Leadership skills to support employee innovation mindset : which leadership skills are crucial for a manager to support an employee’s innovation mindset successfully?
Creators: name: Laib, Lea
Publisher: name: ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften
Year: 2023
Subjects: 658.4: Leitendes Management
658.406: Innovationsmanagement, Change Management

description: Innovation is critical to gaining a competitive edge in today's organisations, driven by the demand for new solutions and the evolving business landscape. To thrive in these changing conditions, companies must equip themselves with the managerial skills necessary for innovation. Leadership plays a crucial role in fostering a culture of innovation within organisations, which means it is imperative to invest in the development of leaders.
Future leaders need to possess skills that allow them to foster employee innovation mindsets. In order to effectively train managers in this area, it is crucial to identify the key leadership competences that are central to promoting an employee innovation mindset. The identification of these key competences highlights the existing research gap. Consequently, the study aims to address this research gap and formulate three hypotheses. The primary objectives of the study are to identify leadership skills that support the employee innovation mindset, empirically test the significance of these skills, and examine the role of company culture in relation to the theoretically derived 'from manager to innovation leader' model.
Based on an extensive literature review, 15 leadership skills were identified as potentially relevant for fostering employee innovation. Research was also conducted on seven factors related to the innovation mindset of employees based on the definition of the innovation mindset as a holistic belief in creating newness in the workplace.
The three hypotheses were then verified by means of a quantitative analysis with a sample size of 213. For this purpose, associates from the author’s environment and from different companies were invited to complete an online survey.
The survey results indicated that the participants rated themselves relatively highly in terms of the identified innovation mindset factors. It appears that individuals either overestimate their level of innovation or face obstacles preventing them from fully implementing their employee
innovation mindset in the workplace. These obstacles may arise from limited resources or high daily workloads that do not prioritize or allow for the cultivation of innovative practices. Increased efficiency and a higher standard of quality were the most commonly cited reasons for this need. However, the relatively low number of references to the need of innovation itself may indicate that companies are not investing in it.
The study also found that leadership skills and an employee innovation mindset are positively correlated. According to a linear regression analysis, leadership skills play a significant role in fostering an employee's innovation mindset.
Moreover, a further analysis of the correlation between leadership skills and the innovation mindset revealed that communication skills, commitment, team leadership, change leadership, and decision-making and problem-solving skills exhibited higher correlations with the innovation mindset than other leadership skills. These findings are consistent with previous research emphasising the importance of factors such as employee empowerment, involvement in decision-making, and active problem-solving skills in fostering innovation.
The study also examined the relationship between the “from manager to innovation leader” model by Kremer, Villamor, and Aguinis (2019) and the leadership skills that support employee innovation. These results indicate that the leadership skills that support an employee innovation mindset, identified in the literature review, correlate with the recommendations and guidelines presented in the “from manager to innovation leader” model.
To conclude, this study provides insights into leadership skills that support employee innovation. The findings present 15 leadership skills which are of importance and also highlight specific skills, such as communication, commitment, and decision-making, which are crucial in fostering an employee innovation mindset. In addition, the implications for practice emphasise the importance of company culture, specific leadership skills, alignment between guidelines and skills, individual differences, multiple factors contributing to innovation, and the value of experience and expertise in innovation promotion. By considering the insights provided by this study, practitioners can develop tailored strategies that foster an innovationfriendly environment and enhance the employee innovation mindset within their organisations.