the humility behaviors weuncovered from our first sample’s 360 degree eval-uation data, which we report below. Each interviewlasted approximately 60 minutes and was recordedand transcribed verbatim. As an accuracy check,we sent 30 interview transcripts to participants.Though several leaders said they appreciated theopportunity to revise their statements, we receivedno corrections. We took this as a signal that thetranscriptions were ready to be analyzed.

Data Analysis

We conducted a theme analysis (Lee, 1999; Miles& Huberman, 1994) and obtained an agreementanalysis by independent coders (Cohen, 1960). Fol-lowing Boyatzis (1998), our search for themes wasinitially sorted into rough umbrella constructs thatappeared to adequately capture the humble leaderbehaviors, outcomes, mechanisms, and contingen-cies emerging in the data. Over a series of weekly

meetings, we iteratively generated 39 subthemes orcodes until we had a set of themes within whicheach response could be categorized. Two other re-search assistants were then given these codes andasked to categorize all interview statements.5 Thecoders independently coded 84 percent of inci-dents identically and then resolved discrepanciesvia discussion. Cohen’s kappa from this round ofcoding was .81, which, according to Landis andKoch’s (1977), indicates “full agreement.”6

Since our intent was to learn about both thesimilarities and differences in humble leadershipin different organizational contexts, we then orga-nized all interview statements into coded catego-ries by organization type. We anticipated nuanceddifferences among types, as the implementation ofleader humility would interact with different situ-ational demands, social expectations, and followerimplicit theories of leadership. Over a series ofmeetings, we discussed and made note of differ-ences in the subjective meanings attached to leaderhumility (Schutz, 1972) and the different contex-tual contingencies mentioned.

Overview of Conceptual Model

The purpose of Figure 1 is to summarize how weorganized, reduced, and interpreted our data. Thebottom row in the figure lists sample questions thatguided each interview; the next row lists the codesused to categorize responses to these questions; thenext identifies our model constructs; and the last(top) row states the umbrella constructs that reflectthe major organizing components of our model.Our first set of constructs is organized under theumbrella construct “Leader Humble Behaviors.”Participants reported why or how (i.e., “FollowerPerceptions”) these behaviors led to the outcomesthey cited (i.e., “Reported Outcomes”), as well aswhat factors influenced the effectiveness of thesebehaviors (i.e., “Contingencies”). These linkages,themes, constructs and umbrella constructs pro-vide the structure for the presentation of our find-ings and the foundation for the conceptual modelthat emerges from our results.

5 Reviewers requested that we not report frequenciesfor every code. We do report, however, that all of ourcodes were cited in at least 16 percent and up to 85percent of all interviews.

6 The Atlas.Ti program aided us in organizing andcoding our qualitative data.


HUMBLE BEHAVIORS AND CONTINGENCIES

In this section, we report the elaborative insightswe documented about the enactment of humbleleadership; these are insights intended to go be-yond that which currently exists in the humbleleadership literature. Though the interview de-scriptions of humble leadership were full of nu-anced differences, these humble leader behaviorsmeaningfully fit into three general categories: (1)acknowledging personal limits, faults, and mis-takes, (2) spotlighting followers’ strengths and con-tributions, and (3) modeling teachability.

Our participants also reported many contextualand personal factors that influenced the appropri-ateness and effectiveness of humble leader behav-iors. Responses to our questions about when behav-ing humbly would be less effective varied frommentions of leader traits counterbalancing humility(i.e., behaving humbly will be effective only if fol-lowers perceive their leader to be generally compe-tent or sincere), to more contextual features, suchas the presence of extreme threat and time pressure,an organizational culture of learning, or level ofadherence to hierarchy. Table 2 presents samplequotes illustrating each contingency construct. Forthe sake of narrative flow, in this section we dis-cuss the humble behaviors and the most often citedboundary conditions and contingencies that werementioned in reference to each of these behaviors.We have emphasized particularly illustrative word-ing in the interview quotes with italic. At the end ofthis section, we summarize by discussing what weview as the “core essence” or “way of being” cap-tured by humble leadership, as revealed from theinterview data.

Acknowledging Personal Limits, Faults, andMistakes

When describing humble leaders, participants re-ported examples of leaders acknowledging per-sonal limits, faults, and mistakes. From the ac-counts, humble leaders did not seem to beoblivious or blind to their strengths (i.e., “Humilityis knowing what you are good at and not good at”[interview no. 3]; “She was completely open toboth strengths and weaknesses” [interview no. 50]),but it was publically owning up to mistakes andacknowledging limits that formed much of the“quiet charisma” and strength of humble leaders.Expressing a perspective contrary to the romanti-cized or “great man” perspectives on leadership,wherein leaders are often viewed as superhumanheroes, our interviewees suggested that the humbleleaders’ unique strength involved having the cour-

age to show their “humanness” to followers, in-cluding admitting personal foibles, knowledgegaps, lapses in judgment, and bad decisions, andgenerally acknowledging when they did not leadwell. Sample statements include “He never pro-fessed to be an expert at something he wasn’t”(interview no. 41); “He is aware of his limitations.He understands what others are strong at and whathe is weak at” (interview no. 44); and “He pokedfun at himself. He never tried to appear more per-fect than he was” (interview no. 34)

In some cases, admitting weaknesses was accom-panied by leaders requesting followers to helpthem remedy a weakness or compensate for it:

In one training, I announced to my direct reports, “Iam not a good listener. I just charge ahead. And so,that’s something that I need you to help me withbecause I’m just not good at it. When we’re in thesemeetings and we’re being collaborative, help me toremember to just be quiet and shut up for a bit andlet people hammer out ideas.” (interview no. 15)

My leader does a good job of letting us know herweak spots. She lets us know how we can help tocompensate for the things she doesn’t do very well.(interview no. 42)

Humble leaders were also described as acceptingblame for failures. For example, one participantreported, “We were not doing well and we all knewit. . . . The leader was very forthcoming and upfrontabout assuming fault for that in front of everyone”(interview no. 22). In both the interviews and ourobservational data of those others described ashumble leaders, we found evidence of their notonly taking responsibility for their own mistakes,but also for those of their teams, owning that it wastheir role to adequately prepare, guide, and provideenough resources for the teams to succeed.

The above examples focus on humility “lookingback,” such as admitting limitations from past ex-perience or assuming blame for past failures, butsome leaders also reported that behaving humblyinvolved leaders acknowledging when they werelosing control of their emotions in real-time inter-actions. Interviews suggested that humility also in-volved recognizing when to disconnect from aninteraction and let a “cooler head” take care of atense situation (interview no. 10). For example:

Humility gives us the ability, not only to recoverquickly when we are getting too emotional but toallow other people to know, “Hey, I just have to letyou know I need to step aside for a moment or youneed to have a little patience with me right now,because I’m not myself.” Even with my husband, tosay “I just need a moment. I need to process this. Ineed to get myself back to a good place.” (interviewno. 11)


TABLE 2Evidence for Humble Leader Behavior Model Constructs

UmbrellaConstruct Construct Examples

Humble behavior Acknowledginglimitations, fault,and mistakes

I made a business decision where I put something in place, went forward and thengot feedback it was not working. And I said, “You know what, I messed up. Weneed to redo this.” I just tried to be upfront and honest that I had made amistake and that we needed to redo it. (interview no. 16)

Humble behavior Spotlighting followerstrengths andcontributions

This incredibly complex project was delivered as a huge success and the leadergave everybody on the team all the credit. (interview no. 23)

When there was a success among the team he made sure the person who did thework gets due recognition. He will make sure they get noticed. (interviewno. 29)

Humble behavior Modelingteachability

And so that humility has helped me . . . listen to others and allow them to askquestions and then to respectfully go about answering them. (interview no. 11)

Even though he had the ability to run things well on his own, he would still askinput and advice from his staff. (interview no. 31)

Followerperception

Legitimizing followerdevelopment

I have always stressed with the people who report to me that it is OK to make amistake. They quickly realize that most mistakes don’t cost us that much and wefix it and move on. We learn from it and make the whole process better as aresult. (interview no. 4)

Followerperception

Legitimizinguncertainty

I tell followers that the changes we are facing are unprecedented and there is nohistory to fall back on. But that we don’t need to fear. We’ll just make the bestdecisions we can and execute. (interview no. 2)

Reportedoutcomes

Relational trust andloyalty

Humility builds loyalty. That was the difference between me and my peers. Myleadership approach fostered loyalty; that was my brand. (interview no. 55)

You may get the job done without humility but people don’t seem to be happy.(interview no. 54)

Reportedoutcomes

Psychologicalfreedom

Coming from a spirit of humility allows you to be more of yourself and drop thoseguards. (interview no. 9)

With humility, you don’t feel the pressure to be the expert at everything. Takes thepressure off. (interview no. 17)

Reportedoutcomes

Follower engagement Employees walk away with more sense of responsibility and accountability. Insome ways, his humility actually increased pressure to perform. (interviewno. 41)

Reportedoutcomes

Small, continuouschange

I think [humility] increases the rate of adjustment because you are probably moreopen to outside criticism or ideas or the external environment and I think that’swhat’s needed to help improve adaptability. (interview no. 3)

Contingencies(leader traits)

Leader competence Good leadership is a constellation of several positive traits. Humility is definitelyone of them. But a leader who is humble without competence won’t do well.There has to be a reason for followers to follow this leader. So humility might beconsidered the icing on the cake. (interview no. 34)

Contingencies(leader traits)

Leader sincerity [Leaders] sometimes try to manipulate people by acting humble and I think mostpeople figure it out fairly quickly. . . . If they figure out who you really are andyou are not faking it and you are humble, then they are more willing to acceptit. (interview no. 10, emphasis added)

Your humility has to be real in order for it to work. (interview no. 16)Contingencies

(contextualfactors)

Extreme threat andtime pressure

In environments were decisions need to be made quickly a humble leader may notbe able to make them as quickly. There are some situations where humilityis not good, like when timeliness is everything. Situations of timeliness whichdon’t call for quality; in these circumstances it’s possible a humble leadercouldn’t get it done. When you need to get your soldiers over the hill, it is not atime to get opinions. (interview no. 34)

Contingencies(contextualfactors)

Organizationallearning culture

Our collaborative culture is a strength of our organization. This culture has beenset by our CEO and filters down from there. I would say this allows for humilityto play into what we do. (interview no. 2)

Contingencies(contextualfactors)

Hierarchicaladherence

As a military leader, you can’t be humble all the time. At times you have to beaggressive and mean what you say and say what you mean. (interview no. 52)

I think that leader humility would clash more with a command-and-control typeculture. (interview no. 2)


Following up on this idea, we asked leaders insubsequent interviews for insights about the emo-tional expression and emotional regulation of hum-ble leaders. In all subsequent interviews, humbleleaders were described as regulating their emotionswell, handling anger or stress well, or only showingpositive emotions. Thus, the “lived meaning” ofhumble leadership seems to extend to the domainof emotional management, enabling humble lead-ers to acknowledge when harmful or counterpro-ductive emotions are getting the best of them inreal-time interactions.

Self-reported accounts suggested that these be-haviors were motivated by a belief that being hu-man and showing humanness toward followersyields better interactions and more solid relation-ships than being (or trying to appear) “perfect.” Forinstance, “I think it’s essential [for humility] thatyour direct reports not see you as having an ‘I’mperfect, I sit on a golden throne, I’m upper manage-ment’ mentality” (interview no. 8). “It’s importantthat [followers] know that I don’t think I’m perfect.If I make a mistake, and I don’t acknowledge it,there’s no buy-in on their part. So I’m going to try tolead by example, but I’m also going to make itknown that I’m going to make mistakes” (interviewno. 1). Humble leaders, it seemed, are less suscep-tible to the trap of believing their position makesthem immune from having to acknowledge weak-ness or admit mistakes (Burke, 2006).

Contingency: Perceived Competence

The accounts suggested that humility was effec-tive only to the degree a leader was also perceivedas competent or able, especially with regard to thebehavior of admitting mistakes and limitations (in-terviews nos. 34 and 51). Though humbly admit-ting weakness was itself described as a unique typeof strength, our participants also insisted that moretraditional leadership traits, such as intelligence,resolve, and persuasiveness, needed to work in tan-dem with humility for the leader to be effective.Looking closely at our accounts, we noticed thatthese attributions of competence in many cases de-pended on external signals of authority. For exam-ple, among those with a highly visible leader role(CEO or executive) or clear, external signs of au-thority (military chevrons on a uniform, religiousregalia), the competence of a leader who displayedhumble behavior was less likely to be called intoquestion than would be likely in the case of alower-level leader, for whom signs of leader author-ity were lacking or more ambiguous.

Humility could be perceived as weakness unless theleader also is perceived as confident and effective.

