Empowering leadership in action: Unleashing teacher proactivity through psychological empowerment and self-efficacy

,Numerous studies have investigated the influence of leadership on teachers’ proactive work behaviors; however, the mediating roles of psychological empowerment and self-efficacy remain underexplored and warrant further attention. This study aims to analyze how school principals’ empowering leadership behaviors influence teachers’ proactive work behaviors through psychological empowerment and teacher self-efficacy. A structural model was developed and tested using data from 490 Turkish secondary school teachers. The results confirmed that psychological empowerment and teacher self-efficacy each mediated the link between empowering leadership and proactive work behavior, with a sequential mediation effect via both, as well as a remaining direct effect, indicating partial mediation. In schools where principals demonstrate empowering leadership, teachers report higher levels of psychological empowerment and self-efficacy, which, in turn, foster greater proactive behaviors. These findings underscore the vital role of psychological resources in translating empowering leadership into teacher proactivity and contribute to the educational leadership literature.