Appreciation that inspires: The impact of leader trait gratitude on team innovation

Abstract

Although a leader’s affective characteristics are believed to influence team processes and outcomes, the impact of leaders’ discrete affective traits on team innovation remains unclear. This study addresses this issue by developing a multi‐stage team‐level model that explains how team leaders’ trait gratitude enhances team innovation. Specifically, we draw on the other‐praising perspective of gratitude to predict that leaders with trait gratitude tend to demonstrate humble behavior, which in turn promotes team voice and ultimately enhances team innovation. We also incorporate trait activation theory to theorize that leaders’ perception of organizational support enhances the impact of leaders’ trait gratitude on the leaders’ humble behavior and its indirect effect on team innovation (via humble behavior and team voice). We found support for our research model using data of 71 teams collected from three sources in four phases. This study offers important insights into how and when leaders with high trait gratitude can foster team innovation and advances the existing gratitude research in the team context.

Full text

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
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APPRECIATION THAT INSPIRES:
THE IMPACT OF LEADER TRAIT GRATITUDE ON TEAM INNOVATION
Chenwei Li, Ph.D.
San Francisco State University
1600 Holloway Avenue,
San Francisco, CA, USA 94132
cwli@sfsu.edu
Yuntao Dong, Ph.D. (Corresponding author)
Peking University
5 Yiheyuan Rd
Haidian Qu, China, 100871
yuntao.dong@gsm.pku.edu.cn
Chia-Huei Wu, Ph.D.
Management Department, Leeds University Business School
University of Leeds
Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK
China Medical University Hospital, China Medical University
91 Xueshi Rd, North District, Taichung, Taiwan
chiahuei.wu@gmail.com
Michael E. Brown, Ph.D.
The Pennsylvania State University, Behrend
0281 Jack Burke Res Center
Behrend, Erie, PA, 16563
Meb239@psu.edu
Li-Yun Sun, Ph.D.
Macau University of Science and Technology
Avenida Wai Long, Taipa
Macau, China
lysun@must.edu.mo
Author Biographies
Chenwei Li is an associate professor of management at San Francisco State University.
She received her PhD in management from the University of Alabama. Her current
research interests include leadership, creativity, and voice behavior.
Yuntao Dong is an associate professor of management at Peking University. She
received her PhD in organizational behavior from University of Maryland. Her current

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
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research interests include leadership, team dynamics, and creativity in multilevel
contexts.
Chia-Huei Wu is a professor in organizational psychology at University of Leeds and a
consultant at the department of Medical Research, China Medical University Hospital at
China Medical University. He received his PhD from University of Western Australia.
His current research interests include proactive behavior, personality development, work
design and employees’ subjective well-being.
Michael E. Brown is a professor of management and the Samuel Patton and Marion
Toudy Black Chair in business at Penn State Behrend. He received his PhD in
management from Penn State University. His research interests include ethical
leadership, moral conflict, moral diversity, and other aspects of behavioral ethics.
Li-yun Sun is a professor of management at Macau University of Science and
Technology. He received his PhD in management from Hong Kong Baptist University.
His research interests include leadership, creativity, adaptability, and gratitude.

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
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APPRECIATION THAT INSPIRES: THE IMPACT OF LEADER TRAIT
GRATITUDE ON TEAM INNOVATION
ABSTRACT
Although a leader's affective characteristics are believed to influence team
processes and outcomes, the impact of leaders' discrete affective traits on team
innovation remains unclear. This study addresses this issue by developing a multistage
team-level model that explains how team leaders' trait gratitude enhances team
innovation. Specifically, we draw on the other-praising perspective of gratitude to
predict that leaders with trait gratitude tend to demonstrate humble behavior, which, in
turn, promotes team voice and ultimately enhances team innovation. We also incorporate
trait activation theory to theorize that leaders' perception of organizational support
enhances the impact of trait gratitude on the leaders' humble behavior and its indirect
effect on team innovation (via humble behavior and team voice). We found support for
our research model using data of 71 teams collected from three sources in four phases.
This study offers important insights into how and when leaders with high trait gratitude
can foster team innovation and advances the existing gratitude research in the team
context.
Keywords: humble behavior, leader trait gratitude, perceived organizational support,
team innovation, team voice

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
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INTRODUCTION
Team innovation, or the generation and implementation of novel and useful ideas,
products, processes, and procedures in teams (West & Farr, 1990), is critical for the
growth and competitiveness of today's organizations. Therefore, fostering innovation
in teams has become a top priority for many leaders, and studies linking leaders'
characteristics to team innovation are theoretically and practically important (Hughes et
al., 2018). In particular, leaders' affective characteristics have been considered important
predictors of leaders' behavior and team functioning (Joseph et al., 2015). Some scholars
found that leaders' dispositional tendencies to experience positive or negative emotions
influenced team processes (e.g., decision making style; Barsade et al., 2000) and
outcomes (e.g., team service performance; George, 1995). Others showed that leaders'
display of positive and negative affect also predicted team performance (e.g., Seong &
Choi, 2014). However, little research has examined the effect of leaders' discrete
affective traits (i.e., leaders' dispositional tendency to experience a specific emotion;
Barsade & Gibson, 2007), other than global positive/negative affect, on team innovation.
Due to their stability and specificity, discrete affective traits can exert prolonged and
idiosyncratic influence on leaders' behavior and team processes that are pertinent to
innovation. Lack of this research may prevent us from establishing a nuanced under-
standing of the central role of leader characteristics in promoting team innovation.
To address this issue, we identify leader trait gratitude, which refers to one's stable
dispositional tendency to “recognize and respond with grateful emotion to the roles of
other people's benevolence in the positive experiences and outcomes that one obtains”

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(McCullough et al., 2002, p. 112), as particularly relevant to team innovation. Team
innovation, by its very nature, is a product of collective endeavor which requires inputs
from multiple team members (Alexander & van Knippenberg, 2014; van Knippenberg,
2017). To achieve team innovation, it is crucial for team leaders to engage mem- bers'
talents and knowledge and to recognize their contribution (e.g., He et al., 2020). Leaders
with higher trait gratitude are likely to seek and value others' contribution. This is because
the other-praising tendency of trait gratitude enables these leaders to think less about
themselves and focus more on others' positive qualities (Algoe & Haidt, 2009) and “to
recognize that their capabilities are limited—that is, to acknowledge that they cannot ‘go
it alone’ to achieve their goals” (Ruberton et al., 2016, p. 265). We focus on leaders' trait
gratitude given that this affective trait and its associated other-praising tendency are well
aligned with the requirement for joint contribution inherent in team innovation.
To offer valuable insights regarding how and when leaders' trait gratitude can
enhance team innovation, we further identify the manifestation of the other-praising
tendency and draw on trait activation theory to examine under which circumstances this
impact is stronger or weaker. We propose leaders' humble behavior as a behavioral
expression of their trait gratitude that promotes team members' voice and ultimately
enhances team innovation. Owing to the other-praising tendency, trait gratitude redirects
an individual's focus from the self to others, thus exhibiting humble behavior which is
characterized by “acknowledging personal limits, faults, and mistakes, spotlighting
followers' strengths and contributions, and modeling teachability” (Owens & Hekman,
2012, p. 794). Leaders' humble behavior creates opportunities for team members to

