Inclusive Leadership and Service Innovation Performance: The Moderating Role of Supervisor's Use of Empathetic Language

Leadership behavior can positively affect the performance of employees depending on the preferred style. Considering the relations between managers and employees, especially in the service sector, the effect of leadership style on employee performance is of great importance. Therefore, the first aim of the research is to examine the effect of inclusive leadership style on service innovation performance. The second aim of this research is to investigate whether the impact of inclusive leadership style on service innovation performance differs depending on the empathic language used by supervisors, especially in the service sector where customer demands, and expectations are differentiated and rapidly changing. In this context, the data collected from 275 bank employees reached by convenience sampling method were analyzed with AMOS, SPSS and PROCESS macro. As a result of the research, it was found that inclusive leadership has a positive effect on service innovation performance. In addition, it was determined that the use of empathic language has a moderating role in the impact of inclusive leadership on service innovation performance. Mainly, inclusive leadership was found to significantly affect employees’ service innovation performance when the supervisor’s use of empathetic language is high. The study's findings were discussed, and recommendations for future research were presented at the end of the study.