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You wouldn't know it from our current crook- er - commander-in-chief but it pays to be humble , new research is showing. It’s good to be humble when you’re the boss – as long as that’s what your employees expect, according to newswise.com. Researchers studying workplaces in China found that some real-life teams showed more creativity if the employees rated their bosses as showing more humility. “Whether leader humility is a good thing really depends on the team members’ expectations,” says  Jia (Jasmine) Hu , lead author of the study and associate professor of  management and human resources  at The Ohio State University’s  Fisher College of Business . Humble leaders are most effective when team members expect a low degree of distance between the leaders and followers, Hu explains. When there is "low power distance" (I assume, this means when the boss is humble), employees share power with their boss in a collaborative way. But humility may be seen as a we...

You spell bind your audiences.  Everyone laughs at your jokes.  You've even received a standing ovation after a speech.  You have charisma . But is that a good -- or bad -- thing? A new study finds that charismatic leaders do better when they're somewhere in the middle -- not too charismatic but not lacking charisma altogether. Those with lower amounts (but not too low) of charisma are more effective, according to newswise.com. Too much may hinder a leader, the website reports, based on research published by the American Psychological Association. “Our findings suggest that organizations may want to consider selecting applicants with mid-range levels of charisma into leadership roles, instead of extremely charismatic leaders,” says Jasmine Vergauwe, a doctoral student at Ghent University and lead author of the study, published in the  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology . Vergauwe studied subjects using a charismatic personality test, 56 questio...

I've had bosses who praised my work and bosses who tried to take the credit for it.  I've had bosses who follow the company line, even when they know it's not right (like lying about the downfalls of products), and I've had bosses who've called the media back to say they misspoke on something and now they want to come clean. It takes all kinds but did you know ethical bosses may not be the bosses we should want? A new study suggests that ethical conduct leads to mental exhaustion and the "moral licensing" to lash out at employees, according to newswise.com.  Ethical behavior can turn abusive because of ego depletion and moral licensing. "Moral licensing" is a phenomenon in which people, after doing something good, feel they have earned the right to act in a negative manner. "Ironically, when leaders felt mentally fatigued and morally licensed after displays of ethical behavior, they were more likely to be abusive toward their ...