Do ‘humble’ leaders help employees to perform better? Evidence from the Chinese public sector

Humility is crucial for public sector leaders as it enables them to recognise their inadequacies and acknowledge others’ competencies in complex external environments. Despite its benefits, our knowledge of the influence of leader humility in the public sector remains limited. This study provides insights into how and when leader humility influences employee performance in public sectors. Based on Self-Determination Theory, this article posits that leader humility enhances the leader's perception of employee performance by promoting intrinsic motivation. Moreover, drawing on Dominance Complementarity Theory, it is revealed that the above effect is stronger when the employee has a highly proactive personality. To assess the mechanism and boundary condition of leader humility on the perception of employee performance, our study uses a two-wave multi-source survey of 136 leader–employee dyads amongst public sector workers located in north-eastern China. The results are consistent with our theoretical predictions. We discuss implications for understanding how public leader humility influences employees’ motivation and subsequent performance, and how a leader's character and an employee's personality may enhance desirable outcomes.

Points for practitioners

• Humble public leaders can satisfy their followers’ basic self-determining psychological needs and improve followers’ intrinsic motivations.
• Since humble public leaders care more about others and can minimise the effect of leader–follower power imbalances, facilitate frequent interactions, and spotlight followers’ unique abilities, they tend to enhance the followers’ job performance through their increased intrinsic motivation.
• Humble public leaders are non-hierarchical and power equalising. They could positively interact with proactive followers who tend to take the initiative to get things done. The interaction facilitates followers’ higher intrinsic motivation and job performance.