Expressed Humility in Organizations: Implications for Performance, Teams, and Leadership

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Expressed Humility in Organizations: Implications for

Performance, Teams, and Leadership

Bradley P. Owens, Michael D. Johnson, Terence R. Mitchell

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Bradley P. Owens, Michael D. Johnson, Terence R. Mitchell (2013) Expressed Humility in Organizations: Implications for

Performance, Teams, and Leadership. Organization Science 24(5):1517-1538. http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1120.0795

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Organization Science

Vol. 24, No. 5, September–October 2013, pp. 1517–1538

ISSN 1047-7039 (print)  ISSN 1526-5455 (online)

http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1120.0795

Expressed Humility in Organizations:

Implications for Performance, Teams, and Leadership

Bradley P. Owens

The State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York 14260, bpowens@buffalo.edu

Michael D. Johnson, Terence R. Mitchell

University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195

{mdj3@uw.edu, trm@uw.edu}

e draw on eight different lab and ﬁeld samples to delineate the effects of expressed humility on several important

organizational outcomes, including performance, satisfaction, learning goal orientation, engagement, and turnover.

We ﬁrst review several literatures to deﬁne the construct of expressed humility, discuss its implications in social interactions,

and distinguish expressed humility from related constructs. Using ﬁve different samples, Study 1 develops and validates

an observer-report measure of expressed humility. Study 2 examines the strength of expressed humility predictions of

individual performance and contextual performance (i.e., quality of team member contribution) relative to conscientiousness,

global self-efﬁcacy, and general mental ability. This study also reveals that with regard to individual performance, expressed

humility may compensate for lower general mental ability. Study 3 reports insights from a large ﬁeld sample that examines

the relationship between leader-expressed humility and employee retention as mediated by job satisfaction and employee

engagement as mediated by team learning orientation. We conclude with recommendations for future research.

Key words: humility; task performance; leadership; turnover; self-awareness; narcissism; general mental ability;

learning goal orientation; construct validation; theory elaboration

History: Published online in Articles in Advance February 12, 2013.

Introduction

The construct of humility has received increasing atten-

tion in organizational scholarship in recent years. In the

wake of recent corporate scandals that have been

attributed to the unbridled ego, hubris, sense of entitle-

ment, and self-importance of the corporate executives

involved (Boje et al. 2004), virtues such as humility have

been viewed with greater interest and are seen as more

essential to the character of those who lead and work

within organizations. Humility has been included as one

of the core “organizational virtues” that are proposed to

provide the moral foundation of organizational environ-

ments (Cameron et al. 2003). Theorists have proposed

that humility is becoming more critical for leaders who

direct their organizations in increasingly dynamic and

turbulent environments (Morris et al. 2005, Vera and

Rodriguez-Lopez 2004). Weick (2001, p. 93) suggested,

for instance, that the increasing “unpredictability and

unknowability” organizations face will require leaders of

the 21st century to have “more humility and less hubris.”

Despite calls for leaders and organization members to

have more humility, there are large gaps in our under-

standing of what “humility” means. Some view humil-

ity as a multifaceted, adaptive strength (Tangney 2000),

whereas others associate humility with humiliation and

lowliness (see study results of Exline and Geyer 2004).

Many deﬁnitions have been suggested, but little con-

ceptual consensus has emerged. Moreover, no empirical

research that we are aware of has measured the impact

of humility on important organizational outcomes. Con-

sequently, there are many propositions suggesting the

importance of humility within organizations (i.e., Collins

2005, Morris et al. 2005, Owens and Hekman 2012,

Vera and Rodriguez-Lopez 2004), but almost nothing

has been conﬁrmed by empirical study. Given these mea-

surement problems and the interpersonal, interactional

nature of organizational life, we focus our deﬁnition on

the expressed behaviors that demonstrate humility and

how the behaviors are perceived by others.

To further the study of expressed humility in organi-

zational contexts we have three major goals. First, we

seek to deﬁne the construct in a way that integrates

previous work but goes beyond in a variety of ways

by (1) systematically synthesizing the existing litera-

ture into a parsimonious deﬁnition of expressed humil-

ity, (2) conceptually ﬁtting expressed humility within

the nomological network of related constructs, and

(3) emphasizing how the expressed aspects of humil-

ity could inﬂuence important organizational behaviors.

Our second goal is to develop a measure of expressed

humility by following the standard procedures suggested

by Hinkin (1995). Our third goal is to demonstrate the

1517

Owens, Johnson, and Mitchell: Expressed Humility in Organizations

usefulness of expressed humility, especially as expressed

by a leader in the organizational context.

Deﬁning Expressed Humility

The general construct of humility has a rich back-

ground in theology and philosophy. Because humility

often entails the recognition and appreciation of knowl-

edge and guidance beyond the self, it is a founda-

tional principle in all major world religions—Buddhism,

Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, etc. Humility is also

central to many philosophical discussions of moral-

ity. Immanuel Kant, for example, viewed humility as

a “meta-attitude which constitutes the moral agent’s

proper perspective on himself” and a virtue foundational

to most other virtues (Grenberg 2005, p. 133). Humility

in general has been categorized as a temperance virtue

that guards against excess (Park and Peterson 2003).

Although the virtue of humility has rich historical

roots, conceptualizations of humility vary signiﬁcantly

across philosophical, theological, and psychological per-

spectives. These differing conceptualizations have made

it difﬁcult to derive consensus about the deﬁnition of

humility. Furthermore, attempts to assimilate different

conceptualizations of humility from these ﬁelds has

led to complex deﬁnitions that, in some cases, con-

tain up to 13 different dimensions (Vera and Rodriguez-

Lopez 2004), making humility an unwieldy construct to

operationalize.

One possible reason why previous deﬁnitions of

humility are so complex is that humility may have

different forms or types. Some components of past

humility deﬁnitions have a clear intrapersonal, internal,

and personal focus (i.e., balanced processing of per-

sonal strengths and weaknesses; see Owens 2011); other

deﬁnitions capture the manifested, external, expressed,

or interpersonal properties of humility (i.e., display-

ing a penchant to seek to learn from others; see Vera

and Rodriguez-Lopez 2004). Given the conceptual and

operational implications for these differences, it is not

surprising that past deﬁnitions of humility have been

confusing and past attempts to measure humility unsuc-

cessful. Because our purpose is to examine humility in

the context of organizations, which is considered to gen-

erally be a rich social context, we focus our attention on

the expressed, interpersonal nature of humility.

Literature Review and Deﬁnition

A review of the current literature was our ﬁrst step

in developing a deﬁnition of expressed humility. We

used three criteria in selecting articles for this analy-

sis. Speciﬁcally, we included articles (1) written within

the last 10 years, (2) whose main intent was to deﬁne

the humility construct, and (3) from psychological or

organizational behavior journals or book chapters. Given

our interest in the interpersonal and behavioral aspects

of humility, we looked speciﬁcally for examples of

humility that would be externally observable by oth-

ers (i.e., behavioral based) and did not consider more

intrapersonal aspects of humility (i.e., cognitions and

emotions). The ﬁrst author and two other academic

researchers carefully reviewed this literature indepen-

dently and made notes on what emerged as the core

dimensions of expressed humility. We then met to dis-

cuss the components of humility and to present our sum-

maries of the components of expressed humility. After

some discussion, we agreed on three general categories

of behavior that underlie the construct. We converged

on three dimensions because with more categories, there

was redundancy across categories, and with fewer cat-

egories, some key aspects of expressed humility were

obscured.

As a result of our independent analysis of the litera-

ture and the previous deﬁnitions of humility (i.e., Morris

et al. 2005, Exline et al. 2004, Tangney 2002, Templeton

1997, Means et al. 1990), we deﬁne expressed humility

as an interpersonal characteristic that emerges in social

contexts that connotes (a) a manifested willingness to

view oneself accurately, (b) a displayed appreciation of

others’ strengths and contributions, and (c) teachability.

We view these components as the core reﬂective indica-

tors of humility (Bollen and Lennox 1991) and see them

as tightly interrelated. Expressed humility comprises a

pattern of behaviors that occur in interpersonal interac-

tions and is therefore observable by others. We propose

that though individuals may have a baseline penchant

for expressing humility that is based on heredity, social-

ization, and life experience, the expression of a person’s

humility may vary according to contextual cues and cir-

cumstances (Mischel and Shoda 1995). We elaborate on

each component of our deﬁnition of expressed humil-

ity below. Though our construct focuses on external,

observable behaviors that can be perceived by others,

we discuss general insights from the humility literature

about the motives and cognitions that are thought to

undergird the behavioral manifestations of humility.

An Interpersonal Characteristic

Similar to Costa and McCrae’s (1992) conceptualization

of extraversion and agreeableness as personal, individual

dispositions that are manifest on the “interpersonal

plane,” expressed humility represents an individual

characteristic that emerges in social interactions, is

behavior based, and is recognizable to others. For

decades, the term “interpersonal traits” has been used

to conceptualize individual differences that shape inter-

personal interactions (Sullivan 1953, Bales 1950, Foa

and Foa 1974, Wiggins 1979) and have been effectively

assessed through peer ratings (Costa and McCrae 1992).

Though all personality traits have some interpersonal

implications—and indeed, the Big Five was originally

based on an analysis of social (peer-reported) ratings

Owens, Johnson, and Mitchell: Expressed Humility in Organizations

(McCrae and Costa 1989)—some individual differences

implicate interpersonal dynamics more than others.

Like extraversion and agreeableness, we conceptualize

expressed humility as a construct that has signiﬁcant

interpersonal implications. Because humility is usually a

label attached by others—not something that an individ-

ual assesses and asserts as part of his or her own self-

view—we view conceptualizing and operationalizing an

expressed or social form of humility as a meaningful and

effective way to begin studying this historically elusive

construct. We differentiate our social conceptualization

of humility from the more intrapersonal, philosophical

approaches to humility (e.g., self-transcendence, appre-

ciation of how all things are connected and contribute to

our cohesive universe; see Tangney 2002, Roberts and

Wood 2003), which have more intracognitive implica-

tions. Our social view of humility matches our purpose

to help us further understand how humility plays out in

organizational contexts.

We propose that expressed humility reﬂects a per-

son’s tendency to approach interpersonal interactions

with a strong motive for learning through others. Inter-

action “pushes us to constantly collect information about

ourselves and our environment” (Lawrence and Nohria

2002, p. 107), and therefore expressed humility is

primed, catalyzed, and reinforced through interactions

with others. In addition, humble people utilize interac-

tional partners as “social mirrors” through which they

can more accurately see (or gain an accurate reﬂec-

tion of) themselves by being transparent about strengths

and limitations. And ﬁnally, humble people see inter-

action partners as key sources of learning and insights

about personal development. Given its relational nature,

expressed humility will be especially relevant in con-

texts that entail frequent interactions with people and

where the content of the interactions is to exchange

information, feedback, and criticism (such as in leader–

follower dyads).

