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 constructs, 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.