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
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provide input by proactively making suggestions for improvement (i.e., team voice;
MacKenzie et al., 2011; van Dyne & LePine, 1998), which then benefits team innovation.
Moreover, drawing upon trait activation theory (Tett & Burnett, 2003; Tett & Guterman,
2000), we argue that trait gratitude will likely manifest in humble behavior when
individuals perceive gratitude-relevant cues (e.g., Fredrickson, 2004; van Kleef et al.,
2010). Specifically, leaders' perceived organizational support (POS)—their perception
that “the organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being”
(Eisenberger et al., 1986, p. 501)—informs leaders that they are beneficiaries in their
organizations (Ford et al., 2018) and is thus laden with cues relevant to trait gratitude.
Hence, it can strengthen the effect of leader trait gratitude on humble behavior and its
indirect effect on team innovation. Our theoretical model is depicted in Figure 1.
--------------------------------------
Insert Figure 1 about here
--------------------------------------
Our study offers important contributions to the literature. First, we expand the
research on leaders' influence on team innovation. By demonstrating the utility of a leader
discrete affective trait in shaping team innovation, we address the call for innovation
research to explore the role of leaders' traits in this process (Hughes et al., 2018). We also
contribute to the team innovation literature by suggesting that in addition to using active
leadership (e.g., transformational leadership and empowering leadership; Jiang &
Chen, 2018; Tang et al., 2020), possessing trait gratitude, hence exhibiting humble
behavior, is an important way in which team leaders can promote members' proactive

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
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voice behavior and subsequent team innovation. Second, we broaden the literature on
leader affective characteristics by focusing on leaders' trait gratitude and examining
leaders' humble behavior and team voice as serial mediators that represent the other-
praising tendency of gratitude. Our research extends the work on leaders' positive and
negative affective characteristics (e.g., Barsade et al., 2000; Seong & Choi, 2014) by
explicating how a discrete affective trait enables leaders to encourage their team
members to innovate via the unique other-praising mechanism. Third, by incorporating
trait activation theory to theorize leaders' POS as a moderator that activates the
behavioral expression of leaders' trait gratitude, our research advances the understanding
of the boundary condition of trait gratitude in organizational context and offers insights
regarding how organizations may support their leaders, especially those with high trait
gratitude, to promote team innovation. Finally, in linking leaders' trait gratitude to team
process and innovation, our study creates an avenue for trait gratitude research to uncover
the role of gratitude in work teams.
THEORY AND HYPOTHESES
Trait gratitude refers to a person's predisposition to experience gratitude emotion
and can make people feel frequent and intense thank- fulness for a wide range of
gratitude-stimulating events (McCullough et al., 2001, 2002). Unlike the short-term,
experienced or expressed gratitude emotion that is triggered by specific events and
fluctuates across time and situations (Emmons & McCullough, 2003), a person's trait
gratitude is a stable dispositional tendency (McCullough et al., 2002). It is shaped
by both hereditary and environmental factors, such as genes, childhood experiences,

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
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parenting styles, and surrounding social culture (e.g., Algoe & Way, 2014; Emmons &
Crumpler, 2000; Liu et al., 2017; Steger et al., 2007), and its formation is generally
determined by long-term, persistent interventions and significant life events. Therefore,
trait gratitude is relatively enduring and is not likely to change drastically for an adult
within a short period. Owing to these features, trait gratitude has great potential to
influence leaders' motivation and behavioral style and subsequently affects team
processes and innovation (DeRue et al., 2011; Joseph et al., 2015).
An Other-Praising Perspective of Trait Gratitude
Trait gratitude can “draw people out of themselves” (Algoe & Haidt, 2009, p. 23),
making people focus on others' positive qualities and attribute their own success to those
who contribute to their achievements directly or indirectly (e.g., Haidt, 2003;
McCullough et al., 2002). These features of trait gratitude are captured by its other-
praising tendency (Algoe & Haidt, 2009), with which people tend to recognize and
appreciate others' contributions and external help that guide them in overcoming their
limitations and achieving goals (Armenta et al., 2017; Haidt, 2003). Empirically, trait
gratitude has been shown to be negatively related to pathological narcissism and envy
(McCullough et al., 2002; Solom et al., 2017), thereby suggesting a tendency of low self-
superiority and high appreciation of others' strengths.
We argue that this other-praising perspective differs from the often-studied
prosocial perspective of gratitude and is particularly suit- able for explaining why team
leaders with trait gratitude can spark team innovation. The prosocial perspective indicates

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
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a person's tendency to directly give back to others who have benefited them or even
uninvolved third parties (Ma et al., 2017; Wood et al., 2010) to “maintain the well-being
and integrity of others” (Brief & Motowidlo, 1986, p. 710). In the work context, the
prosocial tendency enables leaders with trait gratitude to provide resources to improve
followers' well- being (Michie, 2009). The other-praising perspective, instead, reflects
one's tendency to focus on others' exemplary actions and involves genuinely recognizing
others' strengths and encouraging others to participate and contribute (e.g., Algoe &
Haidt, 2009; Ruberton et al., 2016), which is beyond tit-for-tat or reciprocity inherent
in the prosocial tendency. In the context of leadership and team innovation, the other-
praising tendency of trait gratitude enables leaders to gain a better understanding of
members' values and thus more effectively
involve their team members in the innovation
process. To showcase the
unique effect of the other-praising tendency on team innovation,
we empirically controlled for the mediating effect of the prosocial tendency of gratitude in
the form of leaders' prosocial behavior.
In the following sections, we apply the other-praising perspective to theorize that
leaders' trait gratitude is positively related to their humble behavior. Next, we propose
that leaders' POS serves as a moderator that strengthens the leader trait gratitude–humble
behavior relationship. We then explicate the impact of leader humble behavior on team
voice, which, in turn, affects team innovation. Finally, we present the overall moderated
mediation model.
Leader Trait Gratitude and Humble Behavior in a Team Context

