Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between team empowerment and team proactivity and the moderating roles of a team leader's emotional intelligence (EI) and a team member's proactive personality. Design/methodology/approach: To provide a rigorous test of the hypotheses, a field study from a sample of 910 certified nurses in 82 teams from 12 university hospitals in Turkey was conducted. Findings: The results reveal that proactivity is positively associated with team empowerment. In addition, team leader's EI and team members' proactive personality influence the relationship between team empowerment and team proactivity. Specifically, teams exhibit the highest proactivity when team leaders' EI and team members' proactive personality are high. Research limitations/implications: The main strength of the investigation in this study was its multilevel research design. Most research on proactivity and empowerment has been conducted within single organizations, precluding an assessment of the way in which individual difference variables influence empowerment or proactivity. The multilevel design incorporated in this study, however, was capable of capturing the complexity of individual behaviors by considering different contexts. Practical implications: In encouraging team proactivity, leadership and team members' personality characteristics do matter. Identifying individual difference variables such as team leader's EI, leader-member exchange, locus of control or team members' personality help to advance the theoretical understanding of the team proactivity. This study provides evidence of the positive relationship between team empowerment and team proactivity. Such knowledge may help to search for continuous improvement and innovative solutions to work problems employed by healthcare administrators and potentially reduce the costs associated with losing high-potential nurses. Originality/value: This is one of the first studies to provide evidence of the moderating roles of the team leader's EI and team members' proactive personality levels on the relationship between team empowerment and team proactivity in university hospitals that formally implement work teams.