Manifested Willingness to See the Self Accurately

The ﬁrst component of our deﬁnition of expressed

humility captures a desire to engage in an ongoing pro-

cess of achieving accurate self-awareness through inter-

actions with others. Nielsen et al. (2010) suggested that

“people with humility are actively engaged in utilizing

information gathered in interactions with others, not only

to make sense of, but also, when necessary, to mod-

ify the self. That is, their self-views are focused on

their interdependence with others rather than their inde-

pendence from others” (pp. 34–35). We propose that

humility fosters a more objective appraisal of personal

strengths and limitations that is manifested by transpar-

ent disclosure of personal limits, acknowledging mis-

takes, and seeking realistic feedback about the self. From

a general psychological standpoint, longitudinal research

has shown that individuals who maintain more realistic

self-views tend to be more psychologically healthy and

have higher general well-being (Vaillant 1992). In con-

trast, individuals with self-enhancing and inaccurately

positive self-perceptions (which are often measured by

contrasting self-views with those of observers) are more

likely to be maladjusted over the long term (Ungerer

et al. 1997), be more deceitful, have a more brittle ego-

defense system, have less social poise and presence, and

be less productive (Colvin et al. 1995).

In an organizational context, these behaviors imply

that this component of the expressed humility construct

may have implications for the quality of interpersonal

work relationships, decision making, and subsequent

performance. We propose that employees who engage

in this self-learning through interactions with others

gain a more accurate awareness of their own intraper-

sonal resources and will be less prone to overconﬁdence,

which is the root of a myriad of organizational prob-

lems, poor decisions, and self-complacency (McIntyre

and Salas 1995, Vera and Rodriguez-Lopez 2004).

Obviously, this overconﬁdence is especially danger-

ous in those who hold power in organizations, such as

those in leadership roles. A balanced or more accurate

self-awareness helps organizational members and lead-

ers more accurately know when to take action and when

to learn more about an issue, as well as which endeav-

ors they are capable of handling competently and which

should not be attempted because of incompetence or

inexperience. Furthermore, as past research has shown

that self-disclosure often leads to increased trust, rela-

tional satisfaction, and reciprocal disclosure (Ehrlich and

Graeven 1971, Collins and Miller 1994), we believe

that this dimension of expressed humility, manifested by

disclosure of personal limitations and weaknesses, has

the potential to foster higher-quality and more transpar-

ent interpersonal interactions between leaders, followers,

and peers.

Appreciation of Others’ Strengths and

Contributions

According to Means et al. (1990, p. 214), “Humility

is an increase in the valuation of others and not a

decrease in the valuation of self.” Expressed humility

reﬂects attitudes that are other-enhancing rather than

self-enhancing (Morris et al. 2005) and leads one to

acknowledge and show that he values others’ strengths

(Tangney 2002). Humility allows one to transcend the

comparative–competitive response when interacting with

others and instead acknowledge and admire the strengths

and contributions of others without feeling threatened

by them (Exline et al. 2004). In line with this reason-

ing, King and Hicks (2007, p. 632) suggested that “true

humility is more about possessing an exalted view of

the capacities of others rather than a negative view of

oneself.” Expressed humility entails the behavioral man-

ifestation of this positive view of others.

Owens, Johnson, and Mitchell: Expressed Humility in Organizations

From an organizational perspective, research has

found that when individuals are given power they tend

to devalue the worth and contributions of others (Kipnis

1972). We propose that organizational leaders and mem-

bers who possess humility can transcend this tendency

and instead maintain a genuine appreciation and high

valuation of the efforts, strengths, and abilities of their

coworkers. This is not to say that individuals with humil-

ity will be oblivious to their coworkers’ weaknesses and

areas of incompetence, but rather, they will be able to

more readily identify and value the unique abilities and

strengths of those with whom they work. By attending to

the qualities of others, humble organizational members

will more likely hold a nonheuristical, complex view of

others (i.e., viewing others through a multifaceted lens

that sees a variety of character strengths and skill sets

others possess) and less likely to hold simplistic, dualis-

tic evaluations of others (i.e., competent versus incom-

petent). By so doing, humble leaders and members are

more readily able to identify in others valuable resources

for social modeling and learning.

Teachability

The third main component of expressed humility is

teachability, which is manifested by showing open-

ness to learning, feedback, and new ideas from others.

Tangney (2000, p. 72) argued that “humility carries with

it an open-mindedness, a willingness to 0 0 0 seek advice,

and a desire to learn.” Similarly, Templeton (1997,

p. 162) noted, “Inherent in humility resides an open and

receptive mind 0 0 0 it leaves us more open to learn from

others.” We propose that this aspect of expressed humil-

ity reﬂects a person’s absorptive capacity (see Zahra

and George 2002) on an individual level and may be

generally related to developmental readiness, a concept

that has mainly been applied to leaders (Avolio et al.

2009) within the context of interpersonal interactions.

This aspect of expressed humility would be manifest by

a displayed receptiveness to others’ feedback, ideas, and

advice and the willingness to ask for help.

The ability of organizational members to learn effec-

tively is critical for organizations competing in the

present “knowledge economy” (Dane and Pratt 2007).

The rapid advance of technology and increasing special-

ization of work suggest that organizations are in greater

need of leaders and employees who are teachable and

have a desire and willingness to acquire new skills,

absorb new information, and learn from others. Hum-

ble individuals, through showing teachability, afford oth-

ers a sense of voice, which has been shown to foster

greater trust, motivation, and a heightened sense of jus-

tice (Cropanzano et al. 2007). Teachability may also be a

particularly important component of expressed humility

in leadership contexts. Alexander and Wilson (in Church

et al. 1998) argued that a thirst for learning is one of the

most critical capacities of effective leaders. Tichy and

Cohen (1997) also insisted on the importance of leaders

having a “teachable point of view.” Finally, Weick (2001,

p. 110) stated that when a leader is able to humbly admit,

“I don’t know,” “that admission forces the leader to drop

pretense, drop omniscience, drop expert authority, drop

a macho posture, and drop monologues 0 0 0 0 [L]istening

and exploring is the consequence.”

Expressed Humility in the Nomological Network

In the exploration of a new construct, it is important

to explain where it ﬁts within the nomological network

and its unique conceptual space (Schwab 1980, Hinkin

1995). Expressed humility is related to but distinct from

many existing constructs. From our review of the litera-

ture, it seems most important to differentiate expressed

humility from the existing constructs of modesty, narcis-

sism, openness to experience, honesty-humility, learning

goal orientation (LGO), and core self-evaluation (CSE).

Table 1 summarizes what we view as the conceptual dif-

ferences between these constructs and the dimensions of

expressed humility.

Although we do not need to go over each of the vari-

ables in the table, we summarize by saying that in every

comparison with expressed humility, the other constructs

demonstrate either criterion deﬁciencies or criterion con-

tamination. That is, the related constructs either fail to

capture the complete expressed humility construct space

or contain aspects of their construct that are not part

of the expressed humility space, and in some instances,

both problems occur. For instance, that modesty does not

include a learning orientation, antinarcissism does not

capture teachability, and openness does not include self-

evaluative information are all examples of criterion deﬁ-

ciency. Criterion contamination examples would include

learning goal orientation targeting achievement situa-

tions and core self-evaluations having optimistic self-

views instead of accurate ones.

Measuring Expressed Humility

As previously mentioned, most of the work discussing

humility in organizations has been theoretical, and thus,

to test these theories, a reliable and valid measure of

humility must be developed. In line with the concept

of expressed humility, we developed a measure that

reﬂects the perceptions of humble behavior expressed

by a focal person. Here is why: First, initial attempts

to measure humility have questionable face and con-

struct validity. Past attempts to circumvent problems

associated with measuring humility (e.g., having people

accurately self-report their strengths and weaknesses or

describing themselves as humble) have used a variety

of proxies aimed at indirectly representing the humil-

ity construct. Some have tried to avoid the problems

inherent in measuring humility via self-report by sim-

ply operationalizing humility as low self-esteem (Knight

and Nadel 1986). Others have discussed the possibil-

ity of measuring humility by comparing the differ-

ence between self-report and other-report performance

evaluations (Tangney 2000).

Owens, Johnson, and Mitchell: Expressed Humility in Organizations

Table 1 Expressed Humility in the Nomological Network

Constructs Deﬁnition Key differences from expressed humility

Modesty Not boastful, underselling accomplishments,

lacking assertiveness. Withhold positive

information about the self (Baumeister and

Jones 1978); deferring credit for success

(Hareli and Weiner 2000).

Modesty differs from expressed humility in that modesty

has less to do with the motivation for personal learning

and personal development and more to do with having

the social sensitivity not to draw too much attention to,

talk too much about, or boast about oneself.

Narcissism “A personality trait encompassing grandiosity,

arrogance, self-absorption, entitlement,

fragile self-esteem, and hostility” (Rosenthal

and Pittinsky 2006, p. 617).

Expressed humility is not merely a lack of displayed

grandiosity or self-absorption (as we would expect from

low levels of narcissism), but it also addresses

teachability or appreciation of others, dimensions that are

not directly addressed by narcissism. Expressed humility

also is theorized to be associated with a stable or

tempered self-view that does not overinﬂate with praise

or overdeﬂate with criticism; narcissism refers to stark

oscillations from grandiose to dejected self-views.

Openness to experience Describes the extent to which someone is

imaginative and insightful; has a broad

range of interests; is in tune with inner

feelings; and appreciates art, emotion,

novelty, unusual ideas, and adventure

(Barrick and Mount 1991, McCrae and

Costa 1987).

Expressed humility focuses on being open to feedback and

ideas from others (and thus is more of an interpersonal

construct) and captures one’s approach to self-evaluative

information, whereas openness to experience has very

little to do with self-evaluative information and is not

necessarily an interpersonal construct (it entails a

general mental openness to information and experience

that is not necessarily tied to interactions with others),

and thus we expect expressed humility to be more tied to

relational outcomes in organizations compared with

openness to experience.

Honesty-humility Part of the HEXACO personality model

(Ashton and Lee 2008), encompassing the

subcomponents of sincerity, fairness, greed

avoidance, and modesty.

Honesty-humility includes some important prosocial

characteristics that are likely to be related to the

expressed humility construct but does not capture the

core elements of willingness to view oneself accurately,

teachability, and appreciation of others.

Learning goal orientation An adaptive approach to task situations

associated with the motivation to

understand and master the task rather than

to display or prove competence

(Dweck 2000).

Learning goal orientation describes cognitive and

behavioral response patterns in achievement situations,

whereas expressed humility is manifest in a broad range

of social situations that may or may not have direct

achievement implications. LGO reﬂects a desire (i.e., an

internal motivation or cognition) to develop new

competencies, master new situations, and acquire new

skills; expressed humility reﬂects behaviors that reﬂect a

pursuit of accurate self-awareness and appreciation of

others’ strengths, in addition to learning and

development.

Core self-evaluation A higher-order trait that represents a baseline

or comprehensive view of the self and

comprises the four lower-order constructs of

self-esteem, generalized self-efﬁcacy,

internal locus of control, and emotional

stability (Judge et al. 2003).

