Leader-follower congruence in humility and follower voice: the mediating role of affective attachment

Humility is regarded as a valuable virtue in modern organizations. Building on the person-supervisor fit theory and the similarity-attraction approach, this study investigated the effect of leader-follower congruence in humility on follower voice through follower affective attachment. We examined our hypotheses using dyadic data from questionnaire surveys of 553 leader-follower pairings in Chinese companies. The results indicate that leader-follower congruence in humility enhances follower affective attachment, which eventually promotes follower voice. In addition, followers in congruent leader-follower dyads with high humility perceived higher levels of affective attachment than those in congruent leader-follower dyads with low humility. We discussed the theoretical implications for literature on humility, voice, and person-supervisor fit.