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This paper aims to outline a process for establishing and implementing strategic priorities to enhance worker garden variety creativity – a type of creativity that improves direct worker outcomes such as enhancing operational efficiencies and flexibility.

The paper presents process suggestions that are based on existing research and practical understanding of best practices for improving worker creativity in typical workplace settings.

The paper finds that organizations need to maximize worker creativity at all organizational levels in order to maintain the flexibility necessary for today's turbulent economic climate. Also, there are concrete steps organizations can take to develop this creativity.

This process is not designed to increase high‐level creativity (such as developing new microchips), and is not appropriate for moving organizations forward in such a direction.

Most organizations are better served by increasing more prosaic outcomes that are improved through garden variety creativity. As such, the vast majority of organizations will benefit by finding ways to improve garden variety creativity.

This paper makes a contribution to the literature in terms of understanding how organizations can strategically focus on worker creativity improvements, and how this focus can be translated into managerial actions.

While there has been an abundance of research on the positive outcomes of creative environment, little work has been done on how creative environment influences the general work outcomes of noncreative specialist workers. The paper aims to fill this void by examining the influence of creative environment on absenteeism among garden variety workers and the mediating role of job satisfaction.

The paper uses cross-sectional data of 116 noncreative specialist workers to empirically test the hypotheses. The authors used covariance-based structural equation modeling (SEM) through the lavaan package for the statistical software R.

Results found that, for a cross section of noncreative specialist workers, a one standard deviation increase in a worker's creative environment would decrease that worker's absenteeism by 0.447 standard deviation. The creative environment also explained 11.3% of the variance in absenteeism. Subsequent analysis showed that job satisfaction fully mediated the relationship between the creative environment and absenteeism and that the results were resistant to omitted variable bias.

The study contributes to theory and practice by showing empirically that creative environment leads to positive work outcomes, despite the innovation level required by the job. This study advances research on creative environment by targeting the garden variety workers, underscores the importance of cultivating a creative environment and calls attention to the complexity of the creativity–job affect link.

This study aims to validate the motivating language scale developed by Mayfield et al. (1995) in the context of the hotel industries of Bangladesh and Malaysia.

For Study 1, data were collected from employees (lower and mid-level) of three to five-star hotels in Bangladesh. Customer-contact employees working in four- and five-star hotels in Malaysia participated in Study 2. Both studies featured a cross-sectional survey design.

Factor analysis revealed that both samples provided three-factor solutions for the motivating language scale in both countries. Convergent, discriminant and nomological validity were assessed by testing with outcome variables of motivating language.

Future studies may use all three versions of the scale (Bengali, Malay and English) to collect data, as all three have been validated.

By validating the Bengali and Malay versions of the motivating language scale, this study contributes to the leadership language literature, specifically that related to hotel industries in developing contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to propose motivating language as a mediator to increase the positive effects of servant leadership on subordinates’ outcomes. The authors propose that motivating language acts as a mediator to transmit servant leadership traits and enhances the positive impact that servant leadership verbal behavior has on employees’ performance.

By developing a conceptual model, the authors propose a connection between servant leadership and motivating language.

In the proposed model, motivating language acts as a full and a partial mediator. The authors further categorize three distinct outcome sets that should be improved from this relationship. The first set includes improved worker performance, job satisfaction, absenteeism and worker innovation. The second set is composed of self-efficacy, organizational citizenship behavior and employee commitment. Finally, the third set includes trust, satisfaction with the leader and inspiration to become servant leaders.

Empirical research needs to be conducted to test this model.

The positive effects of servant leadership through the use of motivating language could be operationalized in multiple ways. First, potential servant leaders could take the well-established, reliable and valid motivating language scale to diagnostically identify their leader-member communication strengths and weaknesses. Then, tailored motivating language trainings could be implemented which target motivating language weaknesses and key strategic outcomes in the proposed model. Furthermore, motivating language training would be a valuable instrument for transmission of a servant leadership culture.

Servant leadership style responds to the demand for positive ethical behavior that is much needed during these times when emphasis is given to profitability and lack of concern for people is the norm rather than the exception. It is also synchronized with the current benefits of organizational citizenship behaviors that have recently emerged in the field of managerial research.

This paper aims at addressing a gap in the literature by developing a model of how leader strategic language, namely, motivating language, mediates between servant leadership and worker outcomes.

This study aims to examine the impact of managerial use of motivating language on employee absenteeism, turnover intention, job satisfaction and job performance for employees from three nations: India, the USA and Vietnam.

Data is collected from 614 employees working in India, the USA and Vietnam. A variance-based partial least squares structural equation modeling technique is used to test the hypotheses. In addition, a statistical test is used to examine the statistical differences in the results across the three nations.

The findings are consistent with the motivating language theory, in that managerial use of motivating language can be an effective strategy in motivating employees. Specifically, motivating language is found to significantly decrease employee absenteeism and turnover intention, as well as significantly increase job satisfaction and performance across the three nations. The effect sizes indicate that, across all samples, motivating language has a medium effect for all employee outcomes, except absenteeism, which is shown to have a small effect size. Moreover, the results indicate that employees in different cultures perceive and interpret the leader’s use of motivating language in different ways. Whereas motivating language may receive greater success in promoting workers’ job performance in eastern cultures, it is also more effective in retaining employees in western cultures.

The study adds to the literature in three major ways. First, it provides evidence for two understudied relationships: motivating language and absenteeism and motivating language and turnover intention. Second, it assesses the generalizability of the motivating language theory by investigating data from India, the USA and Vietnam. Finally, this paper offers a statistical comparison of the three samples to analyze how the relationship between motivating language and worker outcomes differ among the three samples.