Generalized self-efﬁcacy reﬂects optimistic self-beliefs,

whereas expressed humility reﬂects a motivation for an

accurate self-view. Expressed humility and internal locus

of control also share theoretical roots with regard to

determinism, as humility allows individuals to believe they

can improve their personal weaknesses. However,

internal locus of control focuses more on beliefs about

what happens to us externally, whereas expressed

humility is more focused on issues dealing with personal

development. Practically speaking, core self-evaluation is

important for motivation and persistence (locus of

control, self-efﬁcacy) and consistency in performance

(emotional stability), but it says little with regard to how

viewing others may inﬂuence workplace performance via

social learning, nor whether such self-views are an

accurate portrayal of self-abilities (i.e., hyper-CSE has

been suggested as a proxy for hubris; see Hiller and

Hambrick 2005).

Owens, Johnson, and Mitchell: Expressed Humility in Organizations

Second, in addition to using existing scales as prox-

ies for humility, others have tried to develop self-report

measures of humility. Attempting to circumvent the

social desirability bias of measuring humility via self-

reporting, Emmons (as reported in Tangney 2002) cre-

ated a scale using a forced-choice format. However,

results from the initial scale development analysis

showed prohibitively low internal consistency. Part of

the reason for this is that serious problems exist concep-

tually with assessing humility via self-report. For peo-

ple to consider themselves exceptionally humble seems

paradoxical to the construct. Because of these problems,

several scholars have suggested that assessing humil-

ity through close observers may be the ideal approach

(Exline et al. 2004, Davis et al. 2010). For instance,

Richards (1992) argued that although those who actually

possess humility are not likely to attribute this virtue

to themselves, close others may be able to observe and

report on this virtue. Observer reports of personality

have been shown to have a high degree of consensus

(John and Robins 1993, Kenny 1994) and a high level of

accuracy (agreement with self-reports), even when expo-

sure to the person rated is brief or indirect (Gosling et al.

2002). We report on our efforts to develop an observer-

report measure of expressed humility below.

Study 1: Developing a Measure of

Expressed Humility

Method

Participants and Procedures. Five samples were used

to develop and validate items for a new expressed humil-

ity scale. Samples A, B, and C consisted of undergrad-

uate students from a large northwestern U.S. university.

Sample D consisted of employees of a large U.S. health

services organization, and Sample E consisted of full-

time employees from a commercial subject pool. Details

regarding each of these samples and the purpose(s) for

using each sample are provided in Table 2.

Table 2 Characteristics of the Study 1 Samples

Sample Source N Gender Average age Ethnicity Work experience Analysis

A Upper-level 164 52% male 21 50% Caucasian N/A Exploratory factor

undergraduate analysis, discriminant

business students validity

B Upper-level 236 49% male 22 59% Caucasian 2.8 years Conﬁrmatory factor

undergraduate analysis

business students

C Upper-level 124 52% male 22 50% Caucasian 3.3 years Test-retest reliability

undergraduate

business students

D Employees of a large 511 63% male 48 79% Caucasian 4.7 years Conﬁrmatory factor

health maintenance (organization tenure) analysis

organization

E Full-time employees 263 37% male 39 79% Caucasian 13.2 years Discriminant validity

in a commercial

subject pool

Instrument Development. Based on our deﬁnition

of expressed humility, we generated items that were

screened to ensure they were content valid, clear, and

concise. This process resulted in an initial list of

32 items, and our sample sizes allowed for at least a

5:1 subject to item ratio. Items were scaled using a Lik-

ert format ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly

agree.” In Samples A and B, participants were asked to

type the initials of an individual they knew very well

on the survey and then to assess this person on the

expressed humility items. Sample C participants were

asked to rate members of their student project teams,

and Samples D and E participants were asked to rate

their immediate supervisors.

To further establish construct validity, we admin-

istered to Samples A and E scales measuring con-

structs that are expected to be related (for nomolog-

ical validity) and unrelated (for discriminant validity)

to the expressed humility construct. Speciﬁcally, the

Sample A survey included openness, conscientiousness,

emotional stability, extroversion (Barrick and Mount

1991), modesty (Peterson and Seligman 2004), nar-

cissism (Margolis and Thomas 1980), and core self-

evaluations (Judge et al. 2003). The Sample E survey

included the measures of honesty-humility (Ashton and

Lee 2008) and learning goal orientation (VanDeWalle

1997). Similar to the expressed humility scale, items rep-

resenting the Big Five, modesty, narcissism, and core

self-evaluations were adjusted to match an observer-

report format (i.e., “this person” was used in each

descriptive statement), because previous research has

shown the other-report approach to rating personality is

not only valid but often more accurate than self-report

measures (see Kolar et al. 1996).

Results

Instrument Analysis. We conducted exploratory factor

analyses using data from Sample A for the expressed

Owens, Johnson, and Mitchell: Expressed Humility in Organizations

Table 3 Expressed Humility Scale Descriptive Statistics, Loadings, and Reliability

Scale item Item mean Item SD Factor loadings Alpha if item deleted

1. This person actively seeks feedback, 2080 1015 0074 0094

even if it is critical.

2. This person admits it when they don’t know 3020 1012 0085 0093

how to do something.

3. This person acknowledges when others have more 3028 1007 0080 0094

knowledge and skills than him- or herself.

4. This person takes notice of others’ strengths. 3037 1000 0080 0094

5. This person often compliments others on their strengths. 3005 1001 0074 0094

6. This person shows appreciation for the unique 3019 1000 0079 0094

contributions of others.

7. This person is willing to learn from others. 3039 1006 0083 0093

8. This person is open to the ideas of others. 3029 1003 0083 0093

9. This person is open to the advice of others. 3035 1008 0088 0093

humility scales. Through an iterative process, we

sequentially removed items with factor loadings below

0.20 or cross loadings above 0.40. This process resulted

in a nine-item, three-factor solution. Scale items, fac-

tor loadings, item means, and standard deviations are

presented in Table 3. The reliability for the resulting

expressed humility scales was  = 0094. Items repre-

senting the expressed humility components of willing-

ness to view oneself accurately (items 1, 2, and 3),

appreciation of others’ strengths (items 4, 5, and 6),

and teachability (items 7, 8, and 9) were retained in

the reﬁned scale, suggesting a three-factor structure. As

a face validity test, we followed the guidelines in pre-

vious studies to conduct a sorting task (Anderson and

Gerbing 1991). We recruited 10 content experts (i.e.,

professors and researchers who have been involved with

research on humility) to sort these nine items along the

three subdimensions of expressed humility, and, as a

foil, we included nine items from the modesty scale

(Peterson and Seligman 2004) and nine items from a

Machiavellian scale (Jackson Personality Inventory; see

Jackson 1977). After we provided a deﬁnition for each

construct, participants were asked to assign each item to

one of the construct categories according to their respec-

tive construct deﬁnitions. In all these codings, there was

only one instance where an expressed humility item

was coded as belonging to the modesty construct and

only two instances where a modesty item was coded

as belonging to the expressed humility construct. There

were no other cross-categorizations across constructs.

We viewed this as strong evidence for the face valid-

ity of the expressed humility items and the underlying

dimensions.

Using data from Sample B, we conducted a conﬁr-

matory factor analysis to test the factor structure of the

nine-item expressed humility scale. Two competing a

priori models were tested: a one-factor solution and a

three-factor solution with the three subcomponents load-

ing onto a second-order general expressed humility fac-

tor. Following the guidelines outlined by Kline (1998,

p. 130) we report four tests of ﬁt: chi-squared, good-

ness of ﬁt (GFI), nonnormed ﬁt index (NNFI), and

standardized root mean squared residual (SRMR). The

one-factor model had a chi-square value of 1406.05

(p < 000013 df = 27), a GFI of 0.77, an NNFI of 0.92,

and an SRMR of 0.05, suggesting moderate ﬁt. In con-

trast, the three-factor model loading onto a second-order

factor had much better ﬁt, with a chi-square value of

410.47 (p < 000013 df = 24), a GFI of 0.93, an NNFI

of 0.97, and an SRMR of 0.03. These data support our

conceptualization that expressed humility is reﬂected by

three underlying, interconnected components. In other

words, our expressed humility measure is a reﬂective

measure that captures three manifest indicators of the

latent expressed humility construct (see Edwards and

Bagozzi 2000).

The nine-item expressed humility scale was admin-

istered to a third sample, Sample C, to analyze the

reliability of the scales over time. The expressed humil-

ity scores from Time 1 and Time 2 (approximately one

month later) were related (r = 00561 p < 00001), indi-

cating evidence of test-retest reliability. The expressed

humility scale was then administered to Sample D to

replicate this factor structure with a ﬁeld sample. Simi-

lar to the procedure conducted with Sample B, we tested

a one-factor solution and three-factor solution loading

onto a higher-order factor. The one-factor model again

achieved moderate ﬁt, with a chi-square value of 619.47

(p < 00001; df = 27), a GFI of 0.77, an NNFI of 0.82,

and an SRMR of 0.06. In contrast, the three-factor

model loading onto a second-order factor had much bet-

ter ﬁt, yielding a chi-square value of 213.98 (p < 00001;

df = 24), a GFI of 0.90, an NNFI of 0.93, and an SRMR

of 0.04. Internal consistency reliability for this work

sample was equivalent to the reliabilities of the student

sample ( = 0095 and  = 0094, respectively). Taken as a

whole, these results suggest that the nine-item expressed

humility scale had sufﬁcient reliability to proceed with

other analyses.

Owens, Johnson, and Mitchell: Expressed Humility in Organizations

Table 4 Study 1 Descriptive Statistics and Correlations

Variable Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

1. Expressed humility 3021 0085 400945

2. Modesty 2066 0066 0062

∗∗

400845

3. Narcissism 1038 0030 −0063

∗∗

−0069

∗∗

400875

4. Conscientiousness 3021 0079 0028

∗∗

0022

∗

−0035

∗∗

400905

5. Extraversion 3004 0087 0011 0006 0010 −0014 400885

6. Openness to experience 3026 0057 0031

∗∗

0009 −0035 0034

∗∗

0006 400825

7. Emotional stability 3054 0073 0049

∗∗

0032

∗∗

−0050

∗∗

0017 0008 0019 400935

8. Core self-evaluation 3032 0059 0034

∗∗

0010 −0041

∗∗

0042

∗∗

0012 0051

∗∗

0055

∗∗

400865

9. Honesty-humility

3021 0077 0055

∗∗

0068

∗∗

0028

∗∗

400905

10. Learning goal orientation

3054 0077 0063

∗∗

0011 0072

∗∗

400905

Notes. n = 164. Scale alpha reliabilities are given on the diagonal (in parentheses).

Honesty-humility and learning goal orientation scores assessed using Sample E 4n = 2635, which also assessed expressed humility,

modesty, and openness to experience.

∗

p < 0005;

∗∗

p < 0001.

Nomological Network Analysis. As a test of dis-

criminant validity, we conducted two additional factor

analyses to explore whether items from the expressed

humility measure loaded with items of conceptually

related constructs (see DeVellis 2011). First, using data

from Sample A, the resulting nine items from the

expressed humility scale were entered into a factor anal-

ysis along with the items representing trait extraversion,

conscientiousness, emotional stability, openness to expe-

rience, modesty, core self-evaluations, and narcissism.

