Abstract:On the basis of three waved time lagged data of 388 employees, the study examined the influence of personality traits and leader identity on motivation to lead. The results indicated that: (1)Core self evaluation showed a positive impact on both affective-identity motivation and social-normative motivation, whereas humility had a positive impact on social-normative motivation.(2) Individual identity mediated the positive relationship between core self evaluation and affective-identity motivation, whereas relational identity and collective identity mediated the relationship between both core self evaluation and humility on social normative motivation positively. (3) Gender moderated the mediating effects of individual identity between core self evaluation and affective identity motivation, such that the mediating effect of individual identity was stronger for male than female. The practical implications for personality traits and motivation to lead and directions for future research were discussed lastly.