University of the Incarnate Word The Athenaeum Theses & Dissertations 12-2020 How Leaders and Employees Experience, Make Sense of, and Find Meaning in Humility David Perryman University of the Incarnate Word, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://athenaeum.uiw.edu/uiw_etds Part of the Adult and Continuing Education Commons, Business and Corporate Communications Commons, Leadership Studies Commons, Organizational Behavior and Theory Commons, and the Organization Development Commons Recommended Citation Perryman, David, "How Leaders and Employees Experience, Make Sense of, and Find Meaning in Humility" (2020). Theses & Dissertations. 383. https://athenaeum.uiw.edu/uiw_etds/383 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by The Athenaeum. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of The Athenaeum. For more information, please contact [email protected]. i HOW LEADERS AND EMPLOYEES EXPERIENCE, MAKE SENSE OF, AND FIND MEANING IN HUMILITY by DAVID E. PERRYMAN A DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of the University of the Incarnate Word in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF THE INCARNATE WORD December 2020 ii Copyright by David E. Perryman 2020 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my dissertation committee members for the support, patience, and insights they offered throughout my dissertation journey. I am especially grateful to Dr. Sharon Herbers, my dissertation chair, who has been an inspiring teacher and dedicated mentor throughout my doctoral studies. In her Contemporary Issues: Women’s Leadership in Social Justice Movement class on Saturday mornings during the spring 2017 semester, we discovered a shared interest in Jane Addams and her life’s work, and this established common ground on which we have built a strong collegial relationship. I also am grateful to Dr. Norman St. Clair, my committee methodologist. Through several long, painstaking, and productive Zoom calls— during which I read and reread whole chapters aloud—his focused questions and insightful comments helped me remain true to my study design and research methods. In addition, I appreciate the guidance of Dr. Trey Guinn, a committee member whose professional experience and academic expertise in the field of communications were particularly helpful in preparing for my public defense. Two other professors offered significant support and guidance throughout my doctoral program. Dr. Noah Kasraie’s instruction in classes such as Concepts of Leadership and Organizational Theory and Culture awakened in me a passion for the subject matter and a sense of purpose that would sustain me through the long journey. In addition, Dr. Audra Skukauskaite, formerly at University of the Incarnate Word, introduced me to the world of qualitative research methods and tools through two classes she taught in the doctoral program. Her constructive criticism and measured praise of my work both improved and inspired my future doctoral output. iv Acknowledgements—Continued I also appreciate the leaders, nurses, and chaplains at “HealthCo” who participated in my study. Week in and week out, they exemplify humility through their unwavering dedication to serving the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of others, including the most vulnerable people in our society. In addition, I would like to acknowledge the leadership examples of Herb Keller and Ebby Halliday, two remarkable business icons I was first exposed to growing up in Dallas. As I learned more about their humble leadership styles through subsequent research as an adult, they gave me concrete evidence of a different and better way to lead organizations, and ignited in me a desire to help leaders and organizations embrace humility. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their love, support, and patience throughout this very long journey: my parents, Ann H. and Ray W. Perryman; my wife, Laurie (who took care of myriad family matters, large and small, so that I could carve out time to study); my three boys, Braden, Ethan, and Calvin; and my two brothers, Tom and John. They modeled humility at times when I needed grounding, spurred deeper reflection through intellectually stimulating conversations, and renewed my belief in the innate goodness and interdependence of humanity. David E. Perryman v DEDICATION I dedicate this dissertation to Mama and Papa, whose genuine and abiding humility— forged in small Texas towns during the Great Depression—served as a foundation on which they built lives of integrity, kindness, lifelong learning, and service to others. vi HOW LEADERS AND EMPLOYEES EXPERIENCE, MAKE SENSE OF, AND FIND MEANING IN HUMILITY David E. Perryman University of the Incarnate Word, 2020 By just about any measure, organizations today are more dynamic, diverse, and interdependent than at any other time in history. This environment puts unprecedented pressure on the human capacity to lead. And still, we demand more from our leaders—even as employees experience rising stress levels, declining loyalty, and deteriorating trust in their employers, and organizations face historically high rates of employee turnover along with the resulting financial and emotional costs. Clinging to romanticized notions of the larger-than-life leader blinds us to the paradoxical promise of humility; namely, that a leader’s greatest strength may lie, ironically, in the ability to admit weakness while being open to the ideas and feedback of others. The majority of research on leader humility has been quantitative in nature, establishing correlations between leader humility and employee measures. These studies have yielded valuable insights, but they have not explored the complex, dynamic, and reciprocal ways that humility can operate within organizations. Nor have they captured the individual perceptions of participants as articulated in their own authentic voices. This exploratory instrumental case study addressed this gap in the literature by exploring what happened when leaders and employees at a large, complex, geographically dispersed organization participated in interactions that were infused with four humility elements: language, verbal expressions, non-verbal behaviors, and physical objects and settings. By applying constructivist grounded theory methods for data vii analysis, the study explained how participants made sense of and found meaning in those experiences, as well as how humility functioned during the interactions. Eight conceptual categories were developed through close analysis of the coded data: Accurately Assessing Oneself, Being Accountable to Others, Being Part of Something Bigger, Caring for and Being Cared for, Connecting with Others on a Personal Level, Creating a Safe, Comfortable Environment, Grounding Oneself, and Recognizing the Value and Contributions of Others. Four overarching themes were identified from the categories: Seeking Clarity and Truth, Putting Oneself in Context, Achieving Reciprocity, and Transcending the Perceptual. These themes represented the primary ways participants expressed, experienced, and defined humility, and they contributed to the Reciprocal Relation Theory of Humility posited in the study. Findings from this study suggested that infusing humility into leader-employee interactions may be an effective strategy to improve leader effectiveness and organizational performance by bringing people’s best ideas and authentic feelings into honest discussions focused on spurring individual growth, solving shared problems, achieving team goals, and/or advancing an organization’s mission. Results also suggested that humility fostered the physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being of leaders and employees, while laying the foundation for respectful, productive, and mutually beneficial interactions in the future. Participants expressed a range of thoughts and feelings in describing how they experienced, made sense of, and found meaning in humility, including increased relational trust, organizational loyalty, and self- efficacy; a stronger sense of belonging and being valued; and the perception of greater team effectiveness and adaptability along with enhanced organizational learning and innovation. The study made several recommendations to help practitioners develop leader humility programs with the potential to influence these and other employee, team, and organizational measures. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................................ xii LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................................... xiv CHAPTER 1: UNPRECEDENTED STRESS ON THE HUMAN CAPACITY TO LEAD ..........1 Background on the Problem.................................................................................................1 Impact on employees ...............................................................................................2 Impact on organizations ...........................................................................................2 Impact on leaders .....................................................................................................4 Narcissistic leadership .............................................................................................5 Leadership humility .................................................................................................7