When the Underdog Speaks: How Low-Performing Employees Voice Impacts Leaders Trust and Empowerment

Extant research has generally assumed that ideas or opinions expressed by high-performing employees are more likely to arouse leaders’ attention and elicit positive responses from leaders. Drawing upon costly signaling theory, we challenge this prevailing assumption by exploring how and when low-performing employees’ voices can bring benefits for them. We propose that the voice of low-performing employees is more likely to enhance leaders’ trust in these employees, which in turn promotes leaders’ empowering behaviors. We further consider the moderating role of leader Machiavellianism in these relationships. We found support for our hypotheses across an experiment and a field study. Results showed that employee voice was positively related to leader trust and subsequent empowering behavior when employee task performance was low. Moreover, the results revealed an important three-way interaction effect. Only when both employee task performance and leader Machiavellianism were low, did employee voice positively influence leader trust and subsequent empowering behavior. Taken together, our findings reveal the benefits of low-performing employees’ voices for themselves and the importance of encouraging low-performing employees to speak up in the workplace.