A climate for innovation has become a critical resource for service organisations seeking to differentiate themselves through customer experience, yet the leadership conditions that shape this climate remain only partially understood. This paper examines the role of leadership – at senior management, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), and line manager level – in shaping an innovative atmosphere within a service organisation. Adopting a qualitative single case study design, thirty-five in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with employees and managers of a major telecommunications company in Egypt, a market characterised by economic and political turbulence. Findings reveal that senior leadership and CEO sponsorship, high-quality leader-member relationships between line managers and subordinates, and leadership-driven customer centricity are among the most influential leadership dimensions fostering an innovative organisational atmosphere. The study identifies specific leadership behaviours – including intellectual stimulation, participative decision-making, non-controlling supervision, and the communication of a customer-centric vision – that employees associated with the differentiated products and services the organisation brought to market. Because customers were not participants in this study, these associations with customer experience are reported as employees' own perceptions and interpretations rather than as independently verified customer-side outcomes. The paper contributes to leadership and innovation management literature by offering an in-depth, qualitative account of how leadership shapes an innovative organisational atmosphere, and offers managers a diagnostic framework of leadership practices for building innovative, customer-oriented organisations in turbulent emerging markets.

leadership, transformational leadership, climate for innovation, customer experience, Egypt