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Leader credibility is often discussed in literature. Although the literature discusses many facts related to building leader credibility, organized and structured knowledge of how leaders build leader credibility is missing. The present study's purpose is to begin closing that gap by drawing concepts from the literature related to building leader credibility, categorizing them into relevant constructs and building a model. The present study provides a foundation, built from items drawn from peer-reviewed literature, for future research on how leaders build credibility.

The authors reviewed 66 articles discussing or exploring building leader credibility. From those articles, they drew potential leader credibility antecedents. They analyzed the antecedents, seeking to group them into understandable constructs that provide a building leader credibility model. Seeking nomological validity (evidence that our building leader credibility constructs reflect real-world thinking), they conducted an open-ended survey to compare what practitioners say builds leader credibility to our model.

The leader credibility antecedents the authors drew from the literature fell into two dimensions: competence and character. The competence antecedents fell into three subdivisions: interpersonal competence, technical competence and leader competence. The character antecedents fell into two subdivisions: character behaviors and character attributes. Responses from our open-ended survey fit our five subdimensions for building leader credibility, providing some nomological validity for our model.

The authors’ model may help practitioners see the big picture of building leader credibility, develop specific tactics for building leader credibility and provide a basis for assessing their building leader credibility approach.

Although leader credibility is vastly researched and leader credibility antecedents are discussed or explored, a big-picture model of building leader credibility is lacking. This study pursues a path previously not taken, developing a credibility-building model drawn from concepts presented in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to bring definitional clarity to the term “virtue” as pertinent to the behavioural sciences literatures on leadership; to identify a short and consolidated list of cardinal virtues commonly associated with leadership effectiveness; to provide a model relating leader virtues to leader outcomes (i.e. ethics, happiness, life satisfaction, and effectiveness); and to propose a program of research.

The authors systematically and comprehensively review Aristotelian and Confucian literatures on virtue ethics, and the literatures on seven leadership styles – i.e. moral, ethical, spiritual, servant, transformational, charismatic, and visionary leadership.

Six virtues, including four considered cardinal by Aristotle (courage, temperance, justice and prudence), and two considered cardinal by Confucius (humanity, and truthfulness), were common to all seven leadership styles.

Researchers should aim to develop and validate a measure of virtuous leadership based on the six cardinal virtues presented here and also to test both the proposed measurement and structural models.

The authors' recommended program of research will ideally inform development and design of selection and training programs for enhancing virtuous leadership.

The authors provide definitional clarity to the term “virtue” – one that is well grounded in the moral philosophy and virtue ethics literatures; consolidate vast and varied literatures on seven different widely subscribed leadership styles and identify six cardinal virtues most likely to positively impact leadership effectiveness; present an organizing framework, structural model, and research agenda to catalyze research on virtuous leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the leadership style of Muhammad (p) within a character‐centric framework as a useful alternative to the transactional, self‐centered model and the value‐neutral transformational approach that currently permeate business management. The author differentiates such perspectives from the character‐centered, moral approach to leadership suggested by the Qur’an and modeled by Muhammad (p), and proposes that this approach may be of practical use to CEOs.

A conceptual, comparative discussion of Muhammad's leadership style based on the primary Islamic sources is shown to have practical implications for the leadership process in management.

The current malaise in business leadership can be resolved by a new focus on character and on virtues.

The character‐centered, moral approach of Muhammad provides exemplars of virtues and behaviors that, if emulated by CEOs, may help pre‐empt potentially self‐serving, individualistic and narcissistic tendencies.

The leadership model of Muhammad has been applied to a number of arenas before, but this is the first attempt at explicating the Qur’anic emphasis on the role‐modeling aspects of his character (khuluqin azeem). When fully expounded, it is likely to offer a more virtue‐centric alternative to transactional and/or transformational approaches to leadership and their associated relativistic values.

Getting global leadership right is a huge challenge for companies. Having the right leaders has an impact on not only employee attitudes towards globalization but also their engagement levels and approach to working with colleagues across borders. Because of physical distance, language, and cultural differences global leaders face a huge challenge of generating and maintaining trust throughout the organization. The keystone of trust is the character of global leaders. In this chapter, we discuss our research on the role of character in global leadership. In particular we address the challenges of demonstrating character with a particular emphasis on maintaining integrity and connecting with people with different cultural norms and expectations.

On the basis of theories of social cognition and moral identity and the meta-theoretical principle of “too-much-of-a-good-thing,” the purpose of this study is to develop and test a model that explains when and why leader honesty/humility promotes subordinate organizational citizenship behavior directed at individuals (OCBI) as mediated through subordinate moral identity centrality.

In this field study, with online surveys, multisource data were collected from 218 United States Air Force officers and their subordinates. Data were analyzed with MEDCURVE SPSS macro tools.

A nonlinear indirect effect of leader honesty/humility on subordinate OCBI through subordinate moral identity centrality was found. This conditional indirect effect occurred through a curvilinear (inverted U-shape) relationship between leader honesty/humility and subordinate moral identity centrality and a positive linear relationship between subordinate moral identity centrality and OCBI.

Cross-sectional data were collected. Future research might replicate findings using experimental and longitudinal designs.

Recruiting and selecting leaders who possess a moderate level of honesty/humility may serve as the first step in producing prosocial behavior during social interactions with subordinates.

This study extends the literature on character and leadership by applying the too-much-of-a-good-thing principle to empirically test the complex nature of the relationship between leader honesty/humility and subordinate OCBI as mediated through subordinate moral identity centrality.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how a supervisor’s virtuous leadership as perceived by subordinates influences subordinates’ work-related well-being and to examine the mediating role of trust in the leader and the moderating roles of individual leader virtues and various characteristics of subordinates and organizations.

