Exploring food and beverage hospitality sector employees’ experiences of empathetic ability in their leaders

Abstract

The UK F&B hospitality sector recently faced challenges such as issues with employee motivation, stress, and retention, but previous research suggested empathetic leadership may help address these challenges. This study explored UK F&B hospitality employees’ experiences of their leaders’ empathetic abilities using a semi-structured interview design and analysed the data using reflexive thematic analysis. The researchers interviewed 10 participants and generated five main themes: Behaviours of empathetic leadership; Employee beliefs about empathetic leadership; Performance benefits of empathetic leadership; Structural and organisational implementations of empathetic leadership; and Unempathetic leadership. Our findings suggested participants experienced leaders with empathetic abilities positively and attributed positive outcomes like enhanced retention, loyalty, motivation and productivity to empathetic leadership, which largely aligned with existing research. Future research could focus on the effects of empathetic leadership on specific constructs like burnout, potential negative effects of empathetic leadership, adopt experimental designs and focus on managers’ experiences of empathetic leadership.