Are morally courageous leaders more effective?

Abstract

Detecting, interpreting, assuming responsibility, and being driven to act upon situations with potential ethical implications requires morally courageous leaders to be continuously ‘tuned’ to the environment. We argue that this ‘tuning’ facilitates leader respect for employees and greater receptiveness to their inputs, and that it is through these mechanisms that leader moral courage is positively related to leader effectiveness. In a multi-source study involving 102 team leaders (assessed by peers, subordinates, and supervisors), we found that leaders with higher levels of moral courage convey greater respect for team members and are more receptive to relational transparency from them, and that such respect and receptiveness enhance leader effectiveness. We also hypothesized and found that leaders who overestimate their moral courage (i.e., who self-describe as being morally courageous while others perceive them as not being so) are particularly less respectful toward team members, and thus are less effective.