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When leaders admit they are wrong: The effect of fallibility admission on perceived competence and employee feedback-seeking behavior
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School of Business |
Bachelor's thesis
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en
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38 + 12
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This thesis examines how a leader’s admission of fallibility affects followers’ perceptions of the leader’s competence and their willingness to provide honest feed-back. A quantitative, between-subjects, vignette-based experiment was conducted with 29 Finnish university students and young professionals, who were randomly assigned to read either a leader admitting a mistake or the same leader communicating with confidence. The findings show that the confident leader was rated as significantly more competent, while the fallible leader received significantly higher scores for feedback willingness, psychological safety, humility, and trustworthiness. Fallibility admission therefore involves a measurable trade-off between perceived competence and honest communication.