Beyond Leadership Skills: The Conditional Impact of Self‐Directed Protean Career Orientation on Leader Identity Formation

ABSTRACT This study investigates how leadership skills contribute to leader identity formation through prosocial impact at work and how this process is shaped by self‐directed protean career orientation (PCO). Drawing on the identity‐development spiral model, we conceptualize consideration and initiating structure as core leadership skills and examine their effects on leader identity via prosocial impact. Using two‐wave survey data from 432 full‐time employees with subordinates in Japan, structural equation modelling revealed three main findings. First, prosocial impact fully mediated the relationship between consideration and leader identity, whereas the indirect effect of initiating structure was not significant. Second, PCO positively predicted both consideration and initiating structure. Third, PCO moderated the effects of leadership skills in distinct ways: consideration strengthened prosocial impact and leader identity among high‐PCO individuals, whereas initiating structure showed no significant benefit and even a weakening tendency for those with high PCO. These findings refine the identity‐development spiral model, showing that leadership skill acquisition does not uniformly reinforce leader identity. They also highlight that PCO can play both a facilitative and inhibiting role in leadership development and underscore the importance of tailoring leadership training to employees' career orientations.