To maximize the benefits of star employees on non-star peers’ performance, star employees must proactively help their peers. Based on social learning theory, we conducted three studies to investigate whether supervisors' servant leadership promotes star employees’ proactive helping and whether non-stars’ can benefit from stars’ proactive helping. Additionally, we also explore the moderating effect of the group star proportion (GSP) on these potential social learning processes. We tested our hypotheses by collecting data regarding stars and non-star peers from three distinct samples: 97 insurance sales teams, 46 R&D engineer teams, and 65 automobile sales teams. The findings of multilevel path analysis from the three studies revealed that: (1) supervisors’ servant leadership positively correlated with star employees’ proactive helping; (2) star employees’ proactive helping exhibited a positive indirect effect on their peers’ performance via peers’ job-related self-efficacy and challenge-seeking behavior; and (3) a higher group star proportion intensified these indirect relationships. Findings offer both theoretical and practical insights into how star employees benefit their peers and provide guidance on managing and leveraging the contributions of star employees.