An online survey was conducted through Prolific among a self-selected sample of 1,237 employees who worked with an immediate supervisor across various industries in primarily the UK and the USA. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses.

The empirical results indicate that an immediate supervisor’s virtuous leadership as evaluated by the subordinate positively influences all three considered dimensions of work-related well-being – job satisfaction, work-related affect and work engagement – for a wide variety of employees in different industries and countries. A subordinate’s greater trust in the supervisor fully mediates this positive influence for job satisfaction and work engagement and partially for work-related affect. All five individual core leader virtues – prudence, temperance, justice, courage and humanity – positively influence work-related well-being.

The findings underscore that promoting virtuous leadership is a promising pathway for improved employee well-being, which may ultimately benefit individual and organizational performance.

Despite an age-old interest in leader virtues, the lack of consensus on the defining elements of virtuous leadership has limited the understanding of its consequences. Building on recent advances in the conceptualization and measurement of virtuous leadership and leader character, this paper addresses this void by exploring how virtuous leadership relates to employees’ well-being and trust.

There has been a surge of interest in leader character and a push to bring character into mainstream management theory and practice. Research has shown that CEOs and board members have many questions about the construct of leader character. For example, they like to see hard data indicating to what extent character contributes to organizational performance. Human resource management professionals are often confronted with the need to discuss and demonstrate the value of training and development initiatives. The question as to whether such interventions have a dollars-and-cents return on the investment is an important one to consider for any organizational decision-maker, especially given the demand for increased accountability, the push for transparency and tightening budgets in organizations. The authors investigated the potential dollar impact associated with the placement of managers based on the assessment of leader character, and they used utility analysis to estimate the dollar value associated with the use of one instrument – the Leader Character Insight Assessment or LCIA – to measure leader character.

The authors used field data collected for purposes of succession planning in a large Canadian manufacturing organization. The focus was on identifying senior management candidates suitable for placement into the most senior levels of leadership in the organization. Peers completed the LCIA to obtain leader character ratings of the candidates. The LCIA is a behaviorally based and validated instrument to assess leader character. Performance assessments of the candidates were obtained through supervisor ratings.

The correlation between the leader character measure provided by peers and performance assessed by the supervisor was 0.30 (p < 0.01). Using the data required to calculate ΔU from the Brogden-Cronbach-Gleser model leads to an estimate of CAD $564,128 for the use of the LCIA over the expected tenure of 15 years, which is equivalent to CAD $37,609 yearly; and CAD $375,285 over an expected tenure of 10 years, which is equivalent to CAD $37,529 yearly. The results of the study also indicate that there is still a positive and sizeable return on investment or ROI associated with the LCIA in employee placement even with highly conservative adjustments to the basic utility analysis formula.

Utility analysis is a quantitative and robust method of evaluating human resource programs. The authors provide an illustration of the potential utility of the LCIA in a selection process for senior managers. They assert that selecting and promoting managers on leader character and developing their character-based leadership will not only leverage their own contributions to the organization but also contribute to a trickle-down effect on employees below them.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between ethical leadership and the employee’s perception of job insecurity in the Egyptian public sector. It also investigates the mediating effect of work locus of control on the hypothesized relationship.

The study uses a questionnaire that consists of measures adopted from existing and tested scales. The hypothesized model has been tested using multiple regression analysis.

The findings reveal that the character of ethical leadership significantly reduces the employee’s perception of threats to job features and the powerlessness to counteract threats. However, the empowerment dimension of ethical leadership has adverse effects in the employee’s perception of powerlessness.

The adverse effects of the empowerment behavior dimension of ethical leadership may be attributed to East–West differences in the conceptualization of empowerment. The Arab style of management promotes the Islamic principle of Shura, which may slightly deviate from that of empowerment.

This study extends job insecurity research in the often untapped Egyptian culture and provides new insights into the perceived role of leadership character and empowerment in a non-western context.

Three recent publications by noted authors offer valuable insights into the new directions that leadership development thinking and practice now need to take, with all of three books placing particular emphasis on the importance of character, identity and values, not just competence.

Organizational psychologist Fred Kiel’s book, Return On Character sets out to show that the strength of a leader’s character is an important driver of business success and to examine the implications for leadership development. Discover Your True North by Harvard professor and former CEO of Medtronic Bill George examines why the self-development process of discovering one’s core values and passion (authenticity) to lead is essential to becoming an engaging and empowering leader. The theme of leadership as a life-long developmental challenge is Robert Kaplan’s primary focus in What You Really Need to Lead.

Kiel’s data revealed a clear relationship between the strength of a leader’s character and demonstrated mastery of these key skills, with virtuosos “consistently” outperforming their more self-focused peers.

One of the reasons that character matters is that leaders who more consciously and persistently search for greater self-awareness over the course of their careers tend to become ever more capable of questioning “not only the ideas of others” but even their “own most cherished beliefs,” and as a result, their understanding of their life, their business, their marketplace, and the global forces that shape them “enters a state of continual growth and development.”

Two interrelated theoretical schemes on leadership are presented in this paper. One is the Chinese CPM leadership behavior model, and the other, the Chinese implicit leadership theory. The CPM model recognizes three factors: Moral Character (“C” factor), Performance (“P” factor) and Maintenance (“M” factor). The Chinese implicit theory on leadership differentiates four trait factors: Personal Morality, Goal Efficiency, Interpersonal Competence, and Versatility. As such, it corresponds well with the CPM theory’s three-factor model. Both of these studies point to the salience of a cultural aspect. It has been demonstrated in the Chinese cultural context that the Chinese still place key importance on the moral character of their leaders and their behavior.