Using data from Sample F, we entered the nine-item

expressed humility scale with the honesty-humility and

learning goal orientation items. Across these analyses,

only two items from existing scales had cross loadings

above 0.40 that loaded onto the expressed humility con-

struct. We take this as strong evidence of discriminant

validity for the expressed humility construct.

Table 4 reports the bivariate relationships between

expressed humility and the traits of modesty, narcissism,

components of the Big Five, and core self-evaluation.

These relationships were in line with our expecta-

tions. Speciﬁcally, narcissism was negatively related to

expressed humility (r = −0063, p < 0001). Modesty was

positively related (r = 00621 p < 0001). Expressed humil-

ity was also positively related to openness to experi-

ence (r = 0031, p < 0001), emotional stability (r = 0049,

p < 0001), conscientiousness (r = 0028, p < 0001), and

core self-evaluations (r = 0034, p < 0001). Using data

from Sample E, expressed humility was shown to be

positively related to honesty-humility (r = 0055, p <

0001) and learning goal orientation (r = 0063, p < 0001)

(for convenience, correlations from both Samples A and

E are reported in the same table). From a nomological

validity standpoint, the other-report expressed humility

scale seems to reﬂect a construct that ﬁts within the the-

oretical network of constructs we have discussed.

Discussion

This study provides initial support for our conceptual-

ization of expressed humility, its validity as observed

by others, its relationship with other constructs, its

underlying dimensionality, and its positive nature. This

study also revealed initial support for external validity,

as the factor structure and alpha reliabilities were equiv-

alent from student and employee samples. However, this

study lends no insight into the predictive validity of

expressed humility. Thus, building off this initial evi-

dence of construct validity, we seek in Study 2 to further

establish expressed humility as an important construct

in organizational contexts by examining its predictive

validity.

Study 2: Relationship of Expressed

Humility with Individual Performance and

Quality of Team Member Contribution

In Study 2, we sought to further establish the valid-

ity of the expressed humility construct by examining

(a) whether expressed humility enhances the quality

of one’s contribution on a team and (b) the incre-

mental predictive validity of expressed humility over

other major predictors of individual performance. In

line with our discussion of the importance of expressed

humility within organizational contexts, we expected

that expressed humility would foster more meaningful

and satisfying interrelations with others (Means et al.

1990, Exline et al. 2004). Increasingly, ﬁrms are orga-

nizing workers into teams in hopes of fostering syn-

ergies of experience, skills, and knowledge, as well

as to encourage mutual mentoring and peer regulation.

Research has shown, however, that the intended bene-

ﬁts of organizing around teams are often not realized

because team member characteristics may starkly con-

trast with expressed humility. Members who display

characteristics such as self-enhancement and arrogance

are punished by other team members because of their

disruptiveness to group functioning (see Anderson et al.

2006, Horowitz et al. 2006). In contrast, we expect that

the behaviors of expressed humility (i.e., owning up to

personal mistakes and weaknesses, being receptive to

Owens, Johnson, and Mitchell: Expressed Humility in Organizations

feedback, and acknowledging the strengths and contri-

butions of other team members) facilitate effective team

functioning and make it more likely that team members

will view humble team members as quality contributors

to the team’s efforts.

Hypothesis 1. Individual expressed humility is posi-

tively related to team member contribution ratings.

We also expect that expressed humility captures some

unique adaptive behaviors important for individual per-

formance that are not captured by common perfor-

mance predictors. Speciﬁcally, we expect that the three

expressed humility dimensions, as measured, represent

behaviors that facilitate individual performance beyond

conscientiousness, generalized self-efﬁcacy, and general

mental ability. First, humble people manifest a will-

ingness to see themselves accurately, to work toward

an unexaggerated understanding of personal strengths

and weaknesses. We expect that this enhanced self-

understanding about strengths and limitations should

impact decisions about how much time and effort one

should allocate to performance-related tasks. For exam-

ple, those who overestimate their ability may allocate

less time and effort than is needed, resulting in miss-

ing deadlines or sacriﬁcing quality to ﬁnish tasks on

time, thus leading to decreased performance. However,

those who are willing to see themselves accurately will

have a more precise sense of their abilities, leading to a

more realistic view of how much time and effort will be

needed to fulﬁll performance expectations. Humble peo-

ple with this self-understanding will also “play to their

strengths” where possible and seek help or feedback on

the aspects of the task where they might be weak.

Second, the teachability component of expressed

humility suggests that humility is associated with open-

ness to feedback. Humble individuals are more likely to

learn from their mistakes and take remedial action after

low performance, leading to higher overall performance

over time. Third, humility involves an appreciation of

the strengths of others. In a performance context, peo-

ple possessing high levels of humility should be less

likely to discount or devalue the strengths or high per-

formance of those around them. Therefore, it may be

that those who are humble are more likely to notice

and beneﬁt from the positive modeling of high perform-

ers. Combined, we expect expressed humility to be pos-

itively associated with overall performance. Moreover,

the positive performance beneﬁts of expressed humility

just discussed are not captured by general mental ability,

conscientiousness, and self-efﬁcacy, three of the most

robust individual difference predictors of performance.

Thus, we hypothesize the following.

Hypothesis 2. Individual expressed humility posi-

tively predicts individual performance, over and above

generalized self-efﬁcacy, conscientiousness, and general

mental ability.

Method

Participants and Procedures. Subjects were 144 stu-

dents from three sections of an upper-level undergrad-

uate management course. In all, 51% of the subjects

were male, 51% were Caucasian, the mean age was 22.8,

and the mean level of work experience was 42 months.

The class entailed completing a number of assessments

throughout the quarter for which the students would

be awarded course credit. Individual performance was

based on the average of individual grades on tests and

assignments (independent of team-related grades). This

performance metric represents an objective proxy of par-

ticipants’ effort on assignments and tests throughout

the course period and, we propose, reﬂects participants’

diligence, timeliness, preparedness, and thoroughness.

In the ﬁrst month of the quarter, students were asked

to complete an online self-assessment of general self-

efﬁcacy (Schwarzer and Jerusalem 1995) and conscien-

tiousness (Barrick and Mount 1991). Sample items for

general self-efﬁcacy include “I can always manage to

solve difﬁcult problems if I try hard enough” and “It is

easy for me to stick to my aims and accomplish my

goals.” Sample items for conscientiousness include “I try

to perform all the tasks assigned to me conscientiously”

and “When I make a commitment, I can always be

counted on to follow through.” Both assessments were

measured on a ﬁve-point scale. One month later, stu-

dents were asked to complete the Wonderlic Personnel

Test (Wonderlic 1973, Dodrill 1983) as a measure of

general mental ability.

On the ﬁrst day of class, students were divided into

teams for the purpose of working together on team-

related assignments throughout the quarter and to com-

plete a culminating ﬁnal team project that entailed a

written report and presentation at the end of the quar-

ter. The structuring of this team project experience, and

the frequent interaction it fostered, was created to pro-

vide the psychological (both mundane and experimen-

tal) realism to approximate a real project team in the

work context (see Colquitt 2008). Thus, far from being

a short-lived hypothetical lab experience, the students

were in real, 10-week-long project teams.

Other-report expressed humility was gathered at the

middle of the term and team member contribution rat-

ings at the end of the term (after completing the team

project but before they knew their team project or indi-

vidual grades). Each group member rated each teammate

on the expressed humility items validated in Study 1.

Students were assured that their responses would be con-

ﬁdential (i.e., their team members would not know how

they rated them) and that their ratings would not impact

their team grades.

Demographic data, such as gender, race, age, and

amount of work experience, were gathered as controls.

Because we were trying to establish the predictive-

ness of expressed humility beyond established constructs

Owens, Johnson, and Mitchell: Expressed Humility in Organizations

(especially those we have identiﬁed as conceptually

related), we also included the measures of core self-

evaluation (Judge et al. 2003) and openness to expe-

rience (McCrae and Costa 2004) with the intention of

controlling for these constructs. We controlled for gen-

der because past research suggests that females show

more humility than males (Furnham et al. 2002). We

controlled for age and work experience because scholars

have suggested that humility might develop with accrued

life experience (Tangney 2000), and we controlled for

race because of the potential differences in the valuing

and expressing of humility across collectivistic and indi-

vidualistic cultures (Morris et al. 2005). Using a ﬁve-

item scale, team members rated each other on the quality

of their contributions to the team project. The items were

anchored to a ﬁve-point Likert scale (1 = very low; 5 =

very high); sample items from this scale included “The

quality of this team member’s contribution to the team

project was 0 0 0 0” and “The overall value that this team

member added to the team was 0 0 0 0” ( = 0090). These

contribution scores were averaged and used as the crite-

rion variable for testing Hypothesis 1. Because each par-

ticipant’s midterm humility score and end-of-term team

member contribution score were based on the average of

his or her team members’ ratings, as a robustness check,

we ran analyses only including groups with an r

more than 0.80. However, the results were equivalent

regardless of whether we included groups with these low

scores, so we report our results with the full sample.

Results

Table 5 contains descriptive statistics and bivariate cor-

relations for all the study variables. Expressed humil-

ity showed a signiﬁcant positive relationship with team

contribution (r = 00331 p < 0001) and individual per-

formance (r = 00351 p < 0001). Table 6 reports the

results of regression analyses to test the hypothesis

Table 5 Study 2 Descriptive Statistics and Correlations

Variable Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

1. Gender

0048 0050

2. Race

0052 0050 −0020

∗∗

3. Age 21067 2090 0003 0001

4. Work experience 38010 31070 0002 0009 0054

5. Openness 3032 0050 0004 0008 0005 0001

6. Core self-evaluation 3079 0058 −0002 0019

∗

−0003 −0003 0006 400755

7. Self-efﬁcacy 3092 0050 −0001 0011 −0003 0002 0028

∗∗

0070

∗∗

400775

8. Conscientiousness 3083 0051 0015

∗

0010 0001 0007 0003 0036

∗∗

0036

∗∗

400845

9. General mental ability 26065 5079 −0026

∗∗

0018

∗

−0020

∗∗

−0003 −0010 0017

∗

0031

∗∗

−0007

10. Expressed humility 3084 0039 0017

∗

−0009 0017

∗

0009 −0003 −0012 −0008 0018

∗

−0002 400945

11. Team contribution 4018 0074 0023

∗∗

−0003 −0010 0015 −0007 0008 −0002 0030 0011 0033

∗∗

400905

12. Individual performance 0085 0010 0006 −0005 −0028

∗∗

−0018

∗∗

−0002 0015

∗

−0007 0014

∗

0016

∗

0035

∗∗

0070

∗∗∗

Notes. n = 144. Scale alpha reliabilities are given on the diagonal (in parentheses).

Represents a dummy variable: male = 0, female = 1.

Represents a dummy variable: non-Caucasian = 0, Caucasian = 1.

