Understanding how leaders’ humility promotes followers’ emotions and ethical behaviors: Workplace spirituality as a mediator

ABSTRACT

We propose a meditational model that explains why and how leaders’ humility manifests into followers’ empathy, gratitude, and ethical behaviors. Building on social information-processing theory (SIP), we hypothesize that, when a leader has a high level of humility, his or her followers receive signals that increase perceptions of workplace spirituality, which fosters an environment of ethical behavior, empathy, and gratitude. We collected time-lagged survey data (three time intervals, each a month apart) from employees and their colleagues (n = 286) in nine organizations in Pakistan’s telecom, education, and industrial sectors. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), we show that a leader’s humility predicts his or her employees’ ethical behaviors, empathy, and gratitude. Moreover, perceptions of workplace spirituality mediated the time-lagged effects of a leader’s humility on his or her followers’ ethical behaviors, empathy, and gratitude. Our findings largely support our theoretical foundations that indicate that a leader’s humility has important implications for his or her followers’ positive emotions and behaviors through a unique process involving workplace spirituality.

KEYWORDS:

• Leader humility
• workplace spirituality
• ethical behavior
• empathy
• gratitude

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Geo-location Information

The current study was conducted in Islamabad and Rawalpindi which is the Federal Capital city of Pakistan.

Additional information

Funding

The current Research did not include formal financial funding and/or support. The author(s) declared that preparation of this manuscript was not supported by any external funding and is the effort of the authors included.