The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of rural superintendent’s talk on the perceived outcomes of principal communication competence and organizational communication satisfaction. More specifically, this study explored whether the source credibility dimensions of goodwill, competency and trustworthiness had a greater impact on the perceived outcomes when mediated by motivating language (ML) than not.

Direct and indirect paths between superintendent and principal communication were modeled, analyzed and evaluated using descriptive and inferential methods, including R version 3.6.1 with the lavaan package and the Sobel mediation test.

Research findings indicated the importance of superintendent talk and motivating language theory (MLT) that, when combined, constitute the medium of superintendent practice and enable a superintendent to execute their roles and duties. Additionally, the authors found the dimensions of goodwill and competency had the most significant impact on the two outcomes mediated by ML. This finding indicates that principals are calling for a more empathetic and interactive form of credibility than the long-established form of credibility based on expertise and stewardship. Finally, as the authors call for an expanded role from the community in research, scholarship and implementation of MLT, they suggest due to the lack of significance in trustworthiness mediated by ML, future research into trustworthiness and trust.

This study’s value is to increase understanding of educational administration scholars of MLT and its power to influence employee and organizational outcomes and highlight a reframing of superintendent credibility away from say and do agreement and expertise and stewardship.

Recent evidence suggests that leaders' communication is central to an organization's success. The purpose of the current research is to examine how the leader's motivating language (direction giving, empathetic and meaning-making) translates into positive career outcomes through the mechanism of positive affective tone.

A three-wave time-lagged research design was applied to collect data (N = 320) from employees of the telecom sector of Pakistan.

Employing structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis, the study results indicate that high levels of leader's motivating language (direction giving and meaning-making) result in positive affective tone in employees, which further creates career motivation (career insight, career resilience and career identity) and career satisfaction. In contrast, positive affective tone does not mediate between empathetic language and career motivation (career insight, career resilience and career identity) and career satisfaction relationship.

The present study's findings explicate the unique effects and mechanism through which leaders motivating language becomes influential in reaping its benefits for followers' career outcomes. More research is warranted to examine other attitudinal and behavioral outcomes of leaders motivating language. This study research prepares future researchers to investigate other mediators and moderators in the leaders motivating language–career outcomes relationship. The authors recommend further implications of the study's findings for research and practice in the domain of leadership, affect and careers.

The current study opens up a new perspective in leaders motivating language literature by examining the underlying mechanism of positive affective tone.

The purpose of this study is to examine the direct and indirect effects of motivating language on organizational commitment, as this phenomenon has drawn the attention of researchers.

This study employs social exchange theory and motivating language theory to examine data collected from 217 full-time employees across various US-based companies. The proposed hypotheses were analyzed using the PLS-SEM method.

This study’s findings demonstrate that motivating language positively affects employees’ organizational commitment and affective trust but not cognitive trust, which mediates the relationship between motivating language and organizational commitment.

There are some limitations of our study that need to be mentioned. First, there are concerns about survey data collection via M-Turk (Shapiro et al., 2013). We attempted to overcome some of these problems by including questions to identify careless respondents. Also, we eliminated many respondents who completed the surveys in unreasonably short periods of time. Hence, we believe we accounted for response bias with these check points. Also, while we believe our final sample is a representative sample due to the significant amount of data elimination during the data collection, we believe that checking for non-response bias, as Armstrong and Overton (1977) suggest, is imperative. Unfortunately, due to the nature of M-Turk, that is impossible. However, M-Turk recruits respondents based on the parameters provided by the researchers, so we expect the non-respondents to be not significantly different from the respondents. In parallel to that, we acknowledge the limitations of our study sample. Due to that reason, our findings must be considered within the context of our sample parameters. We urge future researchers of this area to further validate our findings in different types of samples.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, they are the first to analyze the impact of motivating language on organizational commitment and the mediating role of trust (cognitive and affective) in this relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a model for how leaders can nurture and develop worker garden variety creativity.

This model was created by synthesizing existing research and literature on leadership and garden variety creativity.

Findings' synthesis yielded a testable and implementable model for improving worker garden creativity through leader interventions.

This paper provides a specific examination of leader potential for garden variety creativity enhancement. This focus is different from most research that examines organizational structure interventions, high‐level creativity, or both.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the motivating language (ML) theory conceptualization by examining the role of leader‐level communication (as compared to the current dyadic level conceptualization) in employee performance and job satisfaction.

Partial least squares (PLS) analysis is used to test how leader and dyadic‐based ML effects employee outcomes. PLS analysis is applied in an incremental fashion, adding leader‐level language after dyadic‐level ML had been included in the model. Such an incremental approach shows the extent of added variance by leader‐level ML. The sample is drawn from 151 health care workers in a Southeastern health facility.

Results indicate that leader‐level ML significantly and positively effects follower performance. In comparison, dyadic‐level ML significantly and positively effects both employee performance and job satisfaction.

This research only examines a subset of the outcome variables that have been examined in ML research. As such, it is not clear how extensively leader‐level ML effects related employee outcomes.

The paper helps us to better understand how ML actually effects employee outcomes. As a result, this research contributes insights into improved organizational interventions that are designed to improve follower outcomes through leader communication.

The paper extends our understanding of ML and leader communication. The paper adds a leader‐level component to the original dyadic‐level theory. This reconfiguration offers new avenues for research investigation and implications for leader training.