∗

p < 0005;

∗∗

p < 0001.

that expressed humility would predict team mem-

ber contribution ratings and individual performance

above and beyond conscientiousness, generalized self-

efﬁcacy, and general mental ability. Comparing Model 2

to Model 3 under the “Team contribution” column,

after controlling for age, gender, race, work expe-

rience, core self-evaluation, and openness to experi-

ence, expressed humility positively predicted quality

of team contribution above and beyond conscientious-

ness, self-efﬁcacy, and general mental ability ( = 0034,

ãR

= 0010, p < 00001). Thus, Hypothesis 1 was sup-

ported. Comparing Model 2 to Model 3 under the “Indi-

vidual performance” column, after controlling for age,

gender, race, and work experience, expressed humil-

ity positively predicted individual performance above

and beyond conscientiousness, self-efﬁcacy, and general

mental ability ( = 0023, ãR

= 0005, p < 0001). Thus,

Hypothesis 2 was supported.

Post Hoc Analyses. Recent research has shown that

some individual characteristics can compensate for low

general mental ability on performance tasks. In one

example, Côté and Miners (2006) found a compen-

satory effect for emotional intelligence such that the

relationship between emotional intelligence and perfor-

mance became stronger as general mental ability became

weaker. Part of the rationale for this compensatory

model was that emotional intelligence facilitates aspects

of performance that raw general mental ability does

not, such as identifying and regulating self and oth-

ers’ emotions in working toward cooperative goals. We

have discussed how humility may facilitate a more real-

istic allocation of personal resources toward complet-

ing tasks, the likelihood of taking remedial action after

receiving negative feedback, and enhanced social learn-

ing. Thus, humility may also compensate for low general

mental ability. To examine this possibility, we created

an interaction term using the expressed humility and

Owens, Johnson, and Mitchell: Expressed Humility in Organizations

Table 6 Results of Regression Analyses for Comparing the Predictiveness of Expressed Humility, Conscientiousness,

Generalized Self-Efﬁcacy, and General Mental Ability on Individual Performance and Performance Improvement

Team contribution Individual performance

Variable Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6 Model 7 Model 8

Controls

Gender

0022

∗

0023

∗

0022

∗

0022

∗

0021

∗

0018

†

0017

†

0017

†

Race 0006 −0001 −0001 −0002 0008 0003 0003 0002

Age −0013 −0007 −0012 −0012 −0003 0003 −0001 −0001

Work experience 0023

†

0021

†

0018 0019

†

0000 −0005 −0007 −0006

Openness −0002 −0005 −0006 0002 −0005 −0003 −0003 0001

Core self-evaluation 0016

†

0006 0010 0011 0017

†

0007 0010 0010

Predictors

Self-efﬁcacy −0012 −0010 −0013 −0013 −0012 −0016

Conscientiousness 0033

∗

0026

∗∗

0027

∗∗

0039

∗∗∗

0037

∗∗

0038

∗∗∗

General mental ability 0021

∗

0020

∗

0021

∗

0017

†

0016

†

0017

†

Expressed humility 0034

∗∗∗

0036

∗∗∗

0023

∗∗

0027

∗∗

Interaction terms

Expressed humility × General mental ability −0021

∗

−0023

∗∗

F 2022

∗

3024

∗∗

4089

∗∗∗

5023

∗∗∗

1056 3020

∗∗

3074

∗∗∗

4030

∗∗∗

0011 0022 0032 0036 0008 0021 0026 0031

ãR

0011

∗

0010

∗∗∗

0004

∗

0013

∗∗

0005

∗∗

0005

∗∗

Note. n = 144.

All values reﬂect standardized beta coefﬁcients.

†

p < 0010;

∗

p < 0005;

∗∗

p < 0001;

∗∗∗

p < 00001.

general mental ability variables. As shown in Model 8

in Table 6, the interaction term accounted for signiﬁcant

additional variance, suggesting that expressed humility

interacts with general mental ability to predict individ-

ual performance ( = −00231 ãR

= 00051 p < 0001).

In Figure 1, the slopes suggest that expressed humil-

ity has a compensatory effect on performance for those

with lower general mental ability. In other words, though

expressed humility had a relatively small positive impact

on performance for those with high general mental abil-

ity, expressed humility made a considerable difference in

performance for those with low general mental ability.

Figure 1 The Compensatory Effect of Expressed Humility on

the Relationship Between Intelligence and

Individual Performance

Low humility High humility

Individual performance

Low general mental ability

High general mental ability

Represents percentage points.

To separately test one of the reasons why expressed

humility may compensate for poor performance—that

those with humility will be more likely to take reme-

dial action to improve poor performance (teachability)—

we conducted an additional analysis to assess whether

humility predicted improvement in test performance over

time. All student participants took a midterm (test 1) and

a ﬁnal exam (test 2) during the quarter. The overall class

averages for the midterm and ﬁnal exams were equiva-

lent (M = 0081 and M = 00801 respectively). We exam-

ined whether expressed humility predicted performance

on test 2 while controlling for performance on test 1.

In our hierarchical regression analysis, age, gender, race,

work experience, and test 1 scores were controlled for

in block 1. General self-efﬁcacy, conscientiousness, and

general mental ability (the common performance predic-

tors) were entered in block 2; expressed humility was

entered in block 3. Compared with self-efﬁcacy, consci-

entiousness, and general mental ability, expressed humil-

ity was the strongest predictor of individual performance

improvement, explaining 9% of the variance in improve-

ment in test scores above and beyond the other variables

( = 00391 ãR

= 00091 p < 0001).

Discussion

The main purpose of Study 2 was to further validate

the expressed humility scale by analyzing its criterion

validity. We hypothesized that expressed humility would

enhance one’s ability to work well with others and would

enhance individual performance. As expected, expressed

humility was predictive of team contribution ratings and

individual performance beyond the related constructs of

Owens, Johnson, and Mitchell: Expressed Humility in Organizations

core self-evaluation and openness to experience and the

common performance predictors of self-efﬁcacy, consci-

entiousness, and general mental ability. We also uncov-

ered an interesting interactive effective with intelligence.

In addition to being predictive of individual perfor-

mance above and beyond common performance pre-

dictors, expressed humility was shown to have a com-

pensating effect on performance for those with lower

general mental ability. Unlike team contribution rat-

ings, individual performance was derived from a source

that was independent of expressed humility ratings and

thus is a key strength of this study. Expressed humility

was hypothesized to predict unique variance in perfor-

mance because it captures adaptive behaviors that are

not reﬂected in trait conscientiousness, self-efﬁcacy, or

general mental ability. Speciﬁcally, expressed humility

reﬂects receptiveness to feedback (teachability), better-

informed decisions about attributes needed to meet task

performance expectations (viewing oneself accurately),

and receptivity to the positive modeling of peers (appre-

ciation of others’ strengths). This study also showed that

expressed humility predicts unique variance in perfor-

mance beyond the constructs of core self-evaluation and

openness to experience; this suggests that the concep-

tual differences between expressed humility and these

related constructs have practical implications for predict-

ing important outcomes. In addition, relative to all other

study constructs, expressed humility was the best pre-

dictor of performance improvement.

However, Study 2 also had some limitations. First,

because both humility and team member contributions

were assessed the same way, this relationship could be

a methodological artifact, though common method vari-

ance would not apply to the performance dependent

variable. Also, it should be noted that we have no evi-

dence regarding some of the mediating mechanisms we

mention in our hypothesis rationale, such as feedback-

seeking behaviors and mimetic behaviors.

Organizational Validity

Study 3: The Inﬂuence of Leader-Expressed

Humility on Follower Outcomes

Study 1 provided support for the three-dimensional

nature of the expressed humility construct (willing-

ness to see the self accurately, appreciation of others’

strengths, and teachability) and established evidence for

construct and nomological validity. Study 2 provided

initial evidence for the predictive validity of expressed

humility by testing its connection to team contribution

ratings and individual performance. Building off Stud-

ies 1 and 2 and in an effort to further establish the

predictive and external validity of the new expressed

humility construct, Study 3 aimed to provide evidence

that expressed humility positively inﬂuences important

outcomes within real organizational contexts. Given the

proposed interpersonal nature of expressed humility, and

because much of the current literature has speculated

about the importance of leader humility in general, in

this study we focused speciﬁcally on the implications of

expressed humility in leader–follower relations.

Recent qualitative research suggests that expressed

humility might be an important leader attribute. In a

study that explored the behaviors, effects, and contin-

gencies of leader humility (Owens and Hekman 2012),

humility was found to have important implications for

learning, employee engagement, and employee job sat-

isfaction. As qualitative insights, these outcomes have

not yet been conﬁrmed by quantitative empirical study.

Thus, in this study we focused on a quantitative anal-

ysis of the inﬂuence of leader-expressed humility on

team learning orientation and employee job engagement

(Path 1) and on employee job satisfaction and voluntary

turnover (Path 2).

Path 1: Team Learning Orientation and Team Mem-

ber Engagement. Team learning orientation refers to

“a shared perception of team goals related to learning

and competence development” (Bunderson and Sutcliffe

2003, p. 553). In other words, it refers to the degree

to which a team is oriented toward proactive learning,

reﬂecting a desire to develop new competencies, mas-

ter new situations, and acquire new skills (see Table 1).

Although learning orientation can be considered a sta-

ble characteristic, research has also shown that it can

be primed (i.e., fostered, reinforced) by situational fac-

tors. Two important situational factors that have been

shown to inﬂuence goal orientation are leadership (i.e.,

transformational; see Gong et al. 2009) and authority

relations (Ames 1992, Turner et al. 2002). Speciﬁcally,

different leadership approaches have been shown to

sanction or discourage learning orientations and behav-

iors in teams. Although “authoritarian” leaders have

been found to inhibit team member learning behavior

(Edmondson 1999), we propose that leaders who express

humility will (1) look for, (2) recognize, and (3) appre-

ciate the development of new competencies and skills.

They will enact the humble behaviors of admitting their

own mistakes and limitations, modeling teachability and

openness to learning, and acknowledging the strengths

and contributions of team members, which will foster a

team climate in which team members are more focused

on development and more willing to risk engaging in

learning behaviors.

More speciﬁcally, leaders who show the behaviors of

humility help legitimize learning and personal develop-

ment (i.e., send a signal to employees that it is okay to

be “in process” here; see Owens and Hekman 2012) and

foster openness, trust, and recognition, which have been

shown to be antecedents of learning goal orientation (see

Bunderson and Sutcliffe 2003 for a review). Therefore,

we propose the following hypothesis.

Owens, Johnson, and Mitchell: Expressed Humility in Organizations

Hypothesis 3. Leader-expressed humility is posi-

tively related to team learning orientation.