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
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Leaders' humble behavior includes three key elements: “(a) a manifested
willingness to view oneself accurately, (b) a displayed appreciation of others' strengths
and contributions, and
(c) teachability” (Owens et al., 2013, p. 1518). Although previous
stud-
ies have connected gratitude to either humility or humble behavior (e.g., Emmons,
2006; Kruse et al., 2014; Ruberton et al., 2016), our study is among the first to examine
this relationship in the workplace, especially in the team context, by focusing on leaders'
trait gratitude and their demonstration of humble behavior. We argue that leaders' trait
gratitude, with its other-praising tendency, increases leaders' humble behavior toward
their team for three reasons.
First, people with high trait gratitude are likely to see others' value, accept their
limitations, and keep their ego in check (Chancellor & Lyubomirsky, 2013; Ruberton et
al., 2016). In a team context where members have different strengths and talents, leaders
with trait gratitude tend to recognize that these members' positive qualities serve as
critical complements to their own incapability and weaknesses and can therefore curb
their egoistic attitudes, actions, and judgment, which is a key element of being humble
at work (e.g., Owens et al., 2013).
Second, people with trait gratitude see themselves as beneficiaries of others' actions
(McCullough et al., 2001, 2002) and acknowledge their dependence on and connection
with others (Emmons & McCullough, 2003). Scholars have suggested that trait
gratitude implies humble behavior because grateful people recognize that others'
contributions are critical to their achievements and well-being (e.g., Emmons, 2006;
Kruse et al., 2014). For example, Algoe and Haidt (2009) argued that individuals with

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
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trait gratitude consider themselves part of something bigger than themselves and thus
tend to develop an awareness of others' strengths and value. As a result, team leaders
with high trait gratitude may demonstrate humble behavior because they genuinely
recognize that they rely on the team members' contributions to make progress.
Third, dispositionally grateful people appreciate a wide range of learning
experiences, regard them as teachable moments, and learn from them (e.g., Fredrickson,
2001; Fredrickson & Joiner, 2002). These people let go of their defensive mindset and
engage in a broaden-and-build process (Fredrickson, 2001, 2004) by expanding their
scope of attention and thought–action repertoires. They also uti- lize resources and
opportunities for building their own competence and improving themselves (Armenta
et al., 2017). In a team context where leaders need input from their team members, those
leaders with high trait gratitude tend to be teachable because they know their limits (e.g.,
Haidt, 2003; Ruberton et al., 2016) and are open to new
ideas and feedback from their
members (Owens et al., 2013; Owens &
Hekman, 2012). Taken together, we propose:
Hypothesis 1. Leaders' trait gratitude is positively related to their humble
behavior toward their team members.
Moderating Effect of Leaders’ Perceived Organizational Support
Although we predict that leaders with high trait gratitude tend to exhibit humble
behavior in their work teams, personality theorists argue that the extent to which one's
personal characteristics will predict the manifested behavior also depends on whether
the situation includes trait-relevant cues that justify the expression of that trait (e.g., Tett

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
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& Burnett, 2003). Specifically, trait activation theory focuses on the relevance of a
situation to a specific trait. Tett and Burnett (2003, p. 502) posited that “a situation is
relevant to a trait if it is thematically connected by the provision of cues, responses to
which (or lack of responses to which) indicate a person's standing on the trait.”
Drawing on this perspective, we identify leaders' POS as a factor with trait gratitude-
relevant cues. POS is a relatively stable perception developed through accumulated
experiences of fair organizational procedures, high-quality supervisor support, adequate
organizational
rewards, and favorable job conditions (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002).
Employees often attribute supportive and helpful treatment received at work to the
benevolence of their organizations (Eisenberger
et al., 1986; Sluss & Ashforth, 2008).
High POS indicates leaders' posi
tive interactions with their organizations (e.g., the
organization pro- vides support and aid to one's job) and denotes a situation in which
leaders view themselves as beneficiaries in these interactions and appreciate the
contributions of their organizations to their own achievement or well-being (Ford et al.,
2018; Hu & Kaplan, 2015). POS thus contains salient cues that relate to the expression
of trait gratitude. Moreover, trait activation theory posits that the expression of certain
personality in a relevant situation is an intrinsically rewarding experience (Tett &
Burnett, 2003; Tett & Guterman, 2000). Therefore, leaders with trait gratitude are
motivated to respond positively to a supportive environment that is likely to be
considered as a realm for them to exhibit their “true selves.”
In this regard, POS can activate leaders' other-praising tendency of their trait gratitude
and strengthens the association between their trait gratitude and humble behavior. First,

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
13
with a high POS, contextual
cues such as the assistance of others (e.g., organizational
rewards, job
condition, or colleagues) can be easily detected by leaders with trait
gratitude and enable them to recognize themselves as beneficiaries of the organization
(Ford et al., 2018). A high POS makes leaders with trait gratitude realize that beyond
their intrapersonal resources, a broader external support from their organizations plays
a critical role in helping them maintain a good standing in the workplace. Therefore, high
POS enables leaders with trait gratitude to gain an accurate self- awareness of their limits
and thus exhibit humble behavior.
Second, with high POS, organizations provide respect and care that meet leaders'
social–emotional needs, such as approval, esteem, and affiliation (Eisenberger et al.,
1986), thereby strengthening the connections of these leaders with their organizations
and other organizational participants. As such, a high POS helps leaders with trait
gratitude to consolidate their sense of social connectedness by developing positive views
toward their team members and seeing these members as integral parts of their team or
organizational
effectiveness. This enhanced connectedness motivates these leaders
to
recognize their dependence on the team members, value their strengths, and show greater
appreciation for their contributions, thereby leading to humble behavior.
Third, receiving support from the organization may remind leaders about the
external input that can bring them the necessary resources for improving their work
outcomes, making them more coachable and motivating them to improve themselves
out of the desire to prove that they deserve their organizational support (Eisenberger et
al., 1986). In this way, a high POS facilitates a
broaden-and-build process (Fredrickson,

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
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2001, 2004) whereby leaders
with trait gratitude pay attention to others' feedback and
contributions and utilize these resources for self-learning and self- improvement.
By contrast, in case of low POS when the situation lacks salient
gratitude-relevant
cues, leaders' trait gratitude is
less likely to manifest
in humble behavior. We also expect
that leaders' humble behavior will occur not only in their interactions with or on behalf
of their organizations but also in their interactions with their team members. As
suggested by Wood et al. (2010, p. 892), the influence of trait gratitude “applies more
widely than simply through the recognition and reciprocation of interpersonal aid; with
gratitude drawing attention to the perception of anything to appreciate in the world.”
Taken together, we hypothesize:
Hypothesis 2. Leaders' POS moderates the relationship
between their trait
gratitude and humble behavior such that this relationship is stronger when
leaders' POS is higher.
Leaders’ Humble Behavior and Team Voice
In capturing the implication of the other-praising tendency of leaders' trait gratitude,
we further propose that leaders' humble behavior can promote team voice, which is
defined as team members' collective engagement in making constructive suggestions or
expressing ideas and concerns about work-related issues (MacKenzie et al., 2011). We
argue that leaders' humble behavior can enhance team voice via the three motivational
mechanisms of proactivity: (a) can do (i.e., whether members perceive that they have the
capability of engaging in proactive behavior), (b) reason to (i.e., whether members find

