What Does it Take to Break the Silence in Teams: Authentic Leadership and/or Proactive Followership?

Leadership may help break the silence in teams, but this may not be equally true for all employees. Using behavioral plasticity theory, we propose that authentic leadership—a set of leadership behaviors through which leaders enact their true selves—reduces silence and motivates speaking up in employees low on proactive personality, but hardly affects employees who are proactive by nature, because proactive employees are less susceptible to social influences. Using data from 223 employees (nested in 45 work teams), we indeed find authentic leadership to reduce silence in employees with less proactive personalities, but not in more proactive employees. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for silence and authentic leadership.