Humble leaders

In an editorial on leader humility, SMU Professor of Organisational Behaviour & Human Resources Gary J. Greguras was interviewed regarding his collaboration with a team of researchers, including SMU colleague Assistant Professor Michael Bashshur and Senior Research Associate Michael Daniels from [SMU’s strategic partner] the Human Capital Leadership Institute in Singapore. The collaboration involved a series of studies to define leader humility in Singapore. The research, which also examined the impact of leader humility on employees in terms of job attitudes, job performance and the quality of relationships employees have with their bosses, aims to understand leader humility in an Asian context and to what extent it matters. Prof Greguras said that “our research showed that leader humility relates to a host of positive employee outcomes, including increased job satisfaction, increased organisational commitment, higher quality leader-member relationships, increased job performance and increased organisational citizenship behaviours.” He is optimistic that the findings from these studies will eventually allow the team to develop programmes to increase leader humility.

Asian Scientist