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
15
intrinsic rea- sons to engage in proactive behavior), and (c) energized to (i.e.,
whether members have enough energy to make things happen) (Parker et al., 2010).
First, leaders' humble behavior signals high levels of teachability, which evokes a
can-do mechanism for team voice. By showing their
willingness to learn, leaders
encourage their team as a whole to proac
tively look for areas to improve and find ways
to address them. According to Lin et al. (2019), given that humble leaders prioritize
learning and growth, employees believe that they can “influence the leader's attentions,
and endorsement for their opinions and suggestions” (p. 938), thereby are motivated to
speak up. In addition, humble leaders' openness to different opinions and suggestions
(Owens & Hekman, 2012) creates a safe environment for their team members to speak
up without fear of repercussions for challenging the status quo (e.g., Detert & Trevino,
2010).
Second, leaders' humble behavior reflects high levels of self-
awareness and secure
sense of self, which develop a reason-to mech
anism for team voice. Humble leaders who
are aware of their own strengths and weaknesses tend to acknowledge their limitations
in
decision making and problem solving (e.g., Owens et al., 2013). Given
their modest view
of themselves, these leaders are willing to invite their team members to contribute and
express their ideas and concerns for improving team effectiveness. Under such
circumstances, team members tend to initiate and involve in voice behavior due to their
discretion and intrinsic motivation (Sheldon & Elliot, 1998).
Third, by displaying humble behavior, leaders show an appreciation for their team

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
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members' strengths and contributions and emphasize other-valuation, which can
energize team members in their collective engagement in voice (Wang et al., 2018). In
other words, by exhibiting humble behavior, team leaders identify and value the unique
capabilities of their team members and make them feel respected and energized in
interpersonal and team interactions. Emotional energy is important for team members'
engagement in voice given its role in creating a positive environment for speaking up
(Liu et al., 2015) and in prompting them to persistently seek challenges
and improvement
(Wu & Wang, 2015). Based on the above reasoning,
we propose:
Hypothesis 3. Leaders' humble behavior is positively related to team voice.
Team Innovation as a Distal Outcome
Team voice is a meaningful vehicle for team innovation that reflects a proactive
process where all team members' talents and expertise are utilized. Especially, team
voice can shift members' attention to issues that need improvement and broaden the
problem space that helps them spot issues that are peripheral to their attention and
thinking (e.g., Li et al., 2017). As team members extensively make suggestions to each
other, the chance of utilizing available knowledge to generate
new solutions to the
problems at hand is increased (Liang et al., 2019).
Moreover, when implementing novel
ideas, frequent team voice enables the team to come up with alternative
implementation strategies, identify potential problems in application processes, and
exchange practical suggestions to smooth those procedures to gain more “targeted
employees' appropriate and committed use of an innovation” (Klein & Sorra, 1996,
p. 1055). In addition, team voice reflects collective participation in decision making in

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
17
which team members jointly shape the direction for change (Guzman & Espejo,
2019). It strengthens the team's commitment to implementing new ideas and plans. As
such, team voice not only gives rise to new ideas but also fosters the implementation of
these ideas. Empirically, Li et al. (2017), Liang et al. (2019), and Guzman and Espejo
(2019) reported a positive association between team voice and team innovation. We
hypothesize:
Hypothesis 4. Team voice is positively related to team innovation.
Overall, by building on the other-praising perspective of gratitude, we hypothesize
that leaders with high trait gratitude tend to exhibit humble behavior, which invites their
members to engage in team voice, a team process that helps spark team innovation.
Further draw- ing on trait activation theory, we propose that the indirect effect of leader
trait gratitude on team innovation is strengthened when leaders' POS is high.
Hypothesis 5. Leaders' POS moderates the indirect effect of leader trait
gratitude on team innovation through leaders' humble behavior and team voice
such that the
indirect effect is stronger when leaders' POS is higher.
METHOD
Sample and Procedure
We collected our data from team members, team leaders, and team directors
(team leaders' supervisors) from various companies in major cities in Southeastern
China. These companies were from different industries including transportation,
energy, medicine, banking, retail, and so forth. With the help of human resource

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
18
managers from these companies, trained research assistants conducted preliminary
inter- views to identify teams that shared collective goals and whose collective effort
could significantly influence the delivery of their final service or products. We then
collected data at four time points with a 2-week interval between each time point. Our
time-lagged and multisource design helped reduce the concern of common method
variance (Podsakoff et al., 2012). Our choice to use 2-week intervals is in line with
previous research on leader humility and team performance (Owens & Hekman, 2016)
and studies on leaders' dispositions
and humble behavior (as rated by followers; Owens et
al., 2015; Wang
et al., 2018). Moreover, given that data were collected from different
companies to maximize the generalizability of our findings, a longer data collection
period may introduce uncontrollable variations, such as changes in membership in team
functioning.
Initially, we reached out to 102 teams (with a total of 378 members) to invite
their participation in the study. At Time 1, 90 of 102 team leaders provided their
trait gratitude, POS, and demo- graphics. At Time 2, we invited all members in the 90
teams to participate in the study. A total of 321 members from the 90 teams rated their
leaders' humble and prosocial behaviors. At Time 3, 284 team members from 71 teams
rated their team voice. At Time 4, we reached out to 54 upper-level directors of the 71
teams and asked them to evaluate their teams' innovation by answering a short paper
survey.
The final matched sample comprised 284 members from 711 teams in 48
companies, with the majority of the teams coming from different companies. Overall

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
19
response rates were 70% and 75% for team leaders and team members, respectively.
Each team had 3–7 members (with an average of 4), and their response ratios within
teams ranged from 75% to 100%. We excluded those teams with two or fewer members
who responded in any round of data collection to reduce selection bias (Timmerman,
2005). Among these team
members, 55% were female, the average age was 29 years, 92%
had a
college or higher degree, and the average job tenure was 4.8 years. Among the
team leaders, 56% were female, the average age was
36 years, 96% had a college or
higher degree, and the average job ten
ure was 10 years.
Measures
All measures were translated from English to Chinese and then back translated to
English by a panel of bilingual experts following the procedure recommended by Brislin
(1970). Any resulting discrepancies were discussed and resolved (see the Appendix A for
the items used). All items were rated on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from
1
(strongly disagree) to5 (strongly agree).
Leaders’ trait gratitude. At Time 1, the team leaders self-evaluated their trait
gratitude using the 6-item scale developed by McCullough et al. (2002). This measure
was designed to assess individuals' dispositional tendency toward gratitude. The
Cronbach's alpha for leaders' trait gratitude was .79.
Leaders’ POS. At Time 1, the team leaders rated their perceptions of organizational
support using the 8-item scale of Eisenberger et al. (1986). The Cronbach's alpha for this
scale was .87.