It’s less important if you have a lot of positionalpower, like a CEO, but for somebody at my levelcompetence matters a lot. If followers are turned off[i.e., don’t see you as competent], humility willmake you less effective. (interview no. 1)

Our data also suggested that demographic differ-ences influenced perceptions of competence asmoderators of the effectiveness of humility.Younger leaders with older followers believed theyfirst needed to “prove themselves” (interviewsnos. 9 and 54), to build up or establish reputationsfor competence, before admitting weaknesses.Without this reputation, behaving humbly by ad-mitting mistakes and limitations was seen as too“risky.” For example, one younger leader promotedto lead a group of older employees said:

As much as I want to show my people the real sideof me, I risk not living up to their expectations. I riskthem seeing me weak in some way. I risk showingthat I am susceptible in some way. I risk opening thekimono and showing them something they don’twant to see. I risk all of these different things. So Ivery much grapple with that on a daily basis. (inter-view no. 13)

Similarly to young leaders of more experiencedfollowers, the female leaders we interviewed alsofelt this tension between behaving humbly and es-tablishing a reputation for competence. In line withpast research on emotional display (Tiedens, Ells-worth, & Mesquita, 2000) and agentic behaviors(Rudman & Glick, 1999), the woman leaders weinterviewed often experienced a double bind whentrying to simultaneously meet gender role expecta-tions and leader role expectations (Eagly, 2007; Ea-gly & Karau, 2002; Ragins & Winkel, 2008). Itseemed that with regard to humility, female leadersoperate in a more narrow range of acceptability,feeling pressure to be a strong leader on the onehand and a humble female on the other:

What I’ve learned is that if you’re a female peopleexpect different things. I think humility is expectedmore for a female leader than a male leader, but theyneed to see you as competent too. As a womanleader that’s a complex one for me. I’ve tried to digdeeper in this one. I’m petite and I look youngerthan I am and I’m a female, so I look back at certainevents as a leader and go “Gosh, did that command-and-control approach come from me because Ithought I needed to prove something?” I’ve gottencomments from other males like, “Gosh, I used tothink you were so cute and sweet.” (interviewno. 14)

Several interviewees echoed this idea that non-humble female leaders are viewed more negatively(described as “overcompensating”; interviews


nos. 3, 5, 6, 53, and 54), whereas nonhumble maleswere more likely to be viewed as courageous, con-fident, competent, or strong. In contrast, our datasuggested that when men show humility they areless likely than women to be socially penalized andinstead are more likely to be admired. A male in-terviewee said, “In our society, women are ex-pected to be more humble. Males are given morecredit when they are humble” (interview no. 20).Statements from both male and female leaders in-dicated that they saw a sense of injustice in thetendency they had observed to expect females tobehave more humbly and then to question theircompetence for doing so (interviews nos. 3, 7, 10,11, 14, 16, 34, 51, and 53).

Overall, social status differences based on ageand gender were reported as important determi-nants of competence perceptions and the perceivedeffectiveness of leader humility expression, espe-cially with regard to acknowledging mistakes andlimitations.7 Surprisingly, the influence of age andgender was described as less impactful in militarysettings for shaping competence perceptions be-cause the clear hierarchical rankings and positions(i.e., uniform chevrons and bars) give strong signalsof credibility. “Though I think female leaders haveto prove themselves more, there are lots of otherways to differentiate people. Military rankings, forinstance, influence attributions of competence asmuch as or more than gender or ethnic status”(interview no. 54). Our accounts suggest that lower-level leaders, younger leaders, and female leadersmay be more reticent to display humility by admit-ting mistakes and limitations because their compe-tence is more likely to be called into question.

Also, nearly all of those in business contextsmentioned competence as an important precondi-tion for admitting weaknesses, whereas not onereligious leader mentioned competence as an im-portant precondition for the effectiveness of leadershumbly admitting weaknesses. We interpreted thisfinding to mean that perhaps humility is consid-ered one of the core competencies of religiousleadership (i.e., central to follower expectations ofreligious leadership), whereas in a business envi-ronment, humility is more likely to be viewed as an

“extra-role” behavior that supplements the corecompetencies of business leadership.

Spotlighting Follower Strengths andContributions

Humble leaders were also described as beingvery deliberate in communicating the specificvalue that their followers had to a team or an or-ganization. In contrast to “nonhumble” leaders,who were sometimes described as suspicious to-ward and threatened by exceptionally intelligent ortalented followers because they were worried thesefollowers might “outshine” them (interviewno. 10), humble leaders instead were intent onpushing their followers into the spotlight. Theseleaders frequently recognized, appreciated, andpraised followers’ strengths and complimented thework and efforts of followers. Humble leaders weredescribed as students of their followers’ strengths,and thus they were experts on the “human capital”around them. They actively engaged in behaviors tomake these strengths known and salient to others.For example: “It was obvious that she knew follow-ers’ strengths and she even structured zone goalsbased on that knowledge. She always gave themgenuine compliments” (interview no. 21). Ratherthan drawing attention to themselves, humble lead-ers were described as using “we” rather than “I”when talking about the leaders’ accomplishments.For instance, one interviewee highlighted givingcredit to the team rather than taking credit for him-self as the behavioral change that marked anotherleader’s transformation from being arrogant tohumble:

I left one of my last companies because of my lead-er’s arrogance. . . . He was taking my ideas and coin-ing them as his own to upper management. He hadall the answers to everything in his mind’s eye. Hethought he had no weaknesses. So I left. But I justhad a conversation with a couple of my previouscoworkers and they said “He’s changed.” They saidhe’d received some tongue lashings from uppermanagement that made him more humble and nowhe always talks in terms of “we,” like “As a regionwe’re doing this and we’re making this happen andwe, we, we.” I think he learned to be humble. (inter-view no. 8)

Humble leaders were described as attributinggood ideas to followers when presenting to uppermanagement, taking money out of their pocket togive to followers who had done a good job (inter-view no. 49), giving genuine rather than emptypraise, and taking notice of the unique strengths offollowers (interview no. 25). Overall, humble lead-ers seemed to be continually shifting attention for

7 Past research has shown that the feeling of socialstanding or interpersonal power stems from factors suchas gender, age, and ethnic status (status characteristicstheory [Berger, Fisek, Norman, & Zelditch, 1977; Wagner& Berger, 1997] is relevant here) and that different stan-dards are used to judge the behaviors of more powerfuland less powerful group members (Biernat & Fu-egen, 2001).


positive events to others and shifting focus for neg-ative events on themselves.

Contingency: Perceived Sincerity

Participants reported that the behavior of spot-lighting follower strengths and contributions waseffective only if leaders were viewed as sincerelyoffering praise. Humble leaders were described asthose who provided honest substantive compli-ments, described true follower strengths, and gen-uinely appreciated the contributions of others. Asone leader described, “She always gave genuinecompliments and never handed out flattery orempty praise—it was real praise” (interviewno. 21). In contrast, descriptions of attempts to por-tray “false humility” or “instrumental humility”were accompanied with contempt and suspicion.Leaders who went “through the motions” of ap-pearing humble by handing out false praise in adisguised attempt to win favor were not well re-garded by followers. Moreover, false humility wasreported as putting followers into a defensive andcautious mind-set. For example, a military leadertold us, “I have seen a leader fake humility for theirown benefit. When they are just going through themotions you lose respect for them and really dis-trust everything they say” (interview no. 55). AsSchimmel said, “In a society which rewards humil-ity with social esteem, some people may mimicbehaviors typical of authentic humility” (1992: 39).

Concerning sincerity, we asked about what ourparticipants viewed as the connection betweenleader humility and authenticity, a topic that hasrecently gained more attention in the leadership(Avolio & Gardner, 2005), emotions (Hareli & Rafa-eli, 2008), and customer service (Grandey, Fiske,Mattila, Jansen, & Sideman, 2005) literatures.Though some felt that authenticity and humilitywere deeply intertwined (i.e., “The willingness tobe authentic first comes from a place of being hum-ble” [interview no. 2]), others felt they were notnecessarily connected, citing examples of leaderswho were “authentically arrogant” (i.e., “I’ve hadleaders who were authentically arrogant. They re-ally believed they were superior to others” [inter-view no. 34]; “You can be a person who is self-centered and authentic about it. . . . These concepts[i.e., humility and authenticity] are not necessarilyintersecting” [interview no. 5]). Thus, for many,authenticity was perceived as the motive for a lead-er’s behavior (regardless of the type of behavior),but humility was seen as reflecting a certain set ofleader behaviors. Notwithstanding some disagree-ment about the conceptual similarities and differ-ences between leader humility and the general con-

cept of authenticity,8 there was consensus thatleader humility was better received if it was seen assincere or authentic.

Modeling Teachability

In the descriptions of leader humility we gath-ered, perhaps the most central element of humbleleader behavior (i.e., the one most often mentionedand emphasized by followers) was that humbleleaders were described as “models of learning.”Humble leaders showed openness to new ideas andinformation, had a habit of listening before speak-ing, and were very receptive to feedback. For ex-ample, “The leader would always take notes inmeetings when others were talking. He really lis-tened to people” (interview no. 4). “This leader wasvery good at learning new things . . . a good lis-tener” (interview no. 38). The leaders’ self-reportedaccounts of humility suggested that debunking thebelief that a leader has to have “all the answers”enabled listening to others and showing an open-ness to feedback. Instead, the leaders suggested thatbelieving that everyone has much to learn fosteredthe behavior:

You can’t go into a conversation where you learnwithout a level of humility. If you’ve got a mentalitylike “Wow, I don’t have to know it all and I don’thave to be perfect and it’s okay for me to admitthat”—that’s how you can go into a conversationand really learn from somebody else. You can’t learnfrom others if you think you already know it all.(interview no. 17)

Humble leaders were often described as recep-tive to the feedback and ideas of others becausehumility entails “recognizing there are a lot of dif-ferent ways to accomplish something” (interviewno. 55). Interviewees reported that stressful situa-tions and failures were often resolved by a leaderlistening to followers and seeking their input tococreate solutions to challenges.

Humble leaders would also model teachabilityby initiating role reversals with followers—that is,assuming the follower role and putting the followerin the leader/trainer role. Rather than merely tell-ing followers how to do things, humble leaderswere described as modeling follower tasks and thenseeking feedback from the follower. For example:

8 We recognize that the term “authenticity” used inthis conceptual comparison exercise is referred to in thegeneral sense and does not reflect the specific dimen-sions of the authentic leadership construct (see Walum-bwa, Avolio, Gardner, Wernsing, & Peterson, 2008).


The leader would actually step into the role and say,“Hey let’s learn this together.” . . . “Let’s go out andmake some sales calls together. Maybe you can seeme making a call and you can give me some pointersin what I do right, and what I do wrong. Then youcan try it.” (interview no. 17)

Several interviewees described humble leadersas being willing to “get off the golden throne” (in-terview no. 8) and “jump in the trenches” (inter-view no. 40) to learn firsthand the challenges fol-lowers faced. It seemed that no follower task wastoo menial for humble leaders. They would modelall kinds of follower tasks, from sales calls (inter-view no. 17, 19) to custodial work (interviewno. 51) to grunt labor (interview no. 54). In oneexample, a higher ranking military leader broke hisleg helping lift a heavy generator off a truck withhis soldiers. His only lament was that he would notbe able to run with his soldiers for a while (inter-view no. 53). Through modeling, humble leadersseemed intent on fostering a positive, proactiveattitude about learning new things and gainingdeeper understanding about how to best help fol-lowers overcome challenges.

Contingency: Extreme Threat and Time Pres-sure. Participants reported that the effectiveness ofhumility in general, and modeling teachability es-pecially, depended on their organization’s cultureas well as the contextual circumstances leadersfaced. Specifically, we learned from our interview-ees that modeling teachability was less effectivewhen the status quo had been seriously disrupted,time for action was short, or followers faced a sig-nificant threat. In such situations, followers weredescribed as needing “restabilization” (i.e., reestab-lishment of order) more than development, appre-ciative comments, or the opportunity to expressthemselves and be listened to. For instance:

While humility is important, I don’t think it is ap-plicable in every situation. Sometimes [behavinghumbly] is not what followers need, because theymay be feeling their own insecurities. It’s a veryisolated instance because I believe in humility inalmost everything, but I can see in certain situationswhere you have extreme change and insecurity,when followers may be looking to their leader forself-confidence. The leader needs to step up andtruly exhibit themselves. Then the leader can gohome and privately freak out. (interview no. 10)

Interviewees explained that modeling teachabil-ity and taking a more humble approach to leader-ship takes time, but that in these high-threat situa-tions in which immediate action was necessary,taking the time to learn and grow would be ineffec-tive. For example:

In the military, sometimes you have to get yoursoldiers out of there as fast as possible, whatever ittakes to get them out of there. In some organizationsand situations you just have to go. When time isscarce or it is the critical resource and every tick ofthe clock means something important, during thosetimes being humble is not the best. (interviewno. 51)

Humility in leadership is not a good idea when thesafety of the population is at risk with disease con-trol. Here people’s lives are at stake and you have tomove fast; humility cannot always be present, [you]have to be assertive. (interview no. 22)

Statements from our participants suggest that insituations of extreme time pressure or threat, enact-ing humble behaviors would be counterproductiveand might cause followers to question a leader’sworthiness to lead in that situation. As one contex-tual difference, we found it interesting that not onereligious leader could think of a situation in a reli-gious context in which humility would be less ef-fective. This fits with the idea that humility isperhaps more central to religious leadership than tobusiness or military leadership and also suggeststhat extreme threat accompanied by time pressureis less common in religious contexts.

