There are leaders who raise their voices and silence the team. There are others who silence themselves and make the team talk. These last, rarest, are those who truly understand the place of humility in the psychological architecture of a team. Not as submission, but as a refined form of influence.
Leading with humility does not mean giving up command, but understand that the command does not reside only in the imperative verb, and yes in listening, in recognizing others and in the willingness to learn. Humble leaders do not position themselves as the sole source of solutions — and that is why they manage to generate something that many pursue with mistaken methods: engagement.
But there is another dimension, even less obvious, that emerges when humility is exercised with consistency: the ability to emotionally strengthen the team. This strength, described by positive psychology as psychological capital — or PsyCap — is made up of four key elements: self-efficacy, optimism, hope and resilience. In other words, is the set of internal dispositions that make people more capable of facing challenges, stay engaged and believe in the value of their actions.
A survey conducted by Rego, Owens, Leal and Cunha (2021), published in Journal of Business Research, demonstrated that leaders perceived as humble directly favor the development of PsyCap among their employees. The study showed that the leader's humility — expressed in openness to feedback, in valuing others and being willing to recognize their limitations — triggers relational processes that increase self-confidence and the team’s ability to cope as a whole. This is not an indirect effect, but with a clear and measurable relationship: where there is humility, there is more hope, more ability to overcome and more genuine engagement.
This discovery has important implications. In organizational environments marked by continuous pressure, ambitious goals and accelerated changes, what sustains delivery is not just technical competence or structure. It's emotional energy. And the humble leader, by operating as a trusted mirror — someone who recognizes flaws, welcomes doubts and offers confidence before demanding performance — it becomes an agent that restores the group’s soul strength. It doesn't drain, they return.
Contrary to what many think, the leader who recognizes his limits does not lose authority. He repositions it. He shows that authority is not infallibility, but mature responsibility in the face of one's own incompleteness. E, when doing this, invites your team to do the same: working with courage, even though I'm scared. To be created, even in doubt. To persist, even after the error.
Psychological capital is not imposed by technical training. It is cultivated in trusting relationships. And this trust is born when the leader is able to suspend the game of perfection and enter the scene as someone real, here I'm, human. The humility, in this context, is not the denial of force — it is the most sophisticated way of exercising it.
At the end, Teams don't grow stronger because their leaders are brilliant. They grow stronger because their leaders are accessible. And it is in the humility of this access that emerges, silently, the energy that moves what really matters.