Driving Millennials’ Creative Performance in Digital Banking: The Impact of Humble Leadership, Intrinsic Motivation, and Positive Affect through Work Engagement

This study investigates how humble leadership, intrinsic motivation, and employee positive affect influence work engagement and creative performance among Millennial employees in Jakarta’s digital banking sector. As creativity becomes increasingly important in a rapidly changing digital environment, understanding the psychological and leadership-related factors that support innovation is essential. Using a quantitative survey approach, data were collected from Millennial employees working in three independent digital banks in Jakarta. The proposed model was analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with a two-stage approach to assess reliability, validity, and structural relationships. The results show that humble leadership, intrinsic motivation, and employee positive affect each have a significant positive effect on work engagement. Furthermore, intrinsic motivation, employee positive affect, and work engagement significantly enhance creative performance. However, humble leadership does not directly affect creative performance, indicating that its influence operates indirectly through work engagement. Mediation analysis confirms that work engagement plays a key role in linking leadership humility, internal motivation, and employees’ emotional states to creative outcomes. These findings highlight the importance of fostering work engagement as a pathway to strengthening creativity among Millennial employees in the digital banking sector. The study contributes empirical evidence from the Indonesian digital banking context and provides practical insights for leaders seeking to build an innovative and psychologically empowered workforce.