Contingency: Learning culture. Our partici-pants also mentioned that the overarching cultureof the organization in which a leader and followersinteract influenced the interpretation and per-ceived legitimacy of modeling teachability, andsome specifically said that this behavior was moreeffective in an organizational culture that encour-aged and reinforced learning. For example:

The values of the organization are important fordetermining whether humility is recognized as astrength rather than a weakness. . . . I think humilitydepends upon what type of upper-level leadershipyou have or what type of organization that you arein. One of the things that I see at this company isthey allow their managers to take those risks and arelearning-focused. I see this culture as fostering morehumility and loyalty. (interview no. 5)

According to the interview statements, the be-haviors of top-level leaders in an organization hada large impact on shaping a learning culture andvalidating humble leader behaviors for the lower-level leaders.9 As top-level leaders became knownfor modeling teachability, this behavior becamesymbolic of the culture of the organization and was

9 This idea is in keeping with upper echelons theory(Hambrick & Mason, 1984), cascading leadership (Yukl,2010: 486), and leader-imprinting theory (Ballinger &Schoorman, 2009; Ritter & Lord, 2007).


the means of legitimizing this behavior for lower-level leaders. One humble executive leader rein-forced this learning culture role by encouragingorganizational members to vocalize their concernsabout the leader’s decisions, “welcoming debate”(interview no. 14), encouraging collaboration bysaying “one of us is never smarter than all of us”(interview no. 2), and emphasizing “openness andteachability” when socializing and training newleaders (interview no. 8). One interviewee de-scribed the learning culture that was “catalyzed” bythis executive leader’s humble example and lead-ership. She described how after one regional train-ing meeting, leaders from across the state volun-tarily huddled in groups, pulled out notebooks andspreadsheets, and engaged in serious conversationsabout ideas for solving local challenges: “They allcould have gone home, but instead most everyonestayed for over an hour helping and learning fromeach other. In all the previous companies I’veworked for in this industry, I have never seen any-thing like this” (interview no. 8). This intervieweesaid that the learning culture fostered by this exec-utive leader made it acceptable for middle andfirst-line leaders to admit where they were strug-gling and seek to learn from others to find solutionsto challenges. She indicated that in other compa-nies where she had worked, humble leader behav-iors such as modeling teachability would not havebeen well received because of the culture of com-petition and rivalry that existed.

Contingency: Hierarchical adherence. We alsofound that the degree to which organizations werereported as having a hierarchical culture influ-enced the expression of all three types of humblebehaviors. At the onset of this study, we expectedleader humility to be more countercultural—that is,in violation of role expectations in organizationsthat more rigidly adhere to a hierarchical structure.The emphases on chain-of-command, norms ofpower centralization, and the presence of explicitsignals of leadership authority (number of chev-rons, bars, or stars on a military uniform; robes andclerical collars in religious organizations) in hier-archical organizations all reinforce top-down func-tioning and “power distance” norms. Thus, view-ing humble leadership as more of a bottom-up styleof leading, we expected it would look different orbe expressed less often in hierarchical contexts.Indeed, our initial reaction to the data was to seegeneral differences in the tone of the humble be-haviors expressed in more and less hierarchicalsettings; in less hierarchical contexts, humble lead-ers were described as showing humility in playful,self-deprecating, or humorous ways, but in more

hierarchical contexts, expressions of humility werealways described as being serious.

Looking more closely at the data, we noticedmore nuanced differences in the descriptions ofhumble leaders in less and more hierarchical con-texts. For instance, we found that the behaviors ofspotlighting follower strengths and contributionswere expressed in a more “tempered” or less fre-quent way. Those described as humble leaders inmilitary and industrial contexts “shared some”credit with followers, while humble leaders in theless hierarchical organizations were described as“giving all the credit” for success to followers. Weobserved the biggest difference in the behavior ofadmitting mistakes, limitations, and faults. Indeed,humble leaders in the more hierarchical contextswere described as “self-aware,” but not as out-wardly acknowledging limitations and mistakesvery often:

He seemed to be self-aware, but he didn’t articulateor share his limitations much. I think it had a lot todo with his contextual environment; it’s not realcool to sit around and talk about personal stuff inthe military. (interview no. 52)

Honestly, I didn’t hear a lot about his failings orlimitations, but I always felt able to go to him andreally talk about mine. (interview no. 53)

Our understanding the differences in the enact-ment of humble leader behaviors across differentlevels of hierarchical rigidity became clearer whenwe applied a “temporal theoretical lens” (a time-orientation referent for each humble behavior) tothe data (Ancona, Goodman, Lawrence, & Tush-man, 2001; Mitchell & James, 2001). For example,some expressions of humble leadership seemedmore past-focused (i.e., evaluating past events,such as highlighting past successes, and taking theblame for past failures); some behaviors were pres-ent-focused (i.e., behaviors in real-time interper-sonal interactions, such as acknowledging whencurrent emotions were getting the best of them,listening carefully and seeking feedback); and somehumble behaviors were more future-focused (i.e.,modeling tasks as a way to develop followers forfuture success). Viewing humble leader behaviorswith this temporal theoretical lens, we found thatstatements from participants in military and indus-trial contexts suggested that leaders in these morehierarchical contexts expressed past-oriented hu-mility (i.e., gave credit to their teams after a missionor project was accomplished, accepted blame forpast failures) and future-oriented humility (i.e.,modeling tasks to develop followers to succeed),but they expressed very little real-time humility(i.e., admitting weaknesses in real-time interac-


tions). Responses suggested that this pattern mightresult from the emphasis on task accomplishmentin these hierarchical contexts:

He seemed aware of his limitations but I don’t thinkhe saw it as necessary to discuss those with otherpeople unless it was immediately germane. Thisstems from him focusing on what is necessary andneeded to accomplish the task at hand. It wasn’tabout denial of personal limitation, just “let’s focuson what we have to do.” (interview no. 31)

When on a military mission or when an indus-trial assembly line is running, leaders are operatingin a very strong, top-down situation in which theobjective is clear and they are expected to minimizedeviations from that known end goal. Participantssuggested that in such situations, it was less appro-priate and effective for leaders to divulge areas ofweakness and initiate feedback-seeking discus-sions with followers.

Descriptions of humble religious leaders, likethose of humble military leaders, also reflected theleaders’ reticence to admit mistakes and personalweaknesses to followers, but for different reasons.Because religious leaders are generally expected tobe focused on helping their parishioners overcomemistakes rather than spending time discussing theirown, participants reported that church leaders’ ad-mitting weaknesses and mistakes to parishionerswas seen as a violation of role expectations. Inaddition, since religious leaders are often seen asemblems of their religious organization (i.e., sym-bols of its doctrine and principles; see Kreiner,Hollensbe, and Sheep [2006]), religious leaders arealso considered “knowledge leaders.” Unlike busi-ness leaders, who often are required to guide theirgroups in an uncertain, turbulent marketplace, re-ligious leaders generally are expected to know thepath that leads to a higher form of living. Thus,admitting knowledge gaps may be more acceptablein the minds of followers for a business leader thanfor a religious leader.

Taken together, these findings related to differ-ences in hierarchical culture made sense to uswhen we realized that the likely career and repu-tational costs of humble behaviors in hierarchicalcontexts were probably much higher than theywould be in nonhierarchical contexts. Military of-ficers responsible for human lives and religiousleaders responsible for human souls are held to ahigher standard than office managers responsiblefor inventory and sales calls. But the greater risk ofleader humility in hierarchical contexts may alsoyield a greater reward in terms of follower engage-ment because followers knew their humble leaderwould bear the brunt of ill will from the hierarchy

for unit failures (i.e., what we viewed as the “mar-tyr effect”).

As an officer, I would have my higher-ranking en-listed soldiers accompany me when reporting to mysuperiors. I wanted them to be able to be exposed todifferent leadership styles than my own for theirown leadership development. Sometimes they got tosee me get reamed out by my superiors, which wasactually a good thing. It made them want to do theirjobs better. (interview no. 55)

Overall, in less hierarchical contexts it appearedthat leader humility was less risky and had fewerinterpersonal costs. However, because humilitywas more counternormative in hierarchical con-texts (i.e., less common, less expected), it seemed tohave a larger payoff in terms of follower engage-ment, trust, and loyalty.

The Core Essence of Leader Humility

Although the purpose of our study was mainly todocument the observed or “lived meaning” of hum-ble leadership, and fulfilling this purpose yielded agreat deal of information regarding specific behav-iors, we also were curious as to whether the state-ments gave any clues about the underlying essenceor “way of being” captured by humble leadership.Though the data suggested to us that humble lead-ers possessed a generally high moral character (i.e.,unselfish, other-focused), exemplified a uniquekind of courage or quiet charisma, and possessedan underlying belief in personal and follower mal-leability, boiling our hundreds of pages of datadown into one idea yield the following: Leaderhumility at the most basic, fundamental level ap-pears to involve leaders catalyzing and reinforcingmutual leader-follower development by eagerlyand publicly (i.e., outwardly, explicitly, transpar-ently) engaging in the messy process of learningand growing. Even more simply put, humble lead-ers model how to grow to their followers. Ratherthan just talking about the importance of continuallearning or supporting programs for followers’ de-velopment and growth, humble leaders transpar-ently exemplify how to develop by being honestabout areas for improvement (i.e., acknowledgingmistakes and limitations), encouraging social learn-ing by making salient the strengths of those aroundthem (spotlighting follower strengths), and beinganxious about listening, observing, and learning bydoing (modeling teachability). In our accounts,these three humble behaviors seemed to co-occuror to foster one another,10 and their synthesized

10 This insight was supported by comparison with


expression created the perception that the leaderwas obsessed with personal growth. Though hum-ble leaders were intrinsically focused on personalgrowth, they also hoped their modeling wouldspread contagiously to followers:

My goal is to continually be growing, and havingthat effect trickle throughout my sphere. (interviewno. 1)

This leader would tell us, “I’m so committed togrowing and learning and to be a member of thisteam, it’s important for me that you are committedto growing and learning too.” (interview no. 14)

In sum, humble leaders were reported as makingoutwardly explicit the step-by-step process of per-sonal development. We now describe the influenceleader humility had on followers—the reportedoutcomes of leader humility as well as the mecha-nisms linking humble leader behaviors to thesereported outcomes.

MECHANISMS AND OUTCOMES

In response to questions about what outcomeshumble leader behaviors produced we heard gen-eral comments about increased relational satisfac-tion, loyalty, and trust; such comments are com-mon responses to positive or relational approachesto leadership (see Avolio, Walumbwa, and Weber[2009] for a review). In this section, we focus in-stead on some of the more novel and at times coun-terintuitive insights revealed by our participantsregarding the outcomes of humble leader behaviorsand how these behaviors led to the outcomes re-ported (i.e., the mechanisms at work). Two emer-gent mechanisms reflected how followers inter-preted these humble behaviors in forming ideasabout workplace norms. We asked questions suchas, “How did the leader’s humble behaviors influ-ence you as a follower?” and “What did these hum-ble behaviors do to shape the work environment?”In the broadest sense, responses suggested thathumble leader behaviors influenced how followersfelt about both doing (i.e., method of going aboutthe work) and becoming (i.e., attitudes toward de-

velopment and growth). More specifically, we cat-egorized these responses around the idea of legiti-mization.11 It appeared that followers viewed theirleader’s humble behaviors as legitimizing followers’own developmental journeys, leading to followerpsychological freedom and engagement; and thesehumble leader behaviors were seen as legitimizingcontextual uncertainty, leading to a preference forsmall, continuous, rather than large, discontinu-ous, changes and fluid organizing (i.e., ease andswiftness in transitioning to different ways of func-tioning). For continuity, we discuss each legitimi-zation perception and its associated outcomes to-gether. Illustrative quotes for each construct arepresented in Table 1.

Legitimizing the Developmental Journeys ofFollowers

As leaders showed they were not afraid to pres-ent themselves as “in process” by being transparentabout personal limitations and modeling theirteachability, interviewees described feeling vali-dated in their own developmental efforts. Whatwas described was more than merely feeling psy-chologically safe in their work environment (Ed-mondson, 1999). In a deep sense, these humbleleader behaviors influenced followers’ personalideas about “becoming,” shaping, as it were, a de-velopmental identity for the followers as membersof their organization (see Dutton, Roberts, & Bed-nar, 2010; Lord & Brown, 2001). For example, oneinterviewee colorfully emphasized how much hishumble leader’s approach had influenced his ownself-perceptions and his work: “This [humble lead-er’s] mantra was ‘Failure finds its grace in adjust-ment.’ This phrase has impacted me and my work alot. If I were to tattoo something on my body, thatphrase would probably be it” (interview no. 13).Some quotes even reflected the idea that thesehumble leader behaviors catalyzed a development-oriented relational identity:12 “It is ok to be “a workin progress” here. Mutual learning and develop-

360-degree leader evaluation data from our first sample.Leaders whose direct reports rated them highly on theitem “Demonstrates personal humility” were also ratedvery highly on the items that reflect the humble leaderbehaviors: “Shares credit for success” (r � .91; p � .001);“Fosters awareness of strengths and weaknesses”(r � .74; p � .001); “Takes time to develop and mentorhis/her staff” (r � .70; p � .001) and “Is willing toconsider ideas that are contrary to his/her own” (r � .83;p � .001).

11 We use Suchman’s (1995) definition of legitimiza-tion as a generalized perception or assumption that cer-tain actions are desirable, proper, or appropriate withinsome socially constructed system of norms, values, be-liefs and definitions.