In addition to team orientations, our review of the lit-

erature also suggested that leaders’ display of humility

has positive motivational effects on individual employ-

ees. One speciﬁc positive effect of leader humility that

was evident from our review is enhanced employee

job engagement. Job engagement reﬂects the degree to

which individuals invest their entire selves in their work

roles (i.e., physical, emotional, and cognitive; see Rich

et al. 2010) and has been captured by the level of absorp-

tion, vigor, and dedication an individual has toward his

work (Schaufeli and Bakker 2004). We know from past

research that when leaders show what may be viewed

as a lack of humility (taking all the credit for success,

overestimating their contributions relative to others, not

listening), followers disengage and lose their motiva-

tion to work hard under their leader (see Burke 2006,

Lubit 2002). However, we expect that leaders who show

humility by acknowledging the strengths and contribu-

tions of followers and being teachable will help fos-

ter the preconditions for employee engagement, such as

“dignity, self-appreciation, and a sense of value” (Kahn

1990, p. 705). This connection between leader humility

and employee job engagement was also found in recent

qualitative research (Owens and Hekman 2012).

In light

of this review, we propose the following hypothesis.

Hypothesis 4. Leader-expressed humility is posi-

tively related to employee engagement.

Furthermore, we propose that the group climate of

learning and development—which we suggest is fos-

tered by humble leader behaviors—will enable indi-

vidual group members to invest more of themselves

in their job roles (i.e., be more engaged) because an

intrinsic orientation toward learning has been associ-

ated with increased engagement in past research (Meece

et al. 1988). Moreover, Kahn (1990) suggested that both

supportive leadership and the tone of the work group

are important antecedents of job engagement. Thus, we

expect that the effect of leader-expressed humility on

employee job engagement is through the team learning

orientation that humble leader behaviors help foster.

Hypothesis 5. The positive relationship between

leader-expressed humility and employee job engagement

is mediated by team learning orientation.

Path 2: Job Satisfaction and Voluntary Turnover. We

also theorize that leader humility will have a positive

effect on employee job satisfaction. There is substan-

tial literature showing that the leader has a major inﬂu-

ence on his or her employees’ overall job satisfac-

tion (see meta-analysis from Dirks and Ferrin 2002).

Insights from qualitative research and theoretical work

on leader humility also point speciﬁcally to a con-

nection between leader-expressed humility and positive

employee job attitudes, such as job satisfaction (Owens

and Hekman 2012, Morris et al. 2005). Among other

things, job satisfaction is shaped in large part by favor-

able perceptions of supervisors or leaders (Russell et al.

2004). Second, almost all measures of job satisfaction

(e.g., the Job Descriptive Index) have a dimension that

reﬂects one’s satisfaction with supervision. Nearly three-

quarters of employees report that the worst aspect of

their job is their immediate boss (Hogan and Kaiser

2005), and many of the complaints employees have

about their leaders appear to reﬂect the opposite of the

proposed dimensions of expressed humility (i.e., arro-

gance (Dotlich and Cairo 2003); devaluing the opinions

or views of others (Fulmer and Conger 2004); thinking

they have all the answers or having an inﬂated self-view

(Finkelstein 2003)). In contrast, we expect that leaders

who present a realistic view of themselves (i.e., aware-

ness of weaknesses and mistakes), who are open to the

ideas of others, and who give employees due credit for

their contributions and strengths will help employees

generally feel better about their overall job experience.

Hypothesis 6. Leader-expressed humility is posi-

tively related to employee job satisfaction.

We also know from numerous studies that the rela-

tionship with the boss is a critical factor in determining

whether employees choose to stay or not. One’s “imme-

diate supervisor is perhaps one of the most inﬂuential

people in his or her work life,” inﬂuencing job perfor-

mance, job attitudes, well-being, and attachment (Perry

et al. 2010, p. 1145). Indeed, leadership quality has been

shown to be a powerful predictor of employee turnover

(see Richardson and Vandenberg 2005) and in some

cases just as powerful a predictor as employee attitudes

(see Ferris 1985). In addition, past studies have shown

that leaders who recognize the potential of employees

and have a relationship of mutual disclosure (factors

that reﬂect dimensions of leader-expressed humility) are

more likely to retain their followers (Graen et al. 1982).

Thus, we expected the following.

Hypothesis 7. Leader-expressed humility is nega-

tively related to voluntary employee turnover.

The question, of course, is how leader-expressed

humility more speciﬁcally inﬂuences the desire to stay

or leave. We would suggest that job satisfaction medi-

ates leader-expressed humility and employee turnover

for the following reasons. First, job satisfaction is the

strongest single predictor of turnover. Starting with

March and Simon (1958), and including the meta-

analysis by Griffeth et al. (2000) and the more recent

review in the Academy of Management Annals by

Holtom et al. (2008), job satisfaction has emerged as

the primary conduit through which other variables inﬂu-

ence turnover (Hom and Griffeth 1995). Job satisfaction

has been shown to mediate relationships between many

Owens, Johnson, and Mitchell: Expressed Humility in Organizations

aspects of the job (e.g., compensation, nature of the

work, advancement opportunities, work group relations)

and turnover (Boswell et al. 2005). Dickter et al. (1996,

p. 706) go so far as to say “in most studies of turnover

in the organizational literature job satisfaction is the

key psychological construct leading to turnover.” Given

our hypothesis suggesting that leader humility fosters

increased job satisfaction, and because job satisfaction

is one of the strongest predictors of voluntary turnover,

we propose that the relationship between leader humility

and voluntary turnover is mediated by job satisfaction.

Hypothesis 8. The negative relationship between

leader humility and voluntary turnover is mediated by

employee job satisfaction.

Method

Sample and Procedure. We sampled employees of

a large U.S midwestern health services organization.

This sample contained 704 employees rating 218 lead-

ers (mean group size was 3.56 employees); 72% of the

employees were female and 70% were Caucasian. The

average age and tenure under their current leader of this

sample was 37 years and 12.5 months, respectively.

We were given permission to include our measures

of the study constructs with the organization’s own

annual conﬁdential assessment. Each employee in the

organization was invited through email to complete a

voluntary, two-part annual organizational assessment.

Parts 1 and 2 were administered online approximately

one month apart, and the response rates were 67% and

54%, respectively. In part 1, participants were asked to

rate their immediate leader or supervisor on the nine

humility items developed in Study 1. Part 1 also con-

tained questions asking for demographic information

(gender, age, race, and tenure under current leader).

Part 2 contained a 5-item team learning orientation scale

(Bunderson and Sutcliffe 2003), a 12-item job engage-

ment scale (Schaufeli et al. 2002), and a 7-item job sat-

isfaction scale (Cook et al. 1981). Sample items from

the team learning orientation scale include “My team

sees learning and developing skills as very important”

and “My team likes challenging and difﬁcult assign-

ments that teach new things.” Sample items from the job

engagement scale include “I am immersed in my work”

and “At my job, I am very resilient, mentally.” Sam-

ple items from the job satisfaction scale include “All in

all, how satisﬁed are you with your job?” and “All in

all, how satisﬁed are you with the persons in your work

group?” Humility and job satisfaction were measured

on ﬁve-point scales (5 = strongly agree and 5 = very

satisﬁed, respectively). Team learning orientation and

job engagement were measured on a seven-point agree-

ment scale (7 = strongly agree). As noted above, team

learning orientation, job satisfaction, and job engage-

ment were measured one month after leader-expressed

humility in an effort to reduce common method variance

through temporal separation (Podsakoff et al. 2003).

Approximately four months after the part 2 assessment

was administered, we requested and received voluntary

turnover data from the company for all participants.

Analyses. Because of the multilevel and nested nature

of the data (i.e., groups of employees rating their leader),

we tested Hypotheses 4–8 using hierarchical linear mod-

eling (i.e., HLM 7.0). We used regression analyses to

test Hypothesis 3, given that leader humility and team

learning goal orientation were both group-level vari-

ables. The average r

values for the level 2 variables,

leader humility and team learning goal-orientation, were

both 0.93. As a robustness check we ran all analyses

excluding all groups with an r

below 0.80. Because the

results were equivalent to the results using the full sam-

ple, we report model output statistics from analyses with

the full sample. For HLM analyses, we speciﬁed con-

tinuous distribution outcome variables when predicting

job satisfaction and job engagement and the Bernoulli

distribution (which is appropriate for binary outcome

variables) when predicting voluntary turnover. To test

improvement of model ﬁt, we compared deviance statis-

tics across models based on a 2-log-likelihood calcula-

tion (the higher the deviance statistic, the poorer the ﬁt

between the model and the data). Thus, we were look-

ing for a signiﬁcant reduction in the deviance statistic to

discern whether one model ﬁts the data better than the

others. We used a Laplace deviance estimation for all

analyses involving voluntary turnover, as recommended

by Snijders and Bosker (1999, pp. 218–219). Because

our research question centers on understanding how our

level 2 predictor (leader humility) affects the propor-

tion of variance observed in each group (see Neuhaus

et al. 1991), we report the unit-speciﬁc model with

robust standard errors. To test our multilevel mediation

hypotheses for our leader humility (level 2) to job satis-

faction (level 1) to voluntary turnover (level 1) path, we

separated within- and between-group effects by group

centering the mediation variable at level 1 and reintro-

ducing the group average of the mediator at level 2, as

recommended by Zhang et al. (2009, p. 698). Because

Path 2 entails a level 2 mediator (i.e., a 2-2-1 model),

we used the grand-mean centering approach also recom-

mended by Zhang et al. (2009, p. 700). We also report

a Freedman and Schatzkin (1992) t-statistic to indicate

the signiﬁcance of the mediation effect (for the equation,

see Zhang et al. 2009, p. 697).

Results. Descriptive statistics and bivariate correla-

tions for all study variables are presented in Table 7.

Leader-expressed humility was positively related to job

engagement (r = 00251 p < 0001) and job satisfaction

(r = 00441 p < 0001), and it was negatively related to vol-

untary job turnover (r = −00141 p < 0001). Job engage-

ment and job satisfaction were also negatively related to

Owens, Johnson, and Mitchell: Expressed Humility in Organizations

Table 7 Study 3 Descriptive Statistics and Correlations

Variable Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

1. Gender

0072 0045

2. Race

0070 0046 0008

∗

3. Age 37045 11005 0009

∗

0012

∗∗

4. Tenure under leader

12051 12075 0006

†

0007

†

0010

∗∗

5. Leader-expressed humility 3090 0089 0005 0007

†

0003 0005 400975

6. Job engagement 4089

0094 0008

∗

0004 0019

∗∗

0010

∗∗

0025

∗∗

400925

7. Job satisfaction 3055 0071 0001 0008

∗

0002 0006

†

0044

∗∗

0064

∗∗

400825

8. Team LGO

5001

1013 −0001 −0006 0009

∗

0002 0035

∗∗

0046

∗∗

0052

∗∗

400925

9. Voluntary turnover

0011 0032 0006 −0002 0004 −0003 −0014

∗∗

−0010

∗∗

−0016

∗∗

−0005

Notes. N = 704 employees. Scale alpha reliabilities are given on the diagonal.

Represents a dummy variable: male = 0, female = 1.

Represents a dummy variable: non-Caucasian = 0, Caucasian = 1.

Represents the number of months of tenure under the current leader.

Scaled to a seven-point agreement scale.

Reﬂects team learning goal orientation.

