Abstract

Employees’ innovative behavior is crucial for organizations to maintain competitiveness and foster growth. Empowering leadership coaching styles, which delegate authority and responsibility to organizational members while respecting their autonomy, create opportunities for members to solve problems and present innovative ideas. Drawing on signal theory, this study aims to clarify the process through which political skill influences employees’ work innovative behavior, mediated by empowering leadership. Additionally, we examine whether the leader’s implicit followership prototype moderates the relationship between employees’ political skills and empowering leadership. Survey data were collected in two rounds with a two-week lag from 180 employees in a manufacturing company in South Korea. The results revealed that political skill was related to empowering leadership and subsequent work innovative behavior. Furthermore, the leaders’ implicit followership prototype strengthened the relationship between political skill and empowering leadership. This study provides meaningful theoretical and practical insights into empowering coaching styles.