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
20
Leaders’ humble behavior. At Time 2, leaders' humble behavior was measured
using the 9-item scale developed by Owens et al. (2013). This scale assessed team
members' perceived humble behavior of their leaders. The Cronbach's
alpha for leaders'
humble behavior at the individual level was .90. To assess the overall pattern of leader
behavior displayed to the entire group, we calculated within-group agreement (Rwg(j))
and intraclass correlations (ICC1 and ICC2). The mean value of Rwg(j) for leaders'
humble behavior based on a uniform null distribution in the expected variance was .94,
which was above the cut-off point of .70 (Bliese, 2000). We kept four teams with
Rwg(j) values below .70 (.55, .63, .68, and .66, respectively) on this variable to avoid
reducing our
sample size. The ICC1 and ICC2 values were .38 and .71, respectively (F (70,
213) = 3.46, p < .01). Supported by these results, we aggre
gated the team members' ratings
of their leaders' humble behavior to the team level.
Team voice. At Time 3, the team members reported team voice using a 3-item scale
adapted from van Dyne and LePine (1998) with a referent-shift model. The Cronbach's
alpha for team voice was .70. To aggregate this rating to the team level, we obtained a
mean Rwg(j) value of .92 based on the uniform null distribution in the expected variance.
We also kept three teams with Rwg(j) values below .70 on this variable (.50, .60, and .60
for these teams) on this variable to avoid reducing our
sample size. The ICC1 and ICC2
values were .16 and .45, respectively
(F (70, 213) = 1.78, p < .01). Although we had a
moderate ICC2 for team voice ratings, aggregating this rating to the team level was
justified as we obtained high values of Rwg(j) and ICC1 and significant F test results
for the group effect (Chen & Bliese, 2002). Aggregation was also applied in previous

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
21
team studies that obtained similar ICC2 values (e.g., Chiu et al., 2016).
Team innovation. At Time 4, the team directors were asked to rate their team's
innovation using three items from de Dreu (2002, 2006). The Cronbach's alpha for team
innovation was .79.
Control variables. We controlled for team size because it was revealed to be
related to leader behaviors and can influence team members' interactions and their
innovative performance (e.g., Eisenbeiss et al., 2008; Jiang & Chen, 2018). Team
average dyadic tenure (i.e., the average tenure between team members and their leader)
was controlled because previous studies have shown that it might affect team processes
related to innovation (e.g., Schippers et al., 2003). Team leaders' gender and education
levels were also controlled because they were found to affect team members' perception
of their leaders' behaviors as well as how these leaders influenced team processes and
team innovation (Jiang et al., 2015; Tang et al., 2020). To examine the unique effect of
the other-praising perspective of gratitude, we included leaders' prosocial behavior as an
alternative mediator. Leaders' prosocial behavior was measured at Time 2 using the 4-
item scale developed by Barbuto and Wheeler (2006). The Cronbach's alpha of this scale
was .72. The leaders' prosocial behavior was conceptualized as a leader-level construct.
We obtained an Rwg(j) value of .94, an ICC1 of .41, and an ICC2 of .74 (F (70, 213)
= 3.81, p < .01), which justified the aggregation of this variable to the team level.
Analytical Strategy

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
22
Although team directors rated the innovation of multiple teams, we ran an
analysis of variance (ANOVA) test and found no significant differences in their ratings
(F = 1.28, df (between) = 53, df (within) = 17, p = .30). Therefore, we analyzed our data at the
team level. To test the hypothesized model, we ran an integrated team-level path-
analytic model in Mplus 8.3 to perform a unified test of the mediation and moderation
effects. Compared to the piecemeal approach, this integrated approach does not require
multiple stages of analysis and generates less biased estimates (Preacher et al., 2011).
We did not use latent variables in our modeling due to the relatively small size of our
sample. We estimated our model by using an maximum likelihood (ML) estimator with a
bootstrapping approach in Mplus.2
RESULTS
Multilevel Confirmatory Factor Analysis
Before testing our hypotheses, we conducted a series of multilevel confirmatory
factor analyses (MCFA) to determine the distinctiveness of our leader- and member-rated
variables (i.e., leaders' trait gratitude, POS, humble behavior, prosocial behavior, and
team voice). We
excluded team innovation because this variable was rated by directors
outside of the team. We used parcels to indicate latent variables that had five or more
items. Given that leaders' trait gratitude and POS are unidimensional constructs, we
followed the procedures recommended by Bagozzi and Edwards (1998) to create three
parcels for trait gratitude and four parcels for POS by averaging the highest loading item
with the lowest loading one, the second highest loading item with the second lowest
loading one, and so on. Given that leaders' humble behavior is a multidimensional latent

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
23
construct, we formed three parcels as indicators based on the three conceptual
dimensions. Using parcels is appropriate in MCFA because “when thoughtfully com-
posed, parcels provide efficient, reliable and valid indicators of latent construct” (Little
et al., 2013, p. 285). We tested a model in which leaders' trait gratitude and POS were
treated as team-level factors because they were rated by leaders. Meanwhile, leaders'
humble behavior, prosocial behavior, and team voice were treated as team- and
individual-level factors. As shown in Table 1, compared to a number of alternative
models, our hypothesized model had better fit to
the data (χ
2
(141) = 148.91, CFI =
0.99, TLI = 0.99, RMSEA = 0.01,
SRMR (within) = 0.02, SRMR (between) = 0.07), thereby
supporting the distinctiveness of the key variables in this study.
--------------------------------
Insert Table 1 about here
---------------------------------
Descriptive Statistics and Correlations
Table 2 presents the descriptive statistics, reliabilities, and correlations
of all variables.
------------------------------
Insert Table 2 about here
------------------------------
Hypothesis Testing
Table 3 summarizes the unstandardized coefficients of our model. To properly
estimate the proposed indirect effects from leader trait gratitude to team innovation,
we controlled for several direct effects in our model, including the paths from leader

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
24
trait gratitude to both team voice and team innovation, the paths from leaders' humble
behavior to team voice and innovation, and the paths from leaders' prosocial
behavior
to team voice and innovation. Team leaders' gender and education level, team size, and
members' average dyadic tenure with team
leader were included to predict leaders' humble
and prosocial behaviors, team voice, and team innovation. We also included the
interaction effect of leader trait gratitude and POS on both humble and prosocial
behaviors. Results showed that our model fit the data better
(ML-χ
2
(4) = 1.35; RMSEA
= .00; CFI = 1.0; TLI = 1.0; SRMR = .02)
than a model in which the interaction effect
of leader trait gratitude and POS on leaders' humble and prosocial behaviors was fixed
to 0 (ML-χ2 (6) = 10.25; RMSEA = .10; CFI = .94; TLI = .68;
SRMR = .06) (Δχ
2
=
8.9, df = 2, p < .05).
--------------------------------------
Insert Table 3 about here
--------------------------------------
Hypothesis 1 proposed a positive relationship between leaders' trait gratitude and
leaders' humble behavior. Table 3 shows that this relationship was significantly positive
(B = .35, p < .001), supporting Hypothesis 1.
Hypothesis 2 predicted an interaction effect between leaders' trait gratitude and POS
on their humble behavior. We found that the interaction effects of leader trait gratitude
and POS positively
predicted leaders' humble behavior (B = .26, p < .0). We then used
the
Johnson–Neyman technique to provide an analysis of the moderated relationship and
plot the band of significance for effect of leaders' trait gratitude on their humble behavior

