Leader honesty-humility, political skill, and leadership effectiveness: The mediating role of employee extra effort

We tested how a combination of leader honesty-humility and leader political skill affects leader effectiveness. Based on the socioanalytic theory of personality we hypothesized that political skill will moderate and follower extra effort will mediate this relationship. In a sample of 640 leaders and 1259 followers we found a convex pattern of curvilinear relations between leader honesty-humility and follower extra effort when leader political skill was high, which mediated the relationship between leader honesty-humility and team performance. This first-stage moderated mediated relationship remained essentially the same when we controlled for the other five basic personality dimensions and a broad range of sociodemographic leader and follower variables. Our study confirmed that the direct relationships between self-reported personality traits and informant leadership performance assessments are low because they are shaped by moderators and mediators as suggested by the socioanalytic theory of personality.