Leader Humility and Affective Commitment: A Cross-Sectional Study Among Hospital Nursing Teams

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Management
• Organizational Psychology
• Nursing Leadership

Background:

• Nurses face increasing work pressure impacting their affective commitment.
• Traditional power-oriented leadership styles may not be optimal in healthcare settings.
• Understanding factors that enhance nurses' commitment is crucial for hospital retention.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the impact of head nurses' humility on nurses' affective commitment.
• To explore the mediating roles of psychological safety, trust, and participative communication.
• To investigate how humble leadership influences nurse retention in hospitals.

Main Methods:

• Cross-sectional survey design involving 536 nurses across 103 wards in 12 hospitals.
• Data collected in 2023 and analyzed using multilevel structural equation modeling.
• Adherence to Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) guidelines.

Main Results:

• Head nurses' humble leadership positively correlates with a psychological safety climate.
• Humble leadership and safety climate positively associate with nurses' trust in their head nurse.
• Trust is linked to voice behavior and feeling heard (participative communication), with feeling heard significantly predicting affective commitment.

Conclusions:

• Humble leadership, characterized by appreciating others and acknowledging weaknesses, is vital for healthcare settings.
• Fostering psychological safety and trust through humble leadership enhances nurses' affective commitment.
• Empowering nurses and ensuring they feel genuinely heard is more effective than merely encouraging voice behavior for commitment.