Is too much inclusive leadership a good thing? An examination of curvilinear relationship between inclusive leadership and employees’ task performance

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the inclusive leadership’s too-much-of-a-good-thing effect (TMGT effect) and illustrate the possibility of the potential drawbacks of inclusive leadership. Design/methodology/approach: In total, 191 questionnaires were valid and used in the study. Employee participants were asked to report their direct supervisor’s inclusive leadership. Employees’ direct supervisors were asked to rate employees’ task performance to minimize common method variance. The authors use regression analysis to test the hypothesis. Findings: An inverted U-shape characterizes the relationship between inclusive leadership and subordinates’ task performance. Specifically, employees’ task performance is low when the supervisor’s inclusive leadership is low; task performance increases when inclusive leadership is from low to moderate levels, and task performance decreases when inclusive leadership is from moderate to high levels. Originality/value: The study sheds light on inclusive leadership, especially the inclusive leadership in Chinese context. In addition, this finding is important as it investigates the inclusion’s TMGT effect which is rare in organizational research, and the findings also provide additional evidence of TMGT effect in management fields.