12 Relational identities reflect the nature of a role rela-tionship (e.g., leader-follower) that is shaped by the in-teraction between role-based identities (i.e., perceivedexpectations for a given role) and person-based identities(i.e., personal characteristics that influence the enact-ment of role-based identities [see Sluss & Ashforth, 2007:12]).


ment is what my relationship with my leader is allabout” (interview no. 34). Because of their leader’swillingness to acknowledge their own inexperi-ence, foibles, and shortcomings, followers believedthe leader would be more understanding of fol-lower mistakes. Leaders legitimized followers’ pro-cess of development by telling followers, often withenthusiasm, that making mistakes is a normal andeven a beneficial part of learning:

I tell my people that mistakes are okay, as long asyou learn from them. That helps them realize thatwe are all going to have failures consistently andthey’re only going to make us stronger and catapultus further in performance and progress, and we’regoing to learn from them and go forward. And actu-ally they really crave this openness because growingis an awesome process—it’s exciting. (interviewno. 11)

Though leader humility fostered a sense that mis-takes are an acceptable part of development, it alsoreinforced follower accountability for acknowledg-ing these mistakes:

In my experience as both a leader and a follower,I’ve found that leader humility fosters follower ac-countability and the desire to own up to their ownfaults or inexperience. And this desire for honestyand improvement creates an incredible loyalty be-tween the follower and the leader. (interview no. 3)

Aside from the general outcomes of increasedloyalty and trust already mentioned, this legitimi-zation of followers’ developmental journeys report-edly led to the outcomes of increased psychologicalfreedom and follower engagement.

Psychological freedom. Followers’ accounts re-flected that the legitimization of the developmentaljourneys of followers resulting from humble leaderbehaviors produced a profound intrapersonal senseof psychological relief and reduced evaluation ap-prehension. Followers of humble leaders felt“freed” to risk being transparent about their owndevelopmental process and show others, withoutself-denigration, how they were working to bridgethe gap between their real and ideal selves (Hig-gins, 1989). Humble leaders’ admissions of limita-tions and mistakes were described as showing fol-lowers that leaders were interested in followerdevelopment and not just in their performance,which freed followers both from the psychologicalburden of hiding their inexperience and mistakesand from the burden of maintaining and defendingan unrealistically high self-image. “It [the leader’shumility] let down the tension inside. It let downany sense of having to prove yourself. It gave mepermission to be honest about my shortcomings”(interview no. 30). Some cited a connection be-

tween this psychological freedom and improvedperformance:

Leaders who are humble foster a kind of comfort [infollowers]. . . . When you have that in followers, youget better results. (interview no. 9)

In addition, evidence from self-reports suggestedthat behaving humbly had its own psychologicalbenefits for leaders as well. For example, whenasked about the potential benefits of humility, oneleader said: “Freedom, I mean absolute freedom. Toenjoy yourself and enjoy others around you and seethem for who they are. It takes a burden off yourshoulders.” (interview no. 8). “Behaving humbly asa leader is a good use of power. I can go to bed withpeace of mind” (interview no. 52). Another leadertold us: “Humility helps me be real. I just feel likehumility lets me live the life that I desire as op-posed to having the psychological hurdles gettingin my way” (interview no. 14). As leaders andfollowers experience more freedom from “psycho-logical hurdles” as a result of humble leader behav-iors, more psychological and emotional resourcesare freed to expend toward more productive ends.In other words, this psychological relief or comfortmay lead to “better results” because followers arefreed from the cognitive burdens associated with thefear of making mistakes or showing inexperience andso have more cognitive resources for in-depth (ratherthan heuristical) processing (Baumeister & Bushman,2008; Fiske & Taylor, 1984) and creativity (Edmond-son, 2004).

Follower engagement. Our participants also toldus that followers often responded to humble leaderbehaviors with increased job engagement and mo-tivation to do their work. The legitimization ofpersonal development appeared to enhance follow-ers’ intrinsic motivation to learn and master jobtasks and shift followers from a goal of meetingexternal performance standards (i.e., praise fromthe boss, getting a bonus) to one of trying to meetinternal performance standards (cf. Dweck, 1999).At the onset of this study, we wondered whetherhumble leader behaviors might cause followers torelax their focus on accomplishment. However,many followers of humble leaders reported en-hanced motivation as due to leader humility:

I actually enjoy working late and going above andbeyond the call of duty when [my humble leader]genuinely asks for help about something or admitsthey are confused about an issue. My [nonhumbleleader] thought he had all the answers and so itseemed like no matter what I did it wasn’t goodenough or the way he liked it done. Part of theproblem was that he expected me to read his mind,


so it was safer just to do the bare minimum. (inter-view no. 47)

Participants reported that a small humble leaderbehavior stimulus (e.g., asking for advice) couldproduce a tremendous amount of follower workeffort, whereas a very strong stimulus from a non-humble leader (e.g., yelling at followers to do ev-erything their way) was demotivating to followers.For example:

When my leader shows humility and is open towhat others have to say it creates an environment ofenergy. I come to the meetings prepared. Rather thanstepping in the room and saying “Okay, he’s going toset the agenda and we are going to sit here and listenfor an hour,” it’s more interactive, we feel like wehave more impact. Changes the whole thing up.(interview no. 14)

My previous regional president was kind of like, “Iknow everything. I’m the boss” and if you didn’tagree with him you were disagreeing and he took itpersonal. . . . It got to a point where if I didn’t havethe same opinion, I didn’t say anything at all. (in-terview no. 10)

Those described as nonhumble leaders effec-tively shut down the discretionary contributions oftheir followers (e.g., followers psychologically de-tached from the nonhumble leader and did the bareminimum [interview nos. 10 and 52]), whereashumble leader behaviors reportedly unlocked andamplified follower intrinsic motivation. The inter-view responses also suggested that humble leaders’willingness to model follower tasks (as part of themodeling teachability behavior) helped enhancethe perceived meaningfulness and importance ofthe tasks to followers, which are also importantfactors for fostering job engagement (Kahn, 1990).

Humble leaders were also described as adept at“parlaying employees into the right places” (inter-view no. 31) and capitalizing on the unique apti-tudes and skills of followers: “Knowing my em-ployees allows me to play to their strengths andprocure for them new and different duties that cre-ate a passion that excites them about what they do”(interview no. 6). Not only were humble leadersmore “hands off”—their followers were also more“hands on” and even were ready to take the lead-ership role when necessary:

I had a recent situation in our branch where I toldthe district manager, “Please take the lead. I’m get-ting too emotionally reactive here. I am not fit to bedealing with this right now.” She took the respon-sibility and she was wonderful. She stepped up andtook care of it. (interview no. 10)

When hard-nosed leaders “crack” in combat, follow-ers just sit back and think the leader is weak. How-

ever when humble leaders “crack” in theater, theirfollowers usually step up and shoulder more of theleader role. (interview no. 55)

In sum, all humble leader behaviors led followersto feel that personal development was a legitimateworkplace goal, which increased the followers’ in-trinsic motivation to be engaged in their jobs.

Legitimizing Uncertainty

In seeking to learn how and why the humbleleader behaviors led to the outcomes described, wenoticed an important follower perception that wehave labeled “legitimizing uncertainty.” Most ofour interviewees, even those in bureaucratic con-texts such as the military and industrial organiza-tions, reported a work context of uncertainty, tur-bulence, and dynamic change. The humble leaders’acknowledgment of their own uncertainty helpedto validate followers’ uncertainty and encouragedan environment of experimentation and learningdialogue. For instance, one interviewee said, “Weas a group never felt uncomfortable saying to this[humble] leader, “This doesn’t make sense” (inter-view no. 53). In contrast, nonhumble leaders, whowere described as pretending to “know it all,” wereperceived as disconnected from the dynamic con-text in which organization members operated, andfollowers said they were reluctant to acknowledgewhat they did not understand or even ask clarifyingquestions.

Interviewees suggested that leaders set the toneof adopting a posture of certainty or instead ofacknowledging uncertainty. When leaders had a“certainty posture,” followers felt they should bot-tle up their uncertainty until they could present awell-polished, more certain plan: “You’d betterhave all your ducks in a row. Every word you saywould need to be measured and proven” (interviewno. 53). Instead of being paralyzed by uncertaintyand making mistakes, humble leaders enabled andencouraged followers to vocalize their uncertain-ties and doubts and to feel their way forward byexperimenting through trial and error. Humbleleaders reinforced the value of experimenting andstaying in motion by encouraging followers to “justmake the decision and go with it; if it is wrong we’lllearn from it” (interview no. 55). According tothose we interviewed, this legitimization of uncer-tainty and trial-and-error learning led to a prefer-ence for continuous small changes over discretelarge changes and greater fluidity in organizing.

Preference for continuous small changes. On aunit level, the frequency and magnitude of changewere mentioned as being influenced by humble


leader behaviors and the legitimization of uncer-tainty. Units led by humble leaders functioned in away that favored small, continuous changes ratherthan large, infrequent changes. Participants re-ported that humble leader behaviors enabled teamsto adapt to their environment better by constantlyupdating and matching team member strengthswith changing environmental demands. The behav-iors of modeling teachability and admitting igno-rance were described as especially important forhelping followers not interpret uncertainty as athreat (see Staw, Sandelands, & Dutton, 1981), butas a common and valid assessment of their envi-ronment. This legitimization of uncertainty fos-tered acceptance of unpredictability, openness tonew information, and more trial-and-error experi-menting. Thus, units led by humble leaders were in“learning mode” much of the time, favored fre-quent course reevaluation and updating (that is,“making small, day-to-day changes” ([interviewno. 34]), had a “line upon line, fix little things hereand there” approach (interview no. 18), and “fa-vored incremental changes” (interview no. 50). Al-though legitimizing uncertainty, these leaders fos-tered a culture that recognized that ongoinginformation should be used to evaluate the accu-racy of initial decisions. Thus, they questioned ini-tial decisions and made constant adjustments.“Humble leaders improve the effectiveness of thedecision-making process and speed the process ofeffective adaptation” (interview no. 7). Humbleleaders were less likely to escalate commitment tofailed courses of action (e.g., Staw, 1981) becausethey were more open to feedback and less likely tomake and adhere to decisions for purposes of self-validation or self-enhancement. For instance:“Someone who has humility would . . . be betterable to listen to peers and other resources so theydon’t keep going down paths that are nonproduc-tive” (interview no. 29).

Humble leaders also helped followers value stay-ing in motion and creating solutions that were“good enough for now” rather than permanent andperfect. Thus, humble leaders were reported asvaluing moving in the “right direction” rather thanmaking the “right decision.” Humble leaders alsofostered more of an “‘if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it’mentality” (interview no. 50), wherein they weremore likely to build on current foundations ratherthan start fresh to build something that was all theirown creation (i.e., “[They are] willing to stand onthe shoulders of those who had gone before” [inter-view no. 31]). The small, continuous change ap-proach humble leaders fostered seems to contrastwith the bold, all-or-nothing approach of narcissis-tic leaders that is aimed at drawing attention to

themselves, is often vehemently defended, and re-sults in either a big win or a big loss (Chatterjee &Hambrick, 2007).

Fluidity in organizing. The units in which hum-ble leaders led were also described as being moreable to make swift or fluid transitions between dif-ferent types of organizing (i.e., top-down versusbottom-up) in response to changing situational de-mands. Because humble leaders legitimized uncer-tainty, follower responses reflected greater under-standing of the need to adapt to differentenvironmental challenges and reported being morereceptive when the humble leader initiatedchanges in a unit’s way of functioning. Specifically,though humble leaders’ units typically functionedin a bottom-up manner, their followers morequickly “bought-in” (interview no. 8) and “jumpedon board” (interview no. 34) when the leaders felt asituation called for their teams to function in amore top-down fashion. For instance, one inter-viewee described how the firm needed to make a“momentary” transition from their “collaborativeand democratic” culture to respond effectively toimmediate challenges: “Things are going to be com-ing down the pipeline in a more edict-military typeway, because the situation that we’re in calls forthat. We [the followers] understand that this is nota total departure from our culture, but it is a mo-mentary departure from our culture” (interviewno. 2). Followers appeared to be more receptive and“aligned” (interview no. 11) to these changes be-cause followers and leaders freely acknowledgedthe uncertainty they were facing. Leaders and fol-lowers agreed that sometimes uncertainty demandsa top-down mode of organizing, such as when aunit is facing a significant, urgent threat.

Units with leaders described as nonhumble, incontrast, were reported as being much less fluid inorganizing their structure. When such a leader sawthe need to try a more bottom-up approach, follow-ers were described as more suspicious and reticentto participate for fear of saying something out ofline with the leader’s thinking: “From my experi-ence, when a command-and-control leader decidesto try a humble, team approach, at first followersare like, ‘What’s the catch?’ It takes a while tochange the dynamic. Followers won’t buy into itimmediately. It takes time to believe it” (interviewno. 8). “Because of my previous experiences [with anon-humble leader], it took me a while to open upand really share what I was thinking” (interviewno. 6).

In relation to fluidity in organizing, from leaders’own perspectives (our self-reported accounts), hu-mility enabled them to “get out of autopilot mode”(interview no. 12) and recognize when their lead-


ership approach was not working and a unitneeded to function in a different manner. Partici-pants reported that leader humility played a self-regulatory function, helping leaders more effec-tively adjust their leadership styles or approachesto initiate different types of unit functioning.

I think it is critical to have the ability to reflectinward and recognize when you need to try a differ-ent approach. . . . Humility entails opening youreyes in seeing that in leadership you can’t just treatpeople like you want to be treated, or the way youoperate. You have to realize what their needs areand lead according to that. (interview no. 53)

Many leaders said humility spurred them to tem-per initial adherence to traditional, top-down ap-proaches to leadership, enabling them to see whenthey had been too rigid, too forceful, or “ascendant”(interview nos. 8, 14, 15, 16, and 28). But we weresurprised to hear that sometimes humility movedleaders in the other direction, making them moretough, forceful, and top-down when they saw it asnecessary. For example, one leader said: “It tookhumility to realize that my being too relational withfollowers was in an effort to fulfill my own needs,not theirs. It was not serving them or the businesswell. I saw that I needed to adjust my leadership-style back toward the more firm, command-and-control approach” (interview no. 7). In short, leaderhumility was described as enabling leaders to ac-knowledge when their leadership was out of bal-ance and temper or regulate it in either direction(“harder” or “softer”). Thus, we found that leaderhumility does not necessarily mean a leader willhave difficulty making hard decisions and beingforceful when necessary, but rather that he or shewill be more mindful in evaluating whether anapproach is appropriate to the situation. Overall,leader humility helped leaders recognize whenthey needed to change the way their units func-tioned, and followers of humble leaders were morereceptive to these changes in organizing.