Represents a binary variable of voluntary turnover: voluntary turnover = 1.

†

p < 0010;

∗

p < 0005;

∗∗

p < 0001.

turnover (r = −00101 p < 0001 and r = −00161 p < 0001,

respectively).

Table 8 shows the results of the regression and HLM

analyses testing Hypotheses 3–5. In support of Hypoth-

esis 3, leader-expressed humility was positively related

to team LGO after controlling for demographic differ-

ences (as shown in Model 2; b = 00531 ãR

= 00271 p <

00001). Model 4 provides support for Hypothesis 4,

as leader-expressed humility was positively related to

job engagement after controlling for demographic dif-

ferences (

= 00211 p < 0001). In line with the recom-

mendations from Zhang et al. (2009) for testing multi-

level mediation effects, we added grand-mean-centered

team LGO to the equation in Model 5. The relationship

between leader-expressed humility and job engagement

decreased to nonsigniﬁcance, suggesting a full media-

tion effect of team LGO (

= 00301 p < 00001) and

providing support for Hypothesis 5. The Freedman and

Schatzkin (1992) t-statistic for this mediation effect was

also signiﬁcant (t = 60611 p < 00001), providing addi-

tional conﬁrmation of Hypothesis 5.

Table 9 reports the results for the tests of Hypothe-

ses 6–8. Model 2 shows support for Hypothesis 6,

as leader-expressed humility was positively related to

job satisfaction after controlling for demographic differ-

ences (

= 00341 p < 0001). Model 4 shows that leader-

expressed humility was negatively related to voluntary

turnover (

= −00821 p < 0001), supporting Hypothe-

sis 7. As shown in Model 5, this effect was mediated

by job satisfaction (

= −10411 p < 00001), providing

support for Hypothesis 8. The Freedman and Schatzkin

(1992) t-statistic for this mediation effect was signiﬁcant

(t = −10821 p < 0005), providing additional support for

Hypothesis 8.

Discussion

There are three key contributions this study makes

that deserve mentioning. First, although several theoret-

ical and qualitative studies suggest the importance of

leader-expressed humility (Morris et al. 2005, Nielsen

et al. 2010, Owens and Hekman 2012, Vera and

Rodriguez-Lopez 2004), this is the ﬁrst quantitative

study that empirically tests the beneﬁts of leaders humil-

ity in organizational contexts. Second, this study pro-

vides important insight into the job engagement litera-

ture, which is still not deﬁnitive about what leadership

approaches best foster engaged employees. In contrast

to “rousing” employees through charismatic, energetic,

and idealistic leadership approaches (empirical evidence

has been inconsistent about these approaches; see Dvir

et al. 2002), our study suggests a “quieter” leadership

approach, with listening, being transparent about limi-

tations, and appreciating follower strengths and contri-

butions as effective ways to engage employees. Third,

this study also extends what previous research has found

regarding the impact of leadership style on retaining

employees. Companies ﬁercely compete to attract and

retain talented employees (Michaels et al. 2001), and

many talented employees leave ﬁrms because they feel

that their immediate leaders do not recognize their

potential or listen to them (Burke 2006). It seems, then,

that leader-expressed humility may be even more impor-

tant as ﬁrms work to attract and retain talented individu-

als. Overall, the meaning of expressed humility derived

from our literature search and initial empirical testing

appears to have important implications for employee

attitudes and organizational outcomes in the workplace.

We should also mention two limitations that are appar-

ent to us. First, we have suggested causal relationships

in our hypotheses and the direction of these causal

links. We are fairly conﬁdent that Path 2 with expressed

humility, job satisfaction, and turnover makes sense

theoretically and has some support empirically. Also, our

measurement of satisfaction was one month after mea-

suring expressed humility, and we obtained turnover four

Owens, Johnson, and Mitchell: Expressed Humility in Organizations

Table 8 Study 3 (a) Regression and (b) HLM Analyses

Testing the Predictiveness of Leader-Expressed

Humility on Team Learning Goal Orientation (Time 1)

and Job Engagement (Time 2)

Panel (a): Regression

Variable Model 1 Model 2

Controls

Gender (mean)

−0.01 −0009

Race (mean)

−0.01 −0006

Tenure (mean) 0.05 0003

Tenure under leader 0.02 0000

(mean)

Predictor

Leader-expressed 0053

∗∗∗

humility

F 0.19 12096

∗∗∗

0.00 0027

ãR

0027

∗∗∗

Panel (b): HLM

Variable Model 3 Model 4 Model 5

Intercept 4006

∗∗∗

3009

∗∗∗

4092

∗∗∗

Controls

L1: Gender

4

5 0004 0004 0004

L1: Race

4

5 −0008 −0008 0004

L1: Tenure (

5 0003

∗∗∗

0003

∗∗∗

0002

∗∗∗

L1: Tenure under 0000 0000 0000

leader (

Predictors

L2: Leader-expressed 0021

∗∗

0010

humility (

L2: Team LGO (

5 0030

∗∗∗

Log likelihood 11674000 11661042 11637072

−26L4

reduced

− 

full

5] −15014

∗∗

−72055

∗∗∗

Notes. n = 704 employees; k = 218. For Models 1 and 2, the

dependent variable is team LGO; for Models 3–5, the dependent

variable is job engagement. All regression values reﬂect standard-

ized beta coefﬁcients. L1 suggests a level 1 variable; L2 suggests

a level 2 variable.

All controls for regression Models 1 and 2 represent the team

mean for each variable.

Gender coded as 1 = male, 0 = female.

Race coded as 1 = white, 0 = minority.

†

p < 0010;

∗

p < 0005;

∗∗

p < 0001;

∗∗∗

p < 00001.

months after measuring satisfaction. Though turnover

can most certainly be a factor leaders could be judged

on (and thus also be a cause of subsequent expressed

humility), we believe our data support the direction we

hypothesized. We are less sure about the causal direction

for Path 1. We measured both team LGO and engage-

ment at the same time. Although we have argued for

team LGO as the mediator, one could argue that engage-

ment may enhance LGO. We think our logic makes

sense, but more empirical evidence is clearly needed

here.

We also did not directly measure all the mediat-

ing mechanisms we included in our hypothesis rationale

(i.e., increased mutual disclosure and trust).

The other limitation has to do with the fact that we

have three dimensions of expressed humility, and in this

study (as well as Study 2) we might ﬁnd differential

strength of effects for the humility dimensions and their

relationships to our dependent variables. We did not do

this for two reasons. First, we felt that our initial pre-

sentation and tests of our expressed humility construct

should include the whole set of dimensions. We did not

have the theoretical depth, previous empirical ﬁndings or

experience with our new construct to make differential

hypotheses. Second, we believe differential hypotheses

would partly be a function of the types of people in the

study, the type of industry involved, and various on-site

particulars, such as leadership training, past history, and

organizational culture. We suggest that future research

should seek to gain more nuanced insights about the

effects of humility by parsing out the unique effects of

the expressed humility dimensions.

General Discussion

To make a signiﬁcant theoretical contribution, our over-

arching goals for this research were to (1) deﬁne

expressed humility in a parsimonious, theoretically novel

and meaningful way that extends beyond the current

literature; (2) develop a psychometrically robust mea-

sure of expressed humility and provide foundational

evidence for its construct, nomological, and predictive

validity; and (3) show that expressed humility is impor-

tant in organizational contexts. The three studies we have

reported represent at least ﬁve important and novel con-

tributions to the current literature. First, as the result of

our literature review, we synthesize previous conceptual-

izations of humility into one clear, operationalizable def-

inition that portrays expressed humility as a multifaceted

strength displayed in a social and interpersonal context.

This parsimonious synthesis of the expressed humility

dimensions, for which we have shown empirical support,

is an important contribution, given that some present

humility as a complex construct with up to 13 differ-

ent indicators or dimensions (Vera and Rodriguez-Lopez

2004). Though some question the concept of humil-

ity as a virtue or strength (Hume 1994, pp. 219, 270)

and some subjects still categorize humility as associated

with humiliation and lowliness (see Exline and Geyer

2004, Grenberg 2005), our research adds important evi-

dence in this debate, as our strengths-based view of

humility was supported by the positive relationships we

found between expressed humility and positive attitudes,

traits, and adaptive behaviors (i.e., self-esteem via core

self-evaluation, emotional stability, self-efﬁcacy, perfor-

mance improvement, learning orientation, and engage-

ment). The fact that “the willingness to see oneself accu-

rately” component of expressed humility was positively

related to these positive attitudes, traits, and adaptive

behaviors supports the notion that realistic self-views

Owens, Johnson, and Mitchell: Expressed Humility in Organizations

Table 9 Study 3 Hierarchical Linear Modeling Analyses Testing the Predictiveness of Leader Humility (Time 1) on Job

Satisfaction and Voluntary Turnover (Time 2)

Variable Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Model 4

Model 5

Intercept (

5 3057

∗∗∗

3058

∗∗∗

−3056

∗∗∗

−3072

∗∗∗

1002

Controls

L1: Gender

4

5 −0001 −0001 0085 0091 0009

†

L1: Race

4

5 0018

∗

0018

∗∗

−0028 −0027 −0006

L1: Tenure (

5 0000

∗

−0002

∗

0000 0000 0001

L1: Tenure under leader (

5 −0001

†

0001 −0003 −0003

†

−0004

†

Predictor

L2: Leader-expressed humility (

5 0034

∗∗∗

−0082

∗∗

−0033

Mediators

L2: Job satisfaction group average (

5 −1043

∗

L1: Job satisfaction (

5 −1041

∗∗∗

Log likelihood 11473089 11451070 11332097 11327065 11311091

−26L4

reduced

− 

full

5] −44037

∗∗∗

−10064

∗

−31048

∗∗∗

Notes. n = 704 employees; k = 218. For Models 1 and 2, the dependent variable is job satisfaction; for Models 3–5, the dependent variable

is voluntary turnover. L1 suggests a level 1 variable; L2 suggests a level 2 variable.

Gender coded as 1 = male, 0 = female.

Race coded as 1 = white, 0 = minority.

Because voluntary turnover is a binary outcome variable, the Bernoulli function and Laplace deviance estimation (Snijders and Bosker

1999, pp. 218–219) were used when computing this model.

†

p < 0010;

∗

p < 0005;

∗∗

p < 0001;

∗∗∗

p < 00001.

are more beneﬁcial than exaggerated/inﬂated ones (Tay-

lor and Brown 1988, Taylor 1989, Colvin et al. 1995).

Furthermore, the empirical results of Study 1 lend

strong support for the validity and reliability of our

new expressed humility scale using an observer-report

format. Thus, our deﬁnition and operationalization of

expressed humility is a critical contribution to the humil-

ity literature, enabling empirical testing for heretofore

speculative statements about the importance of humility

in organizations.

Second, Study 2 provided evidence that expressed

humility explains unique variance in performance above

and beyond general mental ability, self-efﬁcacy, and

conscientiousness. Intelligence taps what level a person

can perform, and conscientiousness and self-efﬁcacy tap

what level a person is motivated to perform; expressed

humility captures a person’s receptivity to the positive

social modeling of others and responsiveness to feed-

back in taking remedial action after events of poor per-

formance (i.e., performance improvement over time).

