This paper describes the construction and empirical evaluation of a new scale for
measuring empowering leader behavior. Study One consisted of thorough interviews
with external leaders and team members in three organizations. Behaviors elicited in the
interviews were classi®ed by researchers into eight categories of leader empowering
behavior and the Empowering Leadership Questionnaire (ELQ) was constructed to
measure each of these categories. In Study Two, the ELQ was administered to team
members and leaders from two organizations. The results indicated that ®ve-factors
(Coaching, Informing, Leading By Example, Showing Concern/Interacting with the
Team, and Participative Decision-Making) adequately describe the data. In Study
Three, we cross-validated the scale in a sample from ®ve organizations and the factor
analysis con®rmed the ®ve-factor model. The ELQ dimensions were also compared with
behaviors measured by two well-established measures of leader behavior. The results
indicated that the ELQ dimensions partially overlap with previously identi®ed con-
structs, but that empowering leadership behavior can not be entirely accounted for by
the earlier measures. De®nitions and implications for the categories of empowering
leader behaviors are oered. Copyright # 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.