DISCUSSION

In response to recent calls for a deeper exami-nation of bottom-up leadership (Uhl-Bien, 2006;Weick, 2001), our findings highlight the behaviors,mechanisms, contingencies, and outcomes of hum-ble leadership. Though many have speculatedabout what humble leadership is and why it isimportant, this is the first study that we are awareof that documents the lived meaning and the enact-ment of humble leadership. Through an inductiveapproach, we identified the behaviors that organi-zation members in a variety of contexts view as

humble, as well as the outcomes and the boundaryconditions for the effectiveness of such behaviors.Leadership research and theory have been criti-cized as being too segmented, and calls have beenmade for more integration of findings from differ-ent leadership approaches (i.e., integrating leadertraits, leader behaviors, follower cognitions, situa-tional/contextual factors [see Yukl, 2010: 491]). Weexamined and built this theory of humble leader-ship with these calls in mind, as our theory toucheson leader behaviors, leader underlying beliefs, fol-lower cognitions, contextual and situational fac-tors, and outcomes for both leaders and followers.Though uncovering the lived meaning of humbleleadership in organizations is important, the maincontribution of this study is our process modeldescribing in detail exactly how humble leader be-haviors legitimize follower development and fol-lower uncertainty. These follower legitimizationcognitions provide an explanatory mechanism thatis often lacking in existing leadership theory (Yukl,2010: 496). In response to another major criticismof leadership theory—that it is too decontextual-ized (Yukl, 2010: 492)—we structured our study toilluminate boundary conditions, situational con-straints, and contextual factors that influence theappropriateness and effectiveness of humble lead-ership by sampling a broad array of organizationaltypes and leadership levels. The contingencies ofleader perceived competence, sincerity, situationallevel of threat and time pressure, organizationallearning culture, hierarchical rigidity, and level ofthreat and time pressure are important contribu-tions to the humble leadership literature, whichmay also have important application to other bot-tom-up leadership theories. Below, we discuss thetheoretical implications of this study for the field ofleadership, leader and follower development, fol-lower engagement, emergent change, and transi-tioning between top-down and bottom-up ap-proaches to organizing, as well as the uniqueness ofour theory of leader humility among other bot-tom-up leadership approaches.

Theoretical Implications

Both in theory and in practice, leaders have longbeen depicted as demigods, heroes, and superhu-man saviors (Murrell, 1997; Yukl, 1998). Our the-ory and findings provide a substantive theoreticalcounterweight to such models by identifying thepositive developmental influence leaders can haveon followers by modeling how to be effectivelyhuman rather than superhuman. Certainly top-down heroic leadership may be useful in somecontexts, and our results identify extreme situa-


tions in which top-down approaches should be pre-ferred over bottom-up approaches. However, ourfindings suggest that bottom-up leadership ap-proaches are more wholly appropriate and greatlyneeded in today’s knowledge-driven economy(Lichtenstein, Uhl-Bien, Marion, Seers, Orton, &Schreiber, 2006). The humble leader behaviors weidentified (e.g., acknowledging mistakes, spotlight-ing follower strengths, modeling teachability) andthe mechanisms (e.g., legitimization of uncertaintyand personal development) were often described inour interviews as directly challenging the morepopular top-down conceptions of leadership.

Although some common leadership pundits andapproaches appear to legitimize pretending (“fakeit till you make it,” “show no fear,” “power pos-ing,” and “macho posturing” [Weick, 2001; Carney,Cuddy, & Yap, 2010]), humble leaders legitimizethe actual process of becoming. In other words, thecore impact of leader humility on followers appearsto be followers’ constructive and adaptive re-sponses to their own inexperience, gaps in devel-opment, and mistakes. By helping to reduce fol-lower anxiety and evaluation apprehension duringthe process of development, humble leaders helpfree up followers’ psychological resources to beused toward more productive ends. Such a findinghas important implications for the leadership de-velopment literature, helping to form a bridge be-tween leader development (describing the growthof the intrapersonal and other skills of those informal leadership positions) and a context of lead-ership development (a work environment in whichboth leaders and followers are able to develop lead-ership skills and engage in self-leadership regard-less of position [Day, 2000]). Leader humility ap-pears to be a specific and effective way to foster thiscontext of leadership development through the pro-cess of rendering the intrapersonal (internal) statesof leaders interpersonal, making self-awareness,emotional regulation, social learning, and teach-ability explicit and salient in the process of leader-follower interactions. In addition, leader humilitymay have important implications for fostering “de-velopmental readiness” (a topic leadership schol-ars have pinpointed as critically needed in futureleadership research [Avolio et al., 2009]) betweenboth leaders and followers, as the behaviors ofleader humility appear to catalyze a type of inter-action in which leader and follower developmentalactivities are mutually reinforced.

In addition, the difference between legitimizingpretending versus actual becoming also appears tohave important implications for the evolution ofleader-follower relationships. As our data suggest,followers of a humble leader are less likely to ex-

perience disillusionment—and the associated mis-trust, disloyalty, contempt, and dissatisfaction—with their leader over time because the leader nevertried to create any illusions to begin with. Thus, thedevelopment of a humble leader-follower dyadicrelationship may follow a steadier, upward path,marked by increasing trust, mutual respect, andloyalty, rather than the suggested leader-followerrelational stages of honeymoon, disillusionment,and (hopefully) reconciliation (Agashae & Bratton,2001). Leader humility may lead to more stabileleader-follower relations because humble leaderseffectively foster identification (i.e., through con-veying being in a common predicament with fol-lowers with regard to uncertainty and the need forconstant development) without fostering overde-pendence (Kark, Shamir, & Chen, 2003) or leaderidealization (in which followers “elevate leaders toheights from which they can rarely fail [to] disap-point” [Gabriel, 1997: 317]).

Our findings also contribute to the growing liter-ature on job engagement, which is not yet definitiveabout what specific leadership approaches best fos-ter follower engagement.13 Rather than seeking toengage followers through charisma, energy, ideal-ism, and stimulation, on which the empirical evi-dence has been inconsistent (see Dvir, Eden, Avo-lio, & Shamir, 2002), our study suggests that the“quieter” approaches of modeling teachability andvalidating follower developmental processes andexperimentation are important for fostering intrin-sically engaged employees. Our results suggest thatleader humility may help reduce some of the ob-stacles that inhibit followers from feeling engagedin their work (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004). Specifi-cally, our data suggest that humble leader behav-iors go beyond fostering followers’ feeling psycho-logically safe and supported by their leader(Bakker, 2005; Kahn, 1990) to help affirm followers’process of development, foster a more adaptive at-titude toward mistakes and trial-and-error learning,and free more of followers’ psychological resources(i.e., psychological freedom) to dedicate to work-related tasks. In addition, humble leaders’ model-ing of follower tasks, large or menial, helped toennoble or elevate the tasks in the minds of follow-ers, making it more likely that they will not see thetasks as merely unimportant “grunt” work, but asintrinsically worthwhile. Thus, this study providesimportant elaborative insight revealing a constella-

13 Little is known about what leadership behaviors orapproaches best foster job engagement beyond the generalideas of supportiveness (Bakker, 2005) and managerial ef-fectiveness (Mauno, Kinnunen, & Ruokolainen, 2007).


tion of specific leader behaviors that influence fol-lower cognitions, which in turn foster a heightenedsense of job engagement. Recent empirical studysupports this connection between leader humilityand follower engagement (Owens et al., 2012).

Aside from the individual-level implications ofour study, our model of bottom-up, humble leader-ship also adds important insight into the literatureof bottom-up change in organizational units(Burnes, 2004; Cummings & Worley, 2001; Dawson,1994; Weick, 2000). Though some advocate moretop-down strategic change approaches (Conger,2000) others argue the need for organizations tolearn to “grow strategy from below” (Brown &Eisenhardt, 1998; Sayles, 1993), seek bottom-up“small wins” (Kouzes & Posner, 1997), and engagein “opportunistic experimentation” at lower organ-izational levels (Collins & Porras, 1994). Advocatesof emergent change (Burnes, 2004) argue the impor-tance of organizations being willing to live on the“edge of chaos” to achieve the level of flexibilityand adaptability required for continuous transfor-mation. Our findings contribute to this research byidentifying the previously unspecified leadershipbehaviors that facilitate this type of change orgrowth.14 We suggest that the inertia that keepsorganizations from adapting in pace with a chang-ing environment may be in large part due to leaderrigidity (rather than teachability) in decision mak-ing; creating overdependence on leader knowledgeand expertise (rather than acknowledging and en-couraging the strengths and contributions of fol-lowers); and leaders’ overconfidence in their ownability to anticipate the future (rather than admit-ting limitations and knowledge gaps). Leadersadmitting limitations, modeling teachability, andlegitimizing uncertainty may provide the “dis-equilibrium” or “shock to the system” needed foran organization to stay in a continuous change stateand foster the unit reflexivity (reflection, planning,and adaptation) needed for continual unit learning(Swift & West, 1998). As matching resources withevolving opportunities, constraints, and demandsis a key skill in emergent change (Hayes, 2002: 37),humble leadership appears to help foster thismatching, because the humble leader behavior ofspotlighting follower strengths may produce a con-sensual awareness of what human resources a teamhas to allocate to meet evolving demands. In sum,we believe that the behaviors of humble leadershiphelp give more clarity to the specific leadership

approaches that facilitate emergent change in or-ganizations.

In light of theory suggesting that top-down andbottom-up approaches be integrated for optimalchange effectiveness (Conger, 2000; Dunphy, 2000),our study contributes an important insight withregard to an asymmetrical effect in transitioningbetween top-down and bottom-up organizingstyles. Transitioning from a humble, bottom-up to atop-down functional approach was described asmuch easier (i.e., the transition was quicker, thefollowers were more responsive) than transitioningfrom a top-down to a bottom-up approach. Thisdifference in going from top-down to bottom-uporganizing versus from bottom-up to top-down or-ganizing appears to happen because humble leader-follower interactions are more complex; there ismore blurring of role boundaries and more uncer-tainty in role expectations, and dynamic, mutualinfluence is present. Top-down leader-follower re-lationships are generally less complex, as leadersgive orders and followers carry them out. For lead-ers whose default position is top-down leadership,it is more difficult to transition to the bottom-up,humble leadership approach because it requires themelting of heretofore rigid role relationships, andfollowers have not been developed to take part inthe leadership process. Thus, humble leaders havea much easier and quicker time transitioning to alower-order relational mode (i.e., less complex,top-down mode) than top-down leaders who try totransition to a bottom-up mode.

Our findings also contribute to research on leaderbehaviors that are thought to promote flexibility inrigid organizational bureaucracies—that is, the lit-eratures regarding “dynamic delegation,” “con-strained improvisation,” and “authority migration”(Bechky, 2006; Bigley & Roberts, 2001; Klein,Ziegert, Knight, & Xiao, 2006). Each of these leaderbehaviors involves leaders relying on followers fordirection in bureaucratic organizations. Our resultssupport what we perceive to be the main point ofthese literatures: that bottom-up leader behaviorsare useful in hierarchies, even if they occur lessoften. However our model expands and enrichesthis finding by revealing some boundary conditionsfor the effectiveness of bottom-up leader behaviors(i.e., situations of extreme threat and time pressure,presence of a learning culture, perceptions ofleader competence and sincerity). Furthermore,this research also answers calls to understand morefully the mechanisms behind team learning andreflexivity (Swift & West, 1998). Though recent re-search has helped to illuminate some structural meth-ods for facilitating team learning (see Vashdi, Bam-berger, Erez, & Weis-Meilik, 2007), our research

14 One of the few specific examples of advocacy ofleader behaviors to facilitate bottom-up growth is Jenner(1998), who proposes decision delegation to followers.


TA

BL

E3

Bot

tom

-Up

Lea

der

ship

Ap

pro

ach

esa

Cor

eE

lem

ent(

s)A

pp

roac

hH

um

ble

Lea

der

ship

Dev

elop

men

tal

Lea

der

ship

Ser

van

tL

ead

ersh

ipP

arti

cip

ativ

eL

ead

ersh

ip(F

oste

rin

g)S

har

edL

ead

ersh

ip

Lea

der

sca

taly

zean

dre

info

rce

mu

tual

lead

er-f

ollo

wer

dev

elop

men

tby

pu

blic

lyan

dea

gerl

yen

gagi

ng

inth

ep

roce

ssof

grow

than

dle

arn

ing.

Lea

der

sst

ruct

ure

ap

rogr

amfo

rfo

llow

erca

reer

adva

nce

men

t.

Lea

der

s’ke

yro

leis

serv

ing

and

nu

rtu

rin

gfo

llow

ers,

hel

pin

got

her

sac

com

pli

shsh

ared

obje

ctiv

es.

Lea

der

sin

volv

efo

llow

ers

inth

ep

roce

ssof

dec

isio

nm

akin

g.

Ver

tica

lle

ader

sfo

ster

the

dis

per

sion

ofle

ader

ship

resp

onsi

bili

tyth

rou

ghou

tth

eir

team

.

