Unveiling the empowering elixir: exploring the impact of HEXACO traits on leadership and their ripple effect on employee engagement and creative performance

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to find out the role of positive personality traits such as honesty-humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness to experience (HEXACO) in the development of empowering leadership, and also determine the impact that mastery goal orientation and work engagement play in linking the effects of an empowering leader on the creative performance of their followers. Design/methodology/approach - The quantitative research design is used along with a deductive approach to achieve the objectives of the study. Data from 337 employees in the telecom sector was collected through self-administered questionnaires using the purposive sampling method. SEM-AMOS methods were used to conduct the analysis, and regression analysis was used to test the formulated hypotheses. Findings - The study's findings indicated that each component of HEXACO (honesty-humility beta values = 0.086, p < 0.05, emotionality values as beta = 0.275, p < 0.001, extroverts beta = 0.217, p < 0.001, consciousness beta = 0.277, p < 0.001 and agreeableness beta = 0.063) played a significant role in fostering empowered leadership. The results also suggested that there is a sequential mediation of mastery goal orientation and work engagement in the relationship between empowering leadership and creative performance. Originality/value - This study is unique since it covers the antecedents and outcomes of empowering leadership. For antecedents, the study used the HEXACO personality model with all its elements to identify its role in the development of empowering leadership. Moreover, the study also used mastery goal orientation and work engagement as sequential mediators to check the impact of empowering leadership on the creative performance of employees.