Antecedents And Consequences Of Humble Leadership

As the uncertainty of the external environment intensifies,more and more theories and practices have found that leaders who are self-centered,arrogant and narcissistic can lead to corporate reputation damage or even bankruptcy.However,humble leaders who acknowledge their weaknesses,appreciate the strengths of others,respect others,and ask for advice provide a constant source of motivation for continued growth.Thus,humble leadership has become a hot topic in academia and business.As an emerging leadership style,the study of humble leadership is still in its infancy.Reviewing the research of humble leadership,the field of presents the characteristics of "three more and three less".In other words,the antecedents of humble leadership were less while the consequences were more,leader levels were less while employee levels were more.More studies took it as independent variables while less as mediating variables.The lack of these theoretical studies will affect our comprehensive understanding of humble leadership and hinder the research process of humble leadership.Therefore,based on The Trait Motivation Theory and The Leadership Process Model,the study systematically studies the antecedents and consequence of humble leadership by introducing such variables as proactive personality,team learning climate and leadership benefits.Specifically,the study took a leader-subordinate matched sample of 248 staff and their team leaders from 71 teams,and use SPSS24.0 and Mplus7.0 to analysis the data which we surveyed,we find that:(a)Leader's proactive personality was positively related to humble leadership behavior.(b)Humble leadership positively affects leader's reputation and leader's performance.(c)Humble leadership mediated the relationship between proactive personality and leader's reputation and leader's performance.(d)Team learning climate moderated the relationship between leader's proactive personality and humble leadership positively.The significance of this study is as follows: First,the study further expands the influence factors of humble leadership through personality traits and situational factors.Second,the study extends the effectiveness of humble leadership to leaders,which enriches research in this field.Finally,the research extends the mediating mechanism between personality and benefits,and verifies the transfer function of humble leadership between the proactive personality and leader's benefits.In management practice,on the one hand,enterprises can better manage employees,serve the organization and improve performance by identifying and discovering leaders who have the potential to become humble leaders and inspiring leaders' humble behaviors through training and development.On the other hand,by creating a learning climate for the team,a platform for knowledge sharing and communication between leaders and their subordinates can be built to inspire leaders' humble behaviors.Hence,the study extends the antecedents of humble leadership from individual factors to situational factors and enriches the research on the effectiveness of humble leadership at the leadership level,which for the enterprise leader recruitment and development to create a good learning climate and providing theoretical guidance.Therefore,the study provides certain theoretical guidance for the recruitment and development of enterprise leaders and the creation of a good learning climate.