Cor

eid

east

atem

ent

Mod

elin

gto

foll

ower

sh

owto

grow

and

lear

n.

Iam

dev

elop

ing

you

.I

wil

ld

oal

lI

can

tose

rve

and

hel

pyo

u.

We

hav

esh

ared

infl

uen

cein

dec

isio

nm

akin

g.

We

are

all

lead

ers

onth

iste

am.

Lea

der

beh

avio

rsA

dm

itti

ng

mis

take

s,w

eakn

esse

s,an

dfa

ult

Xx

Lea

der

beh

avio

rsS

pot

ligh

tin

gfo

llow

erst

ren

gth

san

dco

ntr

ibu

tion

s

Xx

x

Lea

der

beh

avio

rsM

odel

ing

teac

hab

ilit

yX

Lea

der

beh

avio

rsS

tru

ctu

rin

gfo

rmal

foll

ower

care

erd

evel

opm

ent

pro

gram

X

Lea

der

beh

avio

rsT

eam

bou

nd

ary

man

agem

ent

X

Lea

der

beh

avio

rsT

eam

des

ign

XP

roce

sses

Leg

itim

izat

ion

offo

llow

erd

evel

opm

ent

Xx

Pro

cess

esL

egit

imiz

atio

nof

un

cert

ain

tyX

Pro

cess

esIn

itia

tin

gle

ader

-fol

low

erro

lere

vers

alX

xx

Pro

cess

esG

ran

tin

gvo

ice

xx

XX

Ou

tcom

esP

sych

olog

ical

free

dom

(lea

der

)X

Ou

tcom

esP

sych

olog

ical

free

dom

(fol

low

er)

Xx

Ou

tcom

esF

ollo

wer

enga

gem

ent

Xx

xX

XO

utc

omes

Flu

idit

yof

orga

niz

ing

XX

aL

arge

“X”s

sugg

est

am

ajor

theo

reti

cal

com

pon

ent,

smal

l“x

”ssu

gges

ta

min

orth

eore

tica

lco

mp

onen

t.

uncovers specific leader behaviors that influencethe perceptions of followers en route to establish-ing a unit culture conducive to learning andadaptation.

Construct Differentiation

Looking over the above implications of thisstudy, we feel that to clearly identify the contribu-tions of this work, it is critical to differentiate howour emerging theory of humble leadership isunique among existing and related bottom-up lead-ership theories. Though an extensive review of allclosely related leadership theories is not possiblehere, in Table 3 we summarize the elements of ourhumble leadership model and compare how eachof these elements is related to what we view as themost closely related leadership perspectives: devel-opmental, servant, participative, and shared lead-ership.15

By definition, developmental leaders are thosewho “advise staff on their careers, carefully observeand record followers’ progress and encourage staffto attend technical courses” (Rafferty & Griffin,2006: 39). Developmental leadership is tied to thementoring literature, though it focuses on mentor-ing’s career-oriented rather than psychosocial as-pects (Kram, 1985). Humble leadership, in contrast,appears to capture a much more informal and mu-tual developmental relationship with followers. Itfocuses on the influence of leader behaviors onfollower cognitions rather than on structured pro-grams for follower career development.

Servant leaders view themselves as servants firstand leaders second, and “view the development offollowers as an end, in and of itself, not merely ameans to reach the leader’s or the organization’sgoals” (Ehrhart, 2004: 69). Though there are severalsimilarities between our humble leadership theoryand servant leader theory, a general focus on devel-opment being the most obvious, there are also coredifferences. These, in our view, are (1) humbleleadership’s focus on modeling the process of be-coming for followers, versus servant leadership’sfocus on modeling serving others, and (2) the legit-imization of uncertainty under humble leadership.Humble leadership also implies leader and fol-lower psychological freedom, fluidity of organiz-ing, fostering a tendency toward continuous, small

changes, and initiating leader-follower role rever-sals, processes that are not a major emphasis in theservant leadership literature.

At its core, participative leadership involves“joint decision-making or at least shared influencein decision-making by a superior and his or heremployees” (Somech, 2003: 1003). Although par-ticipative leadership describes a decision-makingapproach or structure, it does not focus on specificinterpersonal behaviors that reflect modeling de-velopment and how these behaviors influencefollower (and leader) cognitions and attitudes. Sim-ilarly, shared leadership—often used interchange-ably with distributed leadership, team leadership,and democratic leadership—occurs when “allmembers of the team are fully engaged in the lead-ership of the team” and is most germane to thecontexts that entail interdependence and complex-ity (Pearce, 2004: 48). We view the humble leader-ship of a vertical leader as potentially antecedent toa norm of shared leadership in a team, yet examin-ing shared leadership and what type of leader ap-proach fosters it says little about the specific hum-ble leader behaviors and the process of legitimizingdevelopment and uncertainty. Instead, the focus ofvertical leaders seeking to foster shared leadershipis on issues of team boundary management andteam design.

Overall, though all the closely related leadershipperspectives have some focus on follower develop-ment—structuring career advancement goals (de-velopmental leadership), sharing decision-makingpower and leadership influence throughout a group(participative and shared leadership), and viewingfollower development as an end in itself (servantleadership)—humble leadership is unique becauseof its major focus on leaders’ transparency abouttheir own developmental processes. Though thereis some conceptual overlap between leader humil-ity behaviors, processes, and outcomes and theseother related constructs (as reflected in Table 3),there are also important novelty and uniquenessthat are not captured by the core elements of theseexisting bottom-up constructs, such as modelingteachability, legitimization of follower develop-ment and uncertainty, initiation of leader-followerrole reversals, continuous small-scale adaptation,fluidity of organizing, and leader-follower psycho-logical freedom.

Limitations and Future Research

Because of our retrospective study design, theincidents reported to us may suffer from partici-pant self-enhancement or “sensemaking” biases.We sought to minimize problems associated with a

15 To check our view of how humble leadership isunique, we sent this section and Table 3 to prominentscholars who have published articles in these leadershipareas and made adjustments according to the feedbackreceived.


retrospective design by asking participants to talkabout someone else and by using a courtroom styleof questioning (Eisenhardt, 1989; Eisenhardt &Graebner, 2007). Furthermore, many of our partic-ipants reported unflattering aspects of themselves,indicating that rosy retrospective bias may not be amajor cause for concern (Mitchell & Thompson,1994). Though we feel our method of learningabout the lived meaning or mental models of hum-ble leadership was appropriate for our goals, werecommend that future research directly explore towhat degree these mental models of humble leaderbehaviors and their connection to the outcomesand moderators that we have identified bear out insubsequent behavioral observation studies.

Our model also does not speak directly to theenablers, sources, and antecedents of leader humil-ity. Ideas put forth about what precipitates or fos-ters humility in leadership include low narcissismand Machiavellianism and moderate self-esteem(Morris et al., 2005); a collective orientation(Nielsen et al., 2010); and undergoing traumaticevents or certain aspects of a religious upbringing(Collins, 2001a); however, nothing yet has beensubstantiated. Future research should explore thepotential personal and contextual antecedents ofleader humility to gain insight about how it mightbe selected for or fostered in an organizational con-text. Specific to our leader competence contin-gency, status characteristics theory (Berger, Fisek,Norman, & Zelditch, 1977) supports the idea thatfactors in addition to age and gender, such as aleader’s ethnicity, race, and education level, mayalso influence the effectiveness of humble leaderbehaviors. Future research should explore howother demographic differences besides the ones weidentified may shape when a leader decides to be-have humbly and how humble leader behaviors areinterpreted. Since age and gender attribution biasesare more operative in ambiguous contexts (see Hek-man, Aquino, Owens, Mitchell, Schilpzand, andLeavitt [2010] for a review), we documented evi-dence that external leadership signals of authorityfound in more hierarchical organizations (i.e., mil-itary chevrons, religious regalia) may reduce thetendency for followers to view humble behaviors ofyoung and female leaders as weakness. Future re-search should explore the possibility that the pres-ence of external signs of authority mitigates thestereotypical biases against female (Eagly, 2007; Ea-gly & Karau, 2002; Ragins & Winkel, 2008) andminority (Rosette, Leonardelli, & Phillips, 2008)leaders. Lastly, as we identified beliefs about per-sonal and others’ malleability as part of the roots ofhumble leadership, we also recommend future re-search examine how leader humility may be asso-

ciated with or driven by incremental implicit per-son theories (Dweck, 1991; Dweck, Chiu, & Hong,1995)

Future research should also examine how hum-ble leader behaviors interact with other leadershipapproaches. As our study suggests, humility ap-pears to play a self-regulatory function that pre-vents an individual’s leadership approach from go-ing to extremes. It may be that humility enables aleader to temper visionary, charismatic, or transfor-mational approaches to influencing others so as toprevent the dark side of such approaches (i.e.,overidentification [Kark et al., 2003]; “pseudo-”transformational leadership [Morris et al., 2005]; orabuse of power [Conger, 1990]). Future researchshould examine, for instance, whether and in whatcontexts humble transformational leaders are moreeffective than less humble ones.

Because all of those we interviewed were fromorganizations in North America, we recommendfuture research also examine the relationships weuncovered in other cultural contexts. Given ourfindings related to hierarchical culture, it may beparticularly interesting to examine leader humilityin countries with generalized differences in thedimensions of uncertainty tolerance, collectivism/individualism, and masculinity/femininity (Hof-stede & Hofstede, 2005). In addition, future re-search should also examine further how leadershiplevel influences the effectiveness and appropriate-ness of leader humility. Though we report somedifferences in the function of humble leader behav-iors enacted by higher- and lower-level leaders (i.e.,higher-level leaders setting the tone of a learningculture that makes humble behaviors of lower-levelleaders more acceptable), more examination isneeded to understand how leader level differencesin decision latitude, task regimentation, and exter-nal signals of authority influence the interpretationand effectiveness of humble leader behaviors.

Conclusion

Humility in leadership is a topic that becomesmore relevant as markets continue to globalize andfirms grow more complex and diverse. In such en-vironments, it becomes less feasible for any singleleader to know everything (Senge, 1990). Whensummarizing the literature on why leaders fail,Burke noted that it is “not what [leaders] know orhow bright they are that leads to success or failure;[rather] how well they work with others, and howwell they understand themselves” (2006: 94). Wesuggest that to effectively lead their firms amidstgrowing market complexity, leaders increasinglymust be able to humbly show their followers how


to grow by admitting what they do not know, mod-eling teachability, and acknowledging the uniqueskills, knowledge, and contributions of thosearound them. Our hope is that the inductive in-sights presented in this study spur further interestin exploring humility in the context of leadership.

REFERENCES

Agashae, Z., & Bratton, J. 2001. Leader-follower dynam-ics: Developing a learning environment. Journal ofWorkplace Learning, 13(3): 9–102.

Ancona, D. G., Goodman, P. S., Lawrence, B., & Tush-man, M. L. 2001. Time: A new research lens. Acad-emy of Management Review, 26: 645–663.

Armstrong, S. J., Allinson, C. W., & Hayes, J. 2002. For-mal mentoring systems: An examination of the ef-fects of mentor/protégé cognitive styles on the men-toring process. Journal of Management Studies, 39:1111–1137.

Avolio, B. J., & Gardner, W. L. 2005. Authentic leadershipdevelopment: Getting to the root of positive forms ofleadership. Leadership Quarterly, 16: 315–338.

Avolio, B. J., Walumbwa, F. O., & Weber, T. J. 2009.Leadership: Current theories, research, and futuredirections. In D. L. Schacter & S. E. Taylor (Eds.),Annual review of psychology, vol. 60: 421–449.Palo Alto, CA. Annual Reviews.

Bakker, B. 2005. Flow among music teachers and theirstudents: The crossover of peak experiences. Journalof Vocational Behavior, 66: 26–44.

Ballinger, G. A., & Schoorman, F. D. 2007. Individualreactions to leadership succession in workgroups.Academy of Management Review, 32: 118–136.

Bass, B. M. 1990. Bass and Stogdill’s handbook of lead-ership: Theory, research and managerial applica-tions (3rd ed.). New York: Free Press.

Bass, B. M. 1997. Does the transactional/transformationalleadership transcend organizational and nationalboundaries? American Psychologist, 52: 130–139.

Bass, B. M., & Avolio, B. J. 1990. Multifactor leadershipquestionnaire. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psycholo-gist Press.

Baumeister, R. F., & Bushman, B. J. 2010. Social psychol-ogy and human nature (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA:Wadsworth.

Bechky, B. A. 2006. Talking about machines, thick de-scription, and knowledge work. Organization Stud-ies, 27: 1757–1768.

Berger, J., Fisek, M. H., Norman, R. Z., & Zelditch, M., Jr..1977. Status characteristics and social interac-tion: An expectation states approach. New York:Elsevier.

Biernat, M., & Fuegen, K. 2001. Shifting standards andthe evaluation of competence: Complexity in gender-based judgment and decision making. Journal ofSocial Issues, 57: 707–724.

Bigley, G. A., & Roberts, K. H. 2001. Structuring tempo-rary systems for high reliability. Academy of Man-agement Journal, 44: 1281–1300.

Blake, R., & Mouton, J. 1964. The managerial grid: Thekey to leadership excellence. Houston: Gulf Pub-lishing.

Boje, D. M., Roslie, G. A., Durant, R. A., & Luhman, J. T.2004. Enron spectacles: A critical dramaturgicalanalysis. Organization Studies, 25: 751–774.

Bono, J. E., & Judge, T. A. 2004. Personality and trans-formational and transactional leadership: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89: 901–910.

