Traditionally speaking, successful leaders can be ruthless. That's according to David Hekman, associate professor of organizational leadership and information analytics at the Leeds School of Business and co-author of a 2024 study on leadership. The Human Resource Management article "An Examination of Whether and How Leader Humility Enhances Leader Personal Career Success" details the research Hekman conducted with Elsa T. Chan of the University of Sussex Business School and Maw Der Foo of the Nanyang Business School at Nanyang Technological University.

"Conventional wisdom is that you've got to be Machiavellian and self-promote and bully to rise to the top, but humility is also a catalyst for leadership success," explains Hekman in a press release.

The researchers surveyed 610 leaders across 18 industries and 21 job functions who have participated in a leadership development program. The study shows that humility predicted leaders' mentoring behavior, which also predicted leaders' status and increased chances of promotion.

"Humility in leadership benefits teams, individuals, and entire organizations," Hekman says. "People experience more psychological freedom, authenticity, job satisfaction, improved team performance, and motivation. And humility spreads, too—it's contagious."

Humble leadership also bodes well for organizations trying to attract and retain talent. According to a 2023 report based on HP's Work Relationship Index, employees want to work for an employer with empathetic and emotionally intelligent leaders. Eighty-three percent of 15,600 employees said they would be willing to earn less in exchange for being happier at work, prioritizing greater fulfillment, empathetic leadership, and workplace flexibility.

To be clear, Hekman says, narcissists can still be great leaders—but humble leaders are more likely to be effective because their performance is less variable. To encourage humble leadership, the report suggests rewarding humility in performance evaluations, recognizing and promoting informal mentoring, encouraging humility and mentoring in leadership, and instituting leadership training programs that emphasize humility.