Introduction: This research was aimed to investigate the relationship between managers' leadership styles and staff empowerment in Ilam hospitals quantitatively.
 Materials & methods: 182 city hospitals staff was determined in present cross-sectional study. A questionnaire was used