Abstract Previous research on the relationship between empowering leadership and employee creativity has found mixed results, calling for more research to explore alternative mechanism and boundary conditions in this relationship. In this research, drawing on regulatory focus theory and social role theory, we propose that empowering leadership has a positive relationship with employee creativity through employee promotion focus and that this relationship is stronger for male (vs. female) leaders and for female (vs. male) employees. We conducted a multi‐source survey study and a vignette experiment to test our theoretical model. Results across these two studies supported our hypotheses. Our findings offer implications for research and practice regarding empowering leadership and creativity.