What Drives Leaders to Serve? The Joint and Interactive Effects of HEXACO Personality Traits and Implicit Motives on Servant Leadership

Drawing on the channeling hypothesis (Winter et al., 1998), this study examines the role of leaders’ explicit personality traits, implicit motives, and their interaction in predicting servant leadership. Using a dyadic design (N = 219), supervisors completed measures of their HEXACO personality traits and implicit motives, while subordinates rated their servant leadership behavior. Contrary to expectations, neither personality traits nor implicit motives explained unique variance in servant leadership. However, interactions between explicit traits and implicit motives significantly improved prediction. Specifically, leaders high in affiliation motivation were perceived as more servant when they scored high on extraversion and, contrary to expectations, low on agreeableness. These findings highlight the value of considering both implicit motives and explicit traits, as well as their interplay, in understanding servant leadership.