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
25
at various values of POS (Gardner et al., 2017; Preacher et al., 2006). We identified
regions of leaders' POS values at which the relation of leaders' trait gratitude and humble
behavior was significantly different from zero. We plotted the upper and lower limits of
a 95% confidence interval (CI) for the moderating effect of leader POS. As illustrated in
Figure 2, the effect of leaders' trait gratitude on humble behavior was positive and
significant when the mean-centered value of leaders' POS reached -.70 or higher, which
provided support for Hypothesis 2.
--------------------------------------
Insert Figure 2 about here
--------------------------------------
Hypothesis 3 proposed a positive association between leaders' humble behavior and
team voice, which was supported by our results (B = .36, p < .01). Hypothesis 4 predicted
a positive association between team voice and team innovation. Our results showed a
significant relationship between team voice and innovation (B = .77, p < .001), thereby
supporting Hypothesis 4.
We also conducted bootstrapping (resampling 5000 times) in Mplus to test the
conditional indirect effects. Bootstrapping results showed that the indirect effect of
leader gratitude on team innovation
via leaders' humble behavior and team voice was
significant and stronger at
high levels of POS (indirect effect = .14, 95%
bias-corrected
CI = [.04, .34], excluding zero) than at low levels (indirect effect = .05,
95% bias-corrected
CI = [.005, .15], excluding zero), supporting Hypothesis 5. We then used Johnson–

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
26
Neyman technique and plotted the upper and lower limits of a 95% CI for the moderating
effect of leader POS on this indirect effect. Figure 3 shows that the indirect effect was
positive and significant when the mean-centered value of leaders' POS reached -.80 or
higher. Therefore, we found support for Hypothesis 5.
---------------------------------
Insert Figure 3 about here
----------------------------------
In addition, Table 3 shows that leader trait gratitude was positively related to leaders'
prosocial behavior (B = .29, p < .01). How- ever, we did not find significant interaction
effect between leader
trait gratitude and POS on prosocial behavior (B = .16, p > .05), which
suggested that POS may not intensify the effect of trait gratitude on prosocial tendency
responses in terms of prosocial behavior. We also did not observe a positive relationship
between prosocial behavior and team voice (B = .07, p > .05), which was consistent with
our theory. To test the robustness of our findings, we estimated an alternative
model by excluding leaders' prosocial behavior as a control
mechanism. The alternative
model showed a good fit (ML-χ
2
4) = 1.4; RMSEA = .00; CFI = 1.0; TLI = 1.0; SRMR =
.02), and results for the
hypotheses test remained the same.
DISCUSSION
We investigated how and when leaders' trait gratitude promotes team innovation,
a collective process that requires less egoistic leader behavior and more collaborative
initiatives from employees. By collecting data from three sources at four phases, we
found that leaders with high trait gratitude were more likely to engage in humble
behavior, which elicited team members' voice and ultimately fostered team innovation.

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
27
We also found that leaders' POS moderated the effect of leader trait gratitude on their
humble behavior and ultimately on team innovation such that these effects became
stronger when leaders perceived high levels of organizational support.
Theoretical Implications
Our study offers important contributions to the literature on team innovation,
leader affective characteristics, and gratitude. First, we expand the research on leaders'
influence on team innovation by identifying leaders' trait gratitude as an important
antecedent of team innovation. Hughes et al. (2018) called for studies on creativity/
innovation to “[s]upplement or move beyond the focus on leader styles to explore the
effects of leader characteristics such as traits” (p. 564). Accordingly, recent work has
started to investigate how leaders' regulatory traits (e.g., regulatory mode, Li et al.,
2018; affect regulation tendency, Madrid et al., 2016) can drive team innovation.
Extending this research, we showed that leaders' trait gratitude, as a discrete affective
trait, can also boost team innovation via the serial mediation of leader humble behavior
and team voice. Moreover, the team innovation literature has generally considered
active leadership styles (e.g., transformational leadership, Eisenbeiss et al., 2008; Jiang
& Chen, 2018; empowering leadership, Lee et al., 2018; Tang et al., 2020) to be critical
for team members to exchange and integrate
their perspectives to innovate (van
Knippenberg, 2017) because those
leaders actively offer specific expectations, directions,
and/or guidance. Complementing this perspective, our research indicates that
alternatively, by acknowledging their own limitations and encouraging team members'
influence, team leaders with trait gratitude can effectively motivate members' own
proactivity to make contribution (e.g., by proactively challenging the status quo and
bringing constructive change) to team innovation.
Second, our study contributes to the literature on leader affective characteristics.
Although scholars have offered insights into the impact of leaders' general positive and
negative affect at multiple levels (e.g., Delgado-García & de la Fuente-Sabaté, 2010;
George, 1995; Johnson, 2008), Joseph et al. (2015) pointed out in their meta-analysis
that there is a “paucity of primary studies examining discrete trait emotions” (p. 563).
Moreover, prior research has mostly examined the effect of leaders' affective

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
28
characteristics from an emotional contagion perspective (i.e., leaders' emotional
experiences influence the team's experience of similar emotions) or an affect-as-
information perspective (i.e., leaders' emotional experiences serve as contextual
information that guides the team's responses). By introducing an other-praising
mechanism of leader trait gratitude, our study uncovers a new influence process of
leaders' affective characteristics. We suggest that rather than shape the team's
emotional experience or offer cognitive resources to team members, leaders' trait
gratitude has a motivational impact as these leaders tend to recognize and appreciate
others' inputs. Our findings that humble behavior, but not prosocial behavior, was
positively associated with team voice and innovation when both were included in the
model show the explanatory power of the other-praising mechanism above the prosocial
mechanism, extending the notion that leaders with high trait gratitude influence follower
outcomes primarily by exhibiting prosocial behavior (Ma et al., 2017; McCullough et
al., 2002).
Third, by incorporating trait activation theory, our study highlights the role of
leaders' POS in boosting the behavioral expression of leaders' trait gratitude.
Specifically, we found that leaders' POS strengthened the impact of leader trait gratitude
on their humble behavior and its indirect impact on team innovation. While POS is
often shown to serve as a gratitude-arousing factor that can induce employees' state
gratitude at work (Ford et al., 2018; Hu & Kaplan, 2015), our findings suggest that
for leaders with high trait gratitude, POS can activate their other-praising tendency and
motivate them to encourage collective innovative contributions from all team members.
In this sense, the benefits of offering organizational support to leaders are not limited
to a reciprocal exchange between
leaders and organizations (e.g., Eisenberger et al., 2001).
Rather, it can
help leaders with high trait gratitude to elicit the proactivity of their team
as a whole and boost team innovation.
Finally, our findings expand the understanding of trait gratitude in the leadership
and team contexts. While previous studies have mainly examined the effect of gratitude
on an individual's subjective well- being and relationship building (e.g., Algoe et
al., 2008; Ma et al., 2017), scholars have recently emphasized the benefits of gratitude

