Drawing on social learning theory and taking a motivational perspective, this study mainly investigates how leader humility can promote employees' other-oriented motivations, and uncovers the other-serving motivational mechanism through which leader humility can impact their employees' different types of voice behavior. By collecting data from 152 leader–subordinate dyads through an online survey, the results revealed that leader humility was positively related to both employees' prosocial motivation and organizational concern motivation. Meanwhile, these two motivations play mediating roles in explaining how leader humility can positively affect employees' supportive voice and challenging voice. It is noteworthy that leader humility, which features highlighting the value and strength of others, is more likely to trigger employees' prosocial motivation and thus influence their voice behavior. This research extends our understanding of leader humility, employee motivation, and workplace voice. Practical implications and limitations of the results are also discussed.

This study utilized social exchange and social learning perspectives to develop a theoretical model about how leader humility predicts follower unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB). Using two-wave data obtained from 203 full-time employees nested within 46 work teams in eastern China, regression analyses revealed a nonmonotonic association between leader humility and follower UPB, such that follower UPB was most at intermediate levels of leader humility. Moreover, the strength of this curvilinear relationship was found to be moderated by the followers' organizational identification, such that the inverted U-curve relationship between leader humility and follower UPB will be stronger for followers with high organizational identification than for those with low organizational identification. Implications in theory and practice, along with limitations of our findings, were discussed.

The fundamental nature of humility and prosocial motivation entails transcending self-interest to enact behaviors that benefit others. We theorize that leader humility may enact a self-transcendent contagion effect that will manifest in enhanced follower prosocial motivation. Due to the fundamental nature of humility, this construct holds great promise in understanding how contextual signals (i.e., leader behaviors) shape prosocial motivation in followers. In this study, we find that leader humility impacts follower prosocial motivation through followers' perception of work meaningfulness. Specifically, we found that leader humility is positively related to prosocial motivation. We also found that this relationship is mediated by followers' perception of work meaningfulness, and that this mediation is moderated by followers' perception of relational vitality. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Although an increasing amount of the leadership literature argues that leader humility is beneficial to team learning, few studies have examined this effect directly and, as such, little is known about why leader humility has such important effects or when these effects can be amplified or attenuated. Utilizing a survey of 305 employees on 89 teams, we found a positive relationship existing between leader humility and team learning. The results also indicated that a shared mental model was an important mechanism revealing why leader humility could stimulate team members to learn. In addition, we found that the learning effect stimulated by leader humility was much stronger on teams having a high collective promotion focus instead of a high collective prevention focus. Theoretical implications and managerial practices were also discussed.