Leader Humility in Singapore

The theoretical development and empirical testing of the effects of humility is surprisingly rare in general, and in the organizational sciences in particular. This scarcity of attention to humility in the organizational sciences is especially pronounced in the study of leadership in Asian contexts. This is surprising given that both Asian cultures and recent leadership theories frequently highlight the importance of leader humility to leader effectiveness. To address this, in two studies, we employ a qualitative approach to examine the conceptualization of leader humility in Singapore and assess whether this conceptualization differs from other emerging conceptualizations of leader humility. In Study 1, using semi-structured interviews of 25 Singaporeans, we identified nine major dimensions of humble leader behaviors and explored our participants??? beliefs about culturally-based differences in leader humility. In Study 2 (N = 307), we generalized our findings to a broader sample of Singaporean managers and replicated the nine dimensions identified in Study 1. We also explored how these nine dimensions fit with existing taxonomies. In addition to replicating all of the Western conceptual dimensions of humility, we identified five unique dimensions of behaviors indicative of leader humility in Singapore.