In terms of producing and exporting footwear, Vietnamese businesses have made significant progress. Vietnamese footwear businesses still face several challenges in maintaining and expanding, nonetheless. The purpose of this study was to better understand how leadership styles affect employees' willingness to innovate. This study analyzed data from 681 employees of shoe stores in order to meet the study's aim. SmartPLS 3 software has chosen to conduct data analysis through the PLS-SEM approach. The findings demonstrate that leadership styles such as humorous leadership, transformational leadership, servant leadership, inclusive leadership, and authentic leadership have positive impacts on employees' innovative behavior, with humorous leadership playing the most significant effect. Besides, the findings indicate that transactional leadership has a negative impact on innovative behavior. In conclusion, increasing humorous leadership skills will be one of the most effective solutions for encouraging innovative behavior of shoe store employees in Vietnam.

Leadership style, employees’ innovative work behavior, shoe store