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
29
in the workplace on a broad type of outcomes at different levels (e.g., Fehr et al., 2017;
Hu & Kaplan, 2015). For example, empirical studies demonstrated that state gratitude
can shape an employee's or a leader's behavior at work (Ford et al., 2018; Grant & Gino,
2010), that a team's state gratitude can promote team creativity (Pillay et al., 2020),
and that gratitude practices in organizations can help improve organizational
effectiveness (Cameron et al., 2011). We expand the scope of this emerging research by
employing a dispositional lens on leaders' trait gratitude and unveiling its implications
in the process of leading teams and driving team innovation.
Practical Implications
In today's volatile and complex environment, leaders have increasingly
relied on their
teams to come up with new ideas and bring innovative
changes (Griffin et al., 2007; Tang
et al., 2020). Therefore, our findings
provide valuable practical implications about which
leaders and when those leaders can boost team innovation by showing that team leaders
with trait gratitude tend to “create … an environment where others could shine” and are
“privileged to find treasure within others and put it to good use” (Bennis, 2005, pp. xi–
xii).
Specifically, our findings indicate that leader trait gratitude matters in catalyzing
leaders' humble behavior, which further improves team voice and innovation. These
positive relationships provide an additional assessment criterion for the selection and
development of effective leaders in today's organizations. For example, when assigning
future leaders, organizations may look for candidates with high trait gratitude given that
these individuals have the predisposition to develop into humble leaders who can
promote team voice and foster team innovation.
Moreover, our findings suggest that organizations can promote leaders' humble
behavior, especially for leaders with high trait gratitude, by offering them support.
Signaling to leaders that the organizations are concerned about their well-being will
increase the chances for their trait gratitude to manifest in humble behavior. Providing
organizational support is less intrusive (and perhaps less offensive) than requiring
humility training in motivating leaders to be humble without pressing them to appreciate

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
30
others. Offering organizational support to leaders with high trait gratitude can also
naturally and genuinely promote their other-praising tendency, thereby preventing a
situation where leaders pretend to be humble in response to the demands of their
organizations.
Limitations and Future Research Directions
Our work has several limitations that point to future research directions. First, we
were unable to conclusively examine the causal relationships among our variables or to
examine the dynamic impact of leader trait gratitude. While acknowledging these
limitations, our theorizing of leader influence process from leaders' characteristics (i.e.,
trait gratitude) to leader behavior (i.e., humble behavior) and then
to team process (i.e.,
voice) and team outcomes (i.e., team innovation)
was consistent with the integrative trait-
behavior model of leadership effectiveness (DeRue et al., 2011) and the literature on the
proximal and distal antecedents to leader effectiveness (van Iddekinge et al., 2009).
Interestingly, we found that leader trait gratitude was related to leaders' behavior but not
to team variables, showing the validity of the proposed theoretical chain. We also
suggest that reversed relationships are unlikely in our study. For example, team voice
and innovation are less likely to trigger changes in leaders' hum- ble behavior or trait
gratitude because team experiences may not be stable and enduring enough to
continuously stimulate specific pat- terns of attitudinal and behavioral responses and to
trigger personality change (Wrzus & Roberts, 2017). Although we are confident in our
theory-driven relationships and measured each variable in the serial mediation at a
different time, we believe that a longitudinal design in which each key variable is
measured multiple times would be valuable in testing the potential dynamic and
reciprocal relationships in our model.
Second, our examination of leaders' trait gratitude in the team context, together
with previous studies on team state gratitude and its role in facilitating favorable
team functioning (e.g., Pillay et al., 2020; Seong & Choi, 2014), suggests that it will
be interesting for future studies to investigate the interplay between state and trait
gratitude among both leaders and team members. For example, leaders' trait gratitude,

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
31
when aligned with team members' trait gratitude, may create leader–team fit or trigger
strong collective gratitude emotions such that team members are willing to engage in
more pro- active behaviors and innovative activities. Moreover, extending our findings
on the importance of leaders' trait gratitude in teams, future research should examine the
impact of other discrete affective char
acteristics such as joy, anxiety, anger (e.g., Visser et
al., 2013) on team
processes and innovation, as well as their associated influence
mechanisms.
Third, although our research demonstrated the moderating role of leaders' POS, we
encourage future research to identify other situational factors that can boost the positive
effect of trait gratitude at work. For example, support at the interpersonal level, such as
help from colleagues, may enhance the other-praising tendency of leaders with high trait
gratitude. This extension can inform an interpersonal mechanism that may strengthen
the effect of trait gratitude in contrast to the perceived organizational supported
identified in this study. Future studies should also examine whether the support from
other life domains (e.g., family support) can serve the same function. Additionally, it
would be valuable to examine how event-level organiza
tional, interpersonal, or family
support can enhance a grateful person's
experience of gratitude on a daily basis in the
workplace. Others' rat
ings or objective measures may be used to assess support-related
variables when possible (e.g., high-involvement human resource systems,
peer
relationships, and family support) to further our theory.
Finally, our findings were based on a Chinese sample, which may raise concerns
about the generalizability of these findings across cultures. For instance, one may argue
that team leaders from different cultures have a systematically different level of trait
gratitude and/or exhibit different levels of humble behaviors due to their cultural values.
However, we noticed that the means of our variables were comparable to those found
in previous studies that used samples from other countries. For example, leaders' humble
behavior in our sample had a mean of 3.88 out of 5, which was comparable to those in
previous studies using samples from Western countries (e.g., a mean of 3.84 in Owens
et al., 2013; a mean of 3.92 in Rego et al., 2017). Nevertheless, given that our study is
the first to examine the link between leaders' trait gratitude and team innovation, future

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
32
studies should cross-validate our findings by using samples from other cultures.
Conclusion
By integrating an other-praising perspective with trait activation theory, our study
unpacked the impact of leaders' trait gratitude in a team context. Using multisource data
collected over four periods, we found that leaders with high trait gratitude can spark team
innovation by exhibiting humble behavior and promoting team voice, especially when
they perceive high organizational support. This study offers important evidence to
support the central role of leaders' trait gratitude in fostering team innovation and
motivates researchers to examine other key team-level outcomes of discrete affective
traits in the workplace.

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
33
ENDNOTES
1. There were two teams with Rwg(j) values below .60 for at least one of the three
aggregated variables: leaders' humble behavior, prosocial behavior, and team
voice. We excluded these two teams and reran our analysis with 277 members
from 69 teams. The results were virtually identical. To avoid reduction in the
sample size, we reported the results using the sample of 71 teams.
2. We also estimated the same model by using an MLR (estimator = MLR)
and a
Bayesian estimator (estimator = Bayes) in Mplus, which is suitable
for a small
sample size. We obtained virtually identical results that lead to the same
conclusions.