Boyatzis, R. 1998. Transforming qualitative informa-tion: Thematic analysis and code development.Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Bright, D. S., Cameron, K. S., & Caza, A. 2006. The am-plifying and buffering effects of virtuousness indownsized organizations. Journal of Business Eth-ics, 64: 249–269.

Brinkerhoff, D. B., White, L. K., Ortega, S. T., & Weitz, R.2007. Essentials of sociology (7th ed.). Belmont, CA:Thompson and Wadsworth.

Brown, S. L., & Eisenhardt, K. M. 1997. The art of con-tinuous change: Linking complexity theory andtime-paced evolution in relentlessly shifting organi-zations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 42:1–34.

Bryman, A. 2004. Qualitative research on leadership: Acritical but appreciative view. Leadership Quar-terly, 15: 729–769.

Burke, R. J. 2006. Why leaders fail: Exploring the dark-side. International Journal of Manpower, 27(1):91–100.

Burnes, B. 2004. Emergent change and planned change—Competitors or allies? The case of XYZ construction.International Journal of Operations & ProductionManagement, 24: 886–902.

Burns, T., & Stalker, G. M. 1961. The management ofinnovation. London: Tavistock.

Butler, P. D., Swift, M., Kothari, S., Nazeeri-Simmons, I.,Friel, C. M., Longaker, M. T., & Britt, L. D. 2011.Integrating cultural competency and humility train-ing into clinical clerkships: Surgery as a model. Jour-nal of Surgical Education, 68: 222–230.

Cameron, K. S., & Caza, A. 2004. Contributions to thediscipline of positive organizational scholarship.American Behavioral Scientist, 47: 731–739.


Cameron, K. S., Dutton, J. E., & Quinn, R. E. 2003. Posi-tive organizational scholarship: Foundations of anew discipline. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

Cameron, K. S., & Quinn, R. E. 2005. Diagnosing andchanging organizational culture. San Francisco:Jossey-Bass.

Carlyle, T. 1869. On heroes, hero-worship, and the he-roic in history. London: Chapman and Hall.

Carney, D., Cuddy, A., & Yap, A. 2010. Power posing:Brief nonverbal displays affect neuroendocrine lev-els and risk tolerance. Psychological Science, 10:1363–1368.

Chatterjee, A., & Hambrick, D. C. 2007. It’s all about me:Narcissistic CEOs and their effects on company strat-egy and performance. Administrative ScienceQuarterly, 52: 351–386.

Cohen, J. 1960. A coefficient of agreement for nominalscales. Educational Psychological Measurement,20: 37–46.

Collins, J. C., & Porras, J. I. 1994. Built to last. New York:HarperCollins.

Collins, J. 2001a. Good to great. New York: HarperCol-lins.

Collins, J. 2001b. Level 5 leadership: The triumph ofhumility and fierce resolve. Harvard Business Re-view, 79(1): 67–76.

Confucius. 2006. The analects. Minneapolis: Filiquar-ian.

Conger, J. A. 1990. The dark side of leadership. Organi-zational Dynamics, 19(2): 44–55.

Conger, J. A. 1998. Qualitative research as a cornerstonemethodology for understanding leadership. Leader-ship Quarterly, 9: 107–121.

Conger, J. A. 2000. Effective change begins at the top. InM. Beer & N. Nohria (Eds.), Breaking the code ofchange: 99–112. Boston: Harvard Business SchoolPress.

Crisp, R. 2000. Aristotle: Nicomachean ethics. Cam-bridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press.

Cummings, T. G., & Worley, C. G. 2001. OrganizationDevelopment and Change (7th ed.). Mason, OH:South-Western.

Daft, R. L., & Weick, K. E. 1984. Toward a model oforganizations as interpretation systems. Academy ofManagement Review, 9: 284–295.

Das, R. 2005. Hinduism. Milwaukee: World AlmanacLibrary.

Dawson, P. 1994. Organizational change: A processualapproach. London: Chapman.

Day, D. V. 2000. Leadership development: A review incontext. Leadership Quarterly, 11: 581–614.

De Cremer, D., Mayer, D. M., van Dijke, M., Bardes, M., &Schouten, B. C. 2009. When does self-sacrificialleadership motivate prosocial behavior? It dependson followers’ prevention focus. Journal of AppliedPsychology, 94: 887–899.

DeSilver, D. 2008. $7 billion gives shaky WaMu firmerfooting for now. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2004336243_wamu09.html.Accessed April 18, 2011.

Detert, J. R., & Burris, E. R. 2007. Leadership behaviorand employee voice: Is the door really open? Acad-emy of Management Journal, 50: 869–884.

Dickson, M. W., Resick, C. J., & Hanges, P. J. 2006. Whenorganizational climate is unambiguous, it is alsostrong. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91: 351–364.

Dotlich, D., & Cairo, P. 2003. Why CEO’s fail. San Fran-cisco: Jossey-Bass.

Drath, W. 2001. The deep blue sea: Rethinking thesource of leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bassand Center for Creative Leadership.

Dunphy, D. 2000. Embracing paradox: Top-down versusparticipative management of organizational change,a commentary on Conger and Bennis. In M. Beer & N.Nohria (Eds.), Breaking the code of change: 99–112. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Dutton, J. E., & Heaphy, E. 2003. The power of highquality connections. In K. Cameron, J. E. Dutton &R. E. Quinn (Eds.), Positive organizational scholar-ship: 263–278. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

Dutton, J. E., Roberts, L. M., & Bednar, J. 2010. Pathwaysfor positive identity construction at work: Four typesof positive identity and the building of social re-sources. Academy of Management Review, 35:285–293.

Dvir, T., Eden, D., Avolio, B. J., & Shamir, B. 2002. Impactof transformational leadership on follower develop-ment and performance: A field experiment. Acad-emy of Management Journal, 45: 735–744.

Dweck, C. S. 1991. Self-theories: Their role in motiva-tion, personality and development. Philadelphia:Psychology Press.

Dweck, C. S., Chiu, C., & Hong, Y. 1995. Implicit theoriesand their role in judgments and reactions: A word fromtwo perspectives. Psychological Inquiry, 6: 267–285.

Eagly, A. H. 2007. Female leadership advantage and dis-advantage: Resolving the contradictions. Psychologyof Women Quarterly, 31: 1–12.

Eagly, A. H., & Karau, S. J. 2002. Role congruity theory ofprejudice toward female leaders. Psychological Re-view, 109: 573–598.

Edmondson, A. C. 1999. Psychological safety and learn-ing behavior in work teams. Administrative ScienceQuarterly, 44: 350–383.


Edmondson, A. C. 2004. Psychological safety, trust, andlearning in organizations: A group-level lens. InR. M. Kramer & K. S. Cook (Eds.), Trust and distrustin organizations: Dilemmas and approaches: 239–272. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Edmondson, A. C., & McManus, S. E. 2007. Methodolog-ical fit in management field research. Academy ofManagement Review, 32: 1155–1179.

Ehrhart, M. G. 2004. Leadership and procedural justiceclimate as antecedents of unit-level organizationalcitizenship behavior. Personnel Psychology, 57: 61–94.

Eisenhardt, K. M. 1989. Building theories from casestudy research. Academy of Management Review,14: 532–550.

Eisenhardt, K., & Graebner, M. 2007. Theory buildingfrom cases: Opportunities and challenges. Academyof Management Journal, 50: 25–32.

Engineer, A. 2003. On developing theology of peace inIslam. New Delhi: Sterling.

Exline, J., & Geyer, A. 2004. Perceptions of humility: Apreliminary study. Self and Identity, 3: 95–115.

Fiedler, F. E. 1958. Leader attitudes and group effec-tiveness. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Fiske, S. T. 1993. Controlling other people: The impact ofpower on stereotyping. American Psychologist, 48:621–628.

Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. 1984. Social cognition. Read-ing, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Fleishman, E. A. 1953. Leadership climate and humanrelations training. Personnel Psychology, 6: 205–222.

Gabriel, Y. 1997. Meeting god: When organizationalmembers come face to face with the supreme leader.Human Relations, 50: 315–352.

Gaughan, A. C. 2001. Effective leadership behaviour:Leading “the third way” from a primary care groupperspective—A study of leadership constructs elic-ited from members of primary care group manage-ment boards. Journal of Management in Medicine,15: 67–94.

Gephart, R. P. 1984. Making sense of organizationallybased environmental disasters. Journal of Manage-ment, 10: 205–225.

Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. 1967. Discovery of groundedtheory: Strategies for qualitative research. MillValley, CA: Sociology Press.

Goodman, P. S., & Morgenson, G. 2008. Saying yes:WaMu built empire on shaky loans. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/business/28wamu.html?pagewanted�all. Acessed April 18 2011.

Graen, G. B., & Uhl-Bien, M. 1995. Relationship-based

approach to leadership: Development of leader-member exchange (LMX) theory of leadership over25 years: Applying a multi-level multidomain per-spective. Leadership Quarterly, 6: 219–247.

Graham, J. W. 1991. Servant-leadership in organizations:Inspirational and moral. Leadership Quarterly, 2:105–119.

Grandey, A. A., Fiske, G. M., Mattila, A. S., Jansen, K. J.,& Sideman, L. A. 2005. Is “service with a smile”enough? Authenticity of positive displays duringservice encounters. Organizational Behavior andHuman Decision Processes, 96: 38–55.

Grant, A. M., Parker, S. K., & Collins, C. G. 2009. Gettingcredit for proactive behavior: Supervisor reactionsdepend on what you value and how you feel. Per-sonnel Psychology, 62: 31–55.

Greenleaf, R. K., & Spears, L. C. 2002. Servant leader-ship: A journey into the nature of legitimate powerand greatness. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.

Grenberg, J. M. 2005. Kant and the ethics of humility: Astory of dependence, corruption and virtue. Cam-bridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Hambrick, D. C., & Mason, P. A. 1984. Upper echelons:The organization as a reflection of its top managers.Academy of Management Review, 9: 193–206.

Hannah, S. T., Uhl-Bien, M., Avolio, B. J., & Cavarretta,F. L. 2009. A framework for examining leadership inextreme contexts. Leadership Quarterly, 20: 897–919.

Hareli, S., & Rafaeli, A. 2008. Emotion cycles: On thesocial influence of emotion in organizations. In A.Brief & B. M. Staw (Eds.), Research in organiza-tional behavior, vol. 28: 35–59. Greenwich, CT: JAI.

Hayes, J. 2002. The theory and practice of change man-agement. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave.

Heaphy, E. D., & Dutton, J. E. 2008. Positive social inter-actions and the human body at work: Linking organ-izations and physiology. Academy of ManagementReview, 33: 137–162.

Hekman, D., Aquino, K., Owens, B., Mitchell, T., Schilp-zand, P., & Leavitt, K. 2010. An examination ofwhether and how racial and gender biases influencecustomer satisfaction ratings. Academy of Manage-ment Journal, 53: 238–264.

Hersey, P. 1985. The situational leader. New York: War-ner.

Higgins, E. T. 1989. Self-discrepancy theory: What pat-terns of self-beliefs cause people to suffer? Advancesin Experimental Social Psychology, 22: 93–136.

Hofstede, G., & Hofstede, G. J. 2005. Cultures and organ-izations: Software of the mind (2nd ed.). New York:McGraw-Hill.


House, R. J. 1996. Path-goal theory of leadership: Les-sons, legacy, and a reformulated theory. LeadershipQuarterly, 7: 323–352.

House, R. J., & Baetz, M. L. 1979. Leadership: Someempirical generalizations and new researchdirections. In B. Staw (Ed.), Research in organiza-tional behavior, vol. 1: 341–423. Greenwich, CT:JAI.

Hughes, L. W. 2010. Leadership under pressure: Tacticsfrom the front line. Leadership and OrganizationDevelopment Journal, 31: 187–188.

Hume, D. 1994. Political writings. Indianapolis: Hackett.

Isabella, L. 1990. Evolving interpretations as a changeunfolds: How managers construe key organizationalevents. Academy of Management Journal, 33:7–41.

Jenner, R. A. 1998. Dissipative enterprises, chaos, and theprinciples of lean organizations. Omega: Interna-tional Journal of Management Science, 26: 397–407.

Judge, T. A., Bono, J. E., Ilies, R., & Gerhardt, M. W. 2002.Personality and leadership: A qualitative and quan-titative review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87:765–780.

Kahn, W. A. 1990. Psychological conditions of personalengagement and disengagement at work. Academyof Management Journal, 33: 692–724.

Kark, R., Shamir, B., & Chen, G. 2003. Two faces oftransformational leadership: Empowerment and de-pendency. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88: 246–255.

Kerfoot, K. 1998. The strategic use of humility. NursingEconomics, 16: 238–239.

Kerr, S. 1977. Substitutes for leadership: Some implica-tions for organizational design. Organization andAdministrative Sciences, 8: 135–146.

Kim, S. 2002. Participative management and job satisfac-tion: Lessons for management leadership. PublicAdministration Review, 62: 231–241.

Kipnis, D. 1972. Does power corrupt? Journal of Person-ality and Social Psychology, 24: 33–41.

Klein, K. J., Ziegert, J. C., Knight, A. P., & Xiao, Y. 2006.Dynamic delegation: Shared, hierarchical anddeindividualized leadership in extreme actionteams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 50: 590–621.

Knottnerus, J. D., Ulsperger, J. S., Cummins, S., & Osteen,E. 2006. Exposing Enron, Media representations ofritualized deviance in corporate culture. Crime, Me-dia, Culture: An International Journal, 2(2): 177–195.

Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. 1997. Leadership practicesinventory: A self-assessment and analysis (Ex-panded Ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Kram, K. E. 1985. Mentoring at work: Developmentalrelationships in organizational life. Glenview, IL:Scott, Foresman.

Kreiner, G. E., Hollensbe, E. C., & Sheep, M. L. 2006.Where is the “me” among the “we”? Identity workand the search for optimal balance. Academy ofManagement Journal, 49: 1031–1057.

Landis, R. J., & Koch, G. G. 1977. The measurement ofobserver agreement for categorical data. Biometrics,33: 159–174.

Lauer, C. S. 2002. The basic recipe for a leader. ModernHealthcare, 32: 33.

Leana, C. R. 1986. Predictors and consequences of dele-gation. Academy of Management Journal, 29: 754–774.

Lee, T. W. 1999. Using qualitative methods in organi-zational research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Lichtenstein, B. B., Uhl-Bien, M., Marion, R., Seers, A.,Orton, J. D., & Schreiber, C. 2006. Complexity lead-ership theory: An interactive process on leading incomplex adaptive systems. In J. K. Hazy, J. A. Gold-stein & B. B. Lichtenstein (Eds.), Complex systemsleadership theory: New perspectives from com-plexity science on social and organizational effec-tiveness: 129–141. Mansfield, MA: ISCE.

Lord, R. G., & Brown, D. J. 2001. Leadership, value, andsubordinate self-concepts. Leadership Quarterly,12: 133–152.

Lord, R., & Maher, K. J. 1991. Leadership and informa-tion processing: Linking perceptions to perfor-mance. Boston: Unwin-Hyman.

Lovaglia, M. J., & Houser, J. A. 1996. Emotional reactionsto status in groups. American Sociological Review,61: 867–883.

Marinoff, L. 2007. The middle way: Finding happinessin a world of extremes. New York: Sterling.

Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. 1997. The truth about burn-out: How organizations cause personal stress andwhat to do about it. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Matteson, J. A., & Irving, J. A. 2006. Servant versus self-sacrificial leadership: A behavioral comparison oftwo follower-oriented leadership theories. Interna-tional Journal of Leadership Studies, 2: 36–51.

Mauno, S., Kinnunen, U., & Ruokolainen, M. 2007. Jobdemands and resources as antecedents of work en-gagement: A longitudinal study. Journal of Voca-tional Behavior, 70: 149–171.

McConnell, M. W. 1996. The importance of humility injudicial review: A comment on Ronald Dworkin’s


“moral reading” of the constitution. Fordham LawReview, 65: 1269–1293.

McCullough, M. E. 2000. Forgiveness as a humanstrength: Theory, measurement, and links to well-being. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology,19: 43–55.

Meyer, E. C. 1997. Leadership: A return to basics. Mili-tary Review, 77: 58–61.

Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. 1994. Qualitative dataanalysis: An expanded source book. ThousandOaks, CA: Sage.

Mitchell, T. R., & James, L. R. 2001. Building better the-ory: Time and the specification of when things hap-pen. Academy of Management Review, 26: 530–547.

Mitchell, T., & Thompson, L. 1994. A theory of temporaladjustments of the evaluation of events: Rosyprospection & rosy retrospection. In C. Stubbart, J.Porac, & J. Meindl (Eds.), Advances in managerialcognition and organizational information process-ing: 85–114. Greenwich, CT: JAI.

Morris, J. A., Brotheridge, C. M., & Urbanski, J. C. 2005.Bringing humility to leadership: Antecedents andconsequences of leader humility. Human Relations,58: 1323–1350.

Murrell, K. L. 1997. Emergent theories of leadership forthe next century: Towards relational concepts. Or-ganization Development Journal, 15(3): 35–42.

Nava, M. 2008. The servant of all: Humility, humanity,and judicial diversity. Golden Gate University LawReview, 38: 175–194.

Nielsen, R., Marrone, J., & Slay, H. 2010. A new look athumility: Exploring the humility concept and its rolein socialized charismatic leadership. Journal ofLeadership and Organizational Studies, 17: 33–43.

Obama, B. 2008. Renewing American leadership. For-eign Affairs, 86: 2–16.

Overbeck, J. R., Neale, M. A., & Govan, C. 2010. I feel,therefore you act: Intrapersonal and interpersonaleffects of emotion on negotiation as a function ofsocial power. Organizational Behavior and HumanDecision Processes, 112: 126–139.

Owens, B. P. 2008. Humility in organizations: Establish-ing construct, nomological, and predictive validity.Academy of Management best Paper proceedings.

Owens, B. P., Johnson, M. J., & Mitchell, T. R. 2012.Humility in organizations: Implications for perfor-mance, teams, and leadership. Organization Sci-ence: In press.

Owens, B. P., Rowatt, W. C., & Wilkins, A. L. 2011.Exploring the relevance and implications of humil-ity in organizations. In K. S. Cameron & G. S. Spre-itzer (Eds.), Handbook of positive organizational

scholarship: 260–272. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford Univer-sity Press.

Park, N., & Peterson, C. 2003. Virtues and organizations.In K. S. Cameron, J. E. Dutton, & R. E. Quinn (Eds.),Positive organizational scholarship: Foundationsof a new discipline: 33–47. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

Parker, S. K., Williams, H. M., & Turner, N. 2006. Mod-eling the antecedents of proactive behavior at work.Journal of Applied Psychology, 91: 636–652.

Payne, G., & Williams, M. 2005. Generalization in quali-tative research. Sociology, 39: 295–314.

Pearce, C. L. 2004. The future of leadership: Combiningvertical and shared leadership to transform knowl-edge work. Academy of Management Executive,18(1): 47–59.

Pearce, C. L., & Conger, J. A. 2003. Shared leadership:Reframing the hows and whys of leadership. Thou-sand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Poirier, J. 2007. Top five US subprime lenders asked totestify-Dodd. In Reuters. Available at: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1930675220070319. Ac-cessed on March 17, 2008.

Quinn, R. E., & Rohrbaugh, J. 1983. A spatial model ofeffectiveness criteria: Towards a competing valuesapproach to organizational analysis. ManagementScience, 29: 363–377.

Quinn, R. W., & Worline, M. C. 2008. Enabling coura-geous collective action: Conversations from UnitedAirlines flight 93. Organization Science, 19: 497–516.

Rafferty, A. E., & Griffin, M. A. 2006. Perceptions oforganizational change: A stress and coping perspec-tive. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91: 1154–1162.

Ragins, B. R., & Winkel, D. E. 2008. Gender, emotion andpower in work relationships. In Academy of Man-agement best Paper proceedings.

Rhodewalt, F., & Morf, C. C. 1998. On self-aggrandize-ment and anger: A temporal analysis of narcissismand affective reactions to success and failure. Jour-nal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74: 672–685.

Rosenthal, S. A., & Pittinsky, T. L. 2006. Narcissisticleadership. Leadership Quarterly, 17: 617–633.

Rosette, A. S., Leonardelli, G. J., & Phillips, K. W. 2008.The white standard: Racial bias in leader categoriza-tion. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93: 758–777.

Rost, J. C. 1991. Leadership for the twenty-first century.London: Praeger.

Rost, J. C. 1995. Leadership: A discussion about ethics.Business Ethics Quarterly, 5: 129–142.


Rousseau, D. 2007. A sticky, leveraging, and scalablestrategy for high-quality connections between organ-izational practice and science. Academy of Man-agement Journal, 50: 1037–1042.

Rudman, L. A., & Glick, P. 1999. Feminized managementand backlash toward agentic women: The hiddencosts to women of a kinder, gentler image of middlemanagers. Journal of Personality and Social Psy-chology, 77: 1004–1010.

Ruggero, E. 2009. Gary Cooper style. http://views.washingtonpost.com/leadership/panelists/2009/11/gary-cooper-style.html. Accessed March 19, 2010.

Sayles, L. R. 1993. The working leader: The triumph ofhigh performance over conventional managementprinciples. New York: Free Press.

Scharffs, B. 1998. The role of humility in exercisingpractical wisdom. University of California, Davis,Law Review, 32: 127–199.

Schaufeli, W. B., & Bakker, A. B. 2004. Job demands, jobresources and their relationship with burnout andengagement: A multi-sample study. Journal of Or-ganizational Behavior, 25: 293–315.

Schimmel, S. 1992. The seven deadly sins: Jewish,Christian, and classical reflections on human na-ture. New York: Free Press.

Schutz, A. 1972. The phenomenology of the socialworld. London: Heinemenn Educational Books.

Seibert, S., Kraimer, M. L., & Crant, J. M. 2001. What doproactive people do? A longitudinal model linkingproactive personality and career success. PersonnelPsychology, 54: 845–874.

Senge, P. M. 1990. The fifth discipline. London: CenturyBusiness.

Sluss, D. M., & Ashforth, B. E. 2007. Relational identityand identification: Defining ourselves through workrelationships. Academy of Management Review,32: 9–32.

Snelling, J. 1998. The Buddhist handbook: A completeguild to Buddhist schools, teaching, practice, andhistory. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions Interna-tional.

Somech, A. 2003. Relationships of participative leader-ship with relational demography variables: A multi-level perspective. Journal of Organizational Behav-ior, 24: 1003–1018.

Spears, L. C. 1998. Insights on leadership: Service,stewardship, spirit and servant leadership. NewYork: Wiley.

Spreitzer, G., & Mishra, A. 2002. To stay or go: Voluntarysurvivor turnover following an organizational down-sizing. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 23:707–729.

Staw, B. 1981. The escalation of commitment to a courseof action. Academy of Management Review, 6:577–587.

Staw, B. M., Sandelands, L. E., & Dutton, J. E. 1981.Threat-rigidity effects on organizational behavior.Administrative Science Quarterly, 26: 501–524.

Suchman, M. 1995. Managing legitimacy: Strategic andinstitutional approaches. Academy of ManagementReview, 20: 571–611.

Suddaby, R. 2006. What grounded theory is not. Acad-emy of Management Journal, 49: 633–642.

Swift, T. A., & West, M. A. 1998. Reflexivity and groupprocesses: Research and practice. Sheffield, U.K.:University of Sheffield.

Tangney, I. P. 2000. Humility: Theoretical perspectives,empirical findings and directions for future research.Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 19: 70–82.

Templeton, J. 1997. Worldwide laws of life. Philadel-phia: Templeton Foundation.

Tiedens, L. Z., Ellsworth, P. C., & Mesquita, B. 2000.Stereotypes about sentiments and status: Emotionalexpectations for high- and low-status group mem-bers. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,26: 560–574.

Trejos, N. 2007. Existing-home sales fall steeply. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2007/04/24/AR2007042400627.html. Accessed March17, 2008.

Uhl-Bien, M. 2006. Relational leadership theory: Explor-ing the social processes of leadership and organiz-ing. Leadership Quarterly, 17: 654–676.

Vashdi, D. R., Bamberger, P. A., Erez, M., & Weiss-Meilik,A. 2007. Briefing-debriefing: Using a reflexive organ-izational learning model from the military to en-hance the performance of surgical teams. HumanResource Management, 46: 115–142.

Vera, D., & Rodriguez-Lopez, A. 2004. Humility as asource of competitive advantage. OrganizationalDynamics, 33: 393–408.

Wagner, D. G., & Berger, J. 1997. Gender and interper-sonal task behaviors: Status expectation accounts.Sociological Perspectives, 40: 1–32.

Walsh, J. P., Henderson, C. M., & Deighton, J. 1988. Ne-gotiated belief structures and decision perfor-mance: An empirical investigation. Organiza-tional Behavior and Human Decision Processes,42: 194–216.

Walumbwa, F. O., Avolio, B. J., Gardner, W. L., Werns-ing, T. S., & Peterson, S. J. 2008. Authentic leader-ship: Development and validation of a theory-based measure. Journal of Management, 34: 89–126.


Weick, K. E. 1993. The collapse of sensemaking in organ-izations: The Mann Gulch disaster. AdministrativeScience Quarterly, 38: 628–652.

Weick, K. E. 2001. Leadership as the legitimization ofdoubt. In W. Bennis, G. M. Spreitzer, & T. G. Cum-mings (Eds.), The future of leadership: Today’s topleadership thinkers speak to tomorrow’s leaders:91–102. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Wilson, J. 2009. Buddhism of the heart: Reflections onShin Buddhism and inner togetherness. Somer-ville, MA: Wisdom Publications.

Yukl, G. 1999. An evaluation of conceptual weaknessesin transformational and charismatic leadership the-ories. Leadership Quarterly, 10: 285–305.

Yukl, G. 2010. Leadership in organizations. Upper Sad-dle River, NJ: Pearson.

Bradley P. Owens ([email protected]) is an assistantprofessor in the School of Management at the State Uni-versity of New York, Buffalo. He holds a Ph.D. in man-agement from the University of Washington. His currentresearch focuses on positive organizational scholarshipas it relates to leadership, identity, team processes, di-versity, and work/life balance.

David R. Hekman ([email protected]) is an assistantprofessor of management at the Leeds School of Busi-ness, University of Colorado at Boulder. He earned hisPh.D. in management from the University of Washington.He is interested in improving organizational health byminimizing organizational problems such as ineffectiveleadership, weak employee attachment, and persistentworkplace inequality.


MODELING HOW TO GROW: AN INDUCTIVE EXAMINATION …leeds-faculty.colorado.edu/dahe7472/Owens and...

Documents

Transcript of MODELING HOW TO GROW: AN INDUCTIVE EXAMINATION …leeds-faculty.colorado.edu/dahe7472/Owens and...