Third, expressed humility demonstrated a compensatory

effect on performance for those with lower general men-

tal ability. Though the link between general mental abil-

ity and performance has a long history, more recently,

scholars have called for and given more attention to

other individual differences that may predict perfor-

mance (Schmidt and Hunter 2004, Poropat 2009). Mea-

sures of raw general mental ability may reﬂect cognitive

processing speed and the ability to grasp new concepts.

But the ability to learn is not the same thing as a will-

ingness to learn. General mental ability says little about

how willing someone is to seek and apply critical feed-

back, admit mistakes, and beneﬁt from the positive mod-

eling of others. Humble people with lower general men-

tal ability may still perform well because they may be

more willing to enact these learning behaviors to master

performance tasks.

Fourth, given the general trend of organizing around

teams, constructs such as expressed humility may make

unique contributions to explain aspects of an individual’s

performance at work, above and beyond general men-

tal ability. How one responds to the increased frequency

and intensity of association with others may be impor-

tant for understanding who thrives and does not thrive

in team-based environments. As we showed in Study 2,

expressed humility was positively related to team contri-

bution ratings. Thus, the tendencies of feedback recep-

tivity, enhanced social learning, and having realistic

views of oneself may be particularly beneﬁcial for indi-

vidual performance improvement and effectiveness in

these team-based contexts. Finally, Study 3 provides evi-

dence that expressed humility is an important component

of effective leadership in modern organizations. In this

study we showed that humble leaders foster learning-

oriented teams and engaged employees as well as job

satisfaction and employee retention. Showing external

and predictive validity for leader-expressed humility

construct enables the existing propositions about hum-

ble leadership to be empirically tested (see Morris et al.

2005, Nielsen et al. 2010, Owens and Hekman 2012).

Limitations and Directions for Future Research

Although our work clearly makes some important con-

tributions, there are also some limitations. First, the

degree to which the ﬁndings of Study 2 generalize to

the workplace is uncertain, given the student sample and

Owens, Johnson, and Mitchell: Expressed Humility in Organizations

the performance criteria. However, the experience upon

which the expressed humility ratings were based—team

member interactions in longitudinal project teams—were

designed to simulate a realistic work context. Thus,

though our objective measure of individual performance

was clearly academic, the measuring of expressed humil-

ity (our main theoretical focus) by members of a long-

standing project team provides a naturalistic setting

that closely approximates a real work-team context. We

also felt, given the implications of expressed humil-

ity on learning, that exploring the connection between

expressed humility and performance in an educational

context was a good theoretical “ﬁt” with conducting ini-

tial explorations of this new construct. Testing whether

expressed humility explained variance beyond mental

ability in an academic environment seemed more con-

servative, because this is the environment where mental

ability has historically been the most predictive of per-

formance (compared with the work context; see Murphy

1996). Though our hypothesized relationships were con-

ﬁrmed in this educational setting, we encourage future

research to replicate the relationships between expressed

humility and performance and the expressed humility

compensatory effect in a work setting.

Second, the results from Study 3 may be inﬂated

because we used a common source of data for ratings

of leader-expressed humility, follower job satisfaction,

job engagement, and team learning orientation. How-

ever, we sought to minimize common method variance

by temporally spacing the measurement of predictor and

criterion variables and by using different referents (i.e.,

leader, self, team) for rating the study constructs (Pod-

sakoff et al. 2003). There were limitations in each study,

but we propose that the strengths of each help compen-

sate for the weaknesses of the others (see Wiesenfeld

et al. 2007, p. 1250). As a set, we suggest that the eight

samples used across our three studies provide convinc-

ing support that expressed humility is a unique, valid,

and predictive construct that deserves more attention in

organizational research.

Third, although our studies provide a foundation for

what expressed humility is, what it is associated with,

and what it inﬂuences, they say little about what indi-

vidual or situational factors foster the expression of

humility in the workplace. Future research should seek

to more fully understand the antecedents of expressed

humility. Such understanding will help better inform

organizations on how to select for or develop this

attribute in employees and leaders. Exline et al. (2004)

suggest that secure relational attachments, reality-based

feedback about one’s strengths and weaknesses, and

not having extreme emphasis placed on performance in

one’s past school (and perhaps work) experience may

be antecedents of personal humility. Future research

should also examine how relative power, status, and

other demographic characteristics inﬂuence the expres-

sion of humility (Owens and Hekman 2012).

We also see the need for more research on the effects

of expressed humility. We suggest that our peer-report

scale may allow researchers to address questions such

as those proposed by Tangney (2000), including to what

degree expressed humility might be related to dimen-

sions of psychological and physical health, the devel-

opment of other virtues (e.g., forgiveness, altruism), its

connection to common cognitive biases (e.g., overconﬁ-

dence or hindsight bias) and emotions (e.g., pride, envy),

and the degree to which expressed humility may help or

hinder occupational success in a competitive world. We

also encourage future research to explore team member-

expressed humility in team contexts and, speciﬁcally,

to examine whether the interactive effects of expressed

humility and intelligence on team member contribu-

tions, process, and outcomes may vary across different

types of team tasks (i.e., disjunctive, conjunctive; see

Steiner 1972).

In addition, future research should further explore

the relevance and beneﬁts of expressed humility in

the context of leadership. Leadership scholars should

empirically examine whether leader-expressed humility

does in fact foster greater learning, adaptiveness, and

extraordinary performance (see Collins 2005, Vera and

Rodriguez-Lopez 2004) or whether it means the differ-

ence between true and “pseudo”-transformational lead-

ership (see Morris et al. 2005), propositions that have

not yet been empirically tested. Future research should

also examine boundary conditions for leader-expressed

humility. For example, the level of leadership (ﬁrst-line,

middle management, executive management) or culture

(Western versus Eastern) may inﬂuence the effectiveness

of leader-expressed humility.

We also propose that future research test how ex-

pressed humility might interact with the closely related

constructs presented in Table 1. We expect, for exam-

ple, that expressed humility may have a tempering or

buffering inﬂuence on LGO, CSE, and openness to

experience that will enhance the utility of these con-

structs within organizational contexts. Driven by intrin-

sic curiosity (openness to experience), favorable views

toward task persistence (LGO), or an unrealistically high

sense of control over outcomes (internal locus of con-

trol), these otherwise positive characteristics could lead

to undue persistence in failing causes or in tasks one has

little chance of accomplishing. Expressed humility may

help buffer extreme or maladaptive levels of these con-

structs to avoid such ineffective path persistence. That is,

a willingness to view oneself accurately (including limi-

tations) and an openness to receiving feedback from oth-

ers may help temper these characteristics, adding more

accuracy to self-efﬁcacy, more realism to perceptions of

control, and more purpose or grounding to openness to

experience. Thus, we recommend that future research

Owens, Johnson, and Mitchell: Expressed Humility in Organizations

examine interactions between expressed humility and

other predictors of individual and team-level outcomes.

One ﬁnal point is especially important to make. The

recent movements of positive psychology (Seligman

and Csikszentmihalyi 2000) and positive organizational

scholarship (Cameron et al. 2003) have spurred more

attention and interest in virtues such as humility. How-

ever, studying virtues has a unique set of challenges.

First, compared with many psychological constructs,

virtues typically have rich historic roots in theologi-

cal and philosophical literatures, often making it more

difﬁcult to gain consensus about how to operational-

ize these virtues. Additionally, because virtues generally

have greater moral underpinnings than many personal-

ity traits, accessing these constructs through self-report

becomes more challenging (see Allison et al. 1989). We

hope that our work can serve as a template for further

research on virtues within organizational contexts.

Conclusion

The scientiﬁc study of humility within organizations

promises many exciting implications and new avenues of

research. Tangney (2000, p. 80) suggested that the study

of humility would be propelled forward signiﬁcantly

with “a clear and consistently articulated conceptualiza-

tion of this rich construct and, in turn, by the develop-

ment of theoretically informed measures of humility.”

Although scholars have argued for the importance of

humility within leadership and organizational contexts,

this research topic has been stymied because of a lack of

consensus with deﬁnitions and the difﬁculty of measure-

ment. We hope that the development and validation of

this humility scale represent an important step forward

in being able to examine the real impact of humility on

important organizational processes and outcomes, and

that this effort will spur more theory and research involv-

ing this “classical source of strength” (Tangney 2000,

p. 70) within organizations.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Batia Wiesenfeld and three anonymous

reviewers for their helpful feedback on this project. The

authors are also grateful to Scott Reynolds and Will Felps for

their encourageent and support during the early stages of this

research. This article was supported in part by a grant from

the John Templeton Foundation [Grant 29630] entitled “The

Development, Validation, and Dissemination of Measures of

Intellectual Humility and Humility.”

Endnotes

The constructs of modesty, narcissism, openness to experi-

ence, and honesty-humility were the most often mentioned

in association with humility in our review of the literature.

From our reading about how humility might ﬁt into the orga-

nizational literature, we identiﬁed learning goal orientation

and core self-evaluations as germane constructs with which to

compare expressed humility.

For example, “When my leader shows humility and is open to

what others have to say it creates an environment of energy”

and humble leaders “play to their [employees’] strengths

and 0 0 0 create a passion that excites them about what they do”

(Owens and Hekman 2012, p. 804).

As a robustness check, we sought to assess this reverse

mediation possibility. Because HLM requires a level 1 out-

come, we conducted this robustness check with individual

(level 1) perceptions of team LGO. Replicating the multilevel

effects, we found that individual perceptions of team LGO

mediated the relationship between leader-expressed humil-

ity and individuals’ reported engagement; we found no evi-

dence that individuals’ engagement mediated the relationship

between leader-expressed humility and individual perceptions

of team LGO.

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Bradley P. Owens is an assistant professor in the School of

Management at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

He holds a Ph.D. in organizational behavior from the Univer-

sity of Washington. His current research focuses on leadership,

identity, team processes, diversity, and work/life balance.

Michael D. Johnson is an associate professor of manage-

ment and organization in the Foster School of Business at

the University of Washington. He received his Ph.D. in orga-

nizational behavior and human resource management from

Michigan State University. His research focuses primarily on

groups and teams, identity, and affect.

Terence R. Mitchell received a bachelor’s degree from

Duke and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in

organizational psychology. With the University of Washington

since 1969, he has published on the topics of motivation,

leadership, turnover, and decision making. A fellow of the

Academy of Management (AoM) and the Society for Indus-

trial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), he has received

the Lifetime Achievement Award from both SIOP and the

AoM’s Organizational Behavior division.

CORRECTION

In this article, “Expressed Humility in Organizations: Implications for Performance, Teams, and Leadership”

by Bradley P. Owens, Michael D. Johnson, and Terence R. Mitchell (ﬁrst published in Articles in Advance,

February 12, 2013, Organization Science, DOI:10.1287/orsc.1120.0795), we have corrected the text so that

“Hypothesis 3” appears in lines 4 and 5 in the left-hand column of page 1531.