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
34
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Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
Table 1: Results of Multilevel Confirmatory Factor Analysis of Member-Rated Study Variables
Models
Factors
χ2
df
Δχ2over
Model 1
SRMR
(within)
SRMR
(between)
RMSEA
CFI
TLI
1
5-factor: Leaders’ trait gratitude; Leaders’ POS; Leaders’
humble behavior; leaders’ prosocial behavior; team voice
148.91
141
.02
.07
.01
.99
.99
2
4-factor: Combining leaders’ trait gratitude and POS
209.67
145
60.76**
.02
.14
.04
.94
.93
3
4-factor: Combining leaders’ humble behavior and
prosocial behavior
241.51
147
92.60**
.06
.10
.05
.91
.89
4
4-factor: Combining leaders’ humble behavior and team
voice
220.74
147
71.83**
.04
.10
.04
.93
.92
5
4-factor: Combining leaders’ prosocial behavior and team
voice
198.74
147
49.83**
.04
.11
.04
.95
.94
N = 284. ** p < .01

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
Table 2: Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations
Variables
M
S.D.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
1. Leader Gender (T1)
.56
.50
2. Leader Education (years) (T1)
16.31
1.13
-.09
3. Team size
4.00
.63
-.05
.14
4. Team Average Dyadic Tenure (T2)
2.67
1.83
-.02
.06
-.09
5. Leader Trait Gratitude (T1)
3.99
.65
-.05
-.32**
.08
-.05
6. Leaders’ POS (T1)
3.75
.66
-.07
-.14
-.06
.13
.36**
7. Leaders’ Humble Behavior (T2)
3.88
.50
.12
-.26*
.08
.02
.37**
.04
8. Leaders’ Prosocial Behavior (T2)
3.42
.53
-.12
-.05
.29*
-.31**
.33**
.06
.43**
9. Team Voice (T3)
3.90
.43
-.13
-.21
.01
-.17
.29**
-.01
.47**
.34**
10. Team Innovation (T4)
3.61
.79
.33**
.01
.02
.04
.05
-.01
.03
.03
.24*
Note. N = 71 teams. Leaders’ POS = Leaders’ perceived organizational support. Gender: 0 = male, 1 = female. * p < .05. ** p < .01.

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
Table 3: Unstandardized Coefficients of the Model Results (With Prosocial Behavior as a Control)
Leaders’ Humble
Behavior
Leaders’ Prosocial
Behavior
Team Voice
Team Innovation
Predictor
B
SE
B
SE
B
SE
B
SE
Controls
Leader Gender
.18
.11
-.07
.11
-.15
.10
.69***
.19
Leader Education
-.08
.05
.00
.05
-.03
.04
.05
.10
Team Size
.04
.13
.18*
.09
-.05
.08
.04
.13
Team Average Dyadic Tenure
.04
.03
-.07*
.03
-.04
.03
.07
.05
Independent Variable
Leader Trait Gratitude
.35***
.08
.29**
.11
.05
.08
.06
.20
Moderator
Leaders’ POS
-.04
.08
.02
.09
Interaction
Leader Trait Gratitude * Leaders’
POS
.26**
.10
.16
.14
Mediators
Leaders’ Humble Behavior
.36**
.12
-.41
.24
Leaders’ Prosocial Behavior
.07
.10
.11
.20
Team Voice
.77***
.21
R2
.28**
.08
.30**
.10
.31**
.12
.25**
.09
Note. N = 71 teams. Leaders’ POS = Leaders’ perceived organizational support. Gender: 0 = male, 1 = female. B = unstandardized
coefficients. SE = standard error. We tested several alternative models with different combinations of leader and team demographic
control variables and obtained similar results for our main hypotheses.
* p < .05. ** p < .01. ***p < .001.

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
Figure 1. Hypothesized Model
Note. The raters and the time point at which the variables were measured are enclosed in parentheses in each box
Leaders’ perceived organizational
support (team leaders at T1)
Leaders’ humble behavior (team
members at T2)
Leaders’ trait gratitude
(team leaders at T1)
Team voice
(team members at T3)
Team innovation
(team directors at T4)

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
Figure 2. Regions of significant for the conditional relationship between leaders’ trait gratitude and humble behavior as a function of
leaders’ POS at a 95% confidence level
Simple slope of leaders’ trait gratitude predicting leaders’
humble behavior (with 95% confidence interval bands)
Value of leaders’ POS (Centered)

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
Figure 3. Regions of significant for the conditional relationship between leaders’ trait gratitude and team innovation as a function of
leaders’ POS at a 95% confidence level
Moderated indirect effect of leaders’ trait gratitude on team innovation
(With 95% confidence interval bands)
Value of leaders’ POS (Centered)

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
Appendix: Items of the Main Variables in the Study
Leaders’ trait gratitude (McCullough et al., 2002):
(1) I have so much in life to be thankful for.
(2) If I had to list everything that I felt grateful for, it would be a very long list.
(3) When I look at the world, I don’t see much to be grateful for. (R)
(4) I am grateful to a wide variety of people.
(5) As I get older, I find myself more able to appreciate the people, events, and
situations that have been part of my life history.
(6) Long amounts of time can go by before I feel grateful to something or someone.
(R)
Leaders’ perceived organizational support (Eisenberger et al., 1986)
(1) The organization shows great concern for me.
(2) The organization values my contribution to its well-being.
(3) The organization appreciates extra effort from me.
(4) The organization would not ignore any complaint from me.
(5) The organization really cares about my well-being.
(6) The organization cares about my general satisfaction at work.
(7) The organization takes pride in my accomplishments at work.
(8) The organization would notice that I did the best job possible.
Leaders’ humble behavior (Owens et al., 2013)
(1) Team leader actively seeks feedback even if it is critical.
(2) Team leader admits it when they don’t know how to do something.
(3) Team leader acknowledges when others have more knowledge and skills than him
or herself.
(4) Team leader takes notice of others’ strengths.
(5) Team leader shows appreciation for the unique contributions of others.
(6) Team leader often compliments others on their strengths.
(7) Team leader shows willingness to learn from others.
(8) Team leader is open to the ideas of others.
(9) Team leader is open to the advice of others.
Leaders’ prosocial behavior (Barbuto & Wheeler, 2006)
(1) Team leader puts my best interests ahead of his/her own.
(2) Team leader goes above and beyond the call of duty to meet my needs.
(3) Team leader does everything he/she can to serve me.
(4) Team leader sacrifices his/her own interests to meet my needs.
Team voice (van Dyne & LePine, 1998)
(1) The members of my work group develop and make recommendations concerning
issues that affect the group.
(2) The members of my work group speak up and encourage others in the group to get
involved in issues that affect the group.

Leader trait gratitude and team innovation
(3) The members of my work group communicate their opinions about work issues to
others in the group even if their opinion differs and if others in the group disagree
with them.
Team innovation (de Dreu, 2002, 2006)
(1) This team often implements new ideas to improve the quality of products and
services.
(2) This team often produces new services, methods, or procedures.
(3) This team gives a lot of consideration to new and alternative methods and
procedures for doing their work.