Intra- and inter-personal factors of facilitative leadership to cultivate corporate entrepreneurship and innovation

Abstract

Organisations find themselves operating in a dynamic environment with rapid changes in new technologies, competition brough on by platform business models and the gig economy, COVID-19, and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. To remain competitive, meet changing customer demands and thrive in this environment, organisations need to cultivate corporate entrepreneurship and innovation which is considered a critical source for long term sustainability and success. For corporate entrepreneurship and innovation to be practised successfully, a co-creation type of leadership style is required and the facilitative leader, as such a leadership style, is introduced in this research project. The purpose of this research was to deepen the understanding and add to the body of knowledge on facilitative leadership to enhance and execute corporate entrepreneurship. The intra- and inter- personal skills of facilitative leadership was of particular interest to this study. A sample of fifteen participants were selected from the financial services industry in South Africa, who lead teams in a facilitative manner, executing on corporate entrepreneurship and innovation. Following a inductive approach and qualitative method, unstructured interviews were used for data collection. The research deduced six intra-personal factors of facilitative leadership, four inter-personal skills and two skills which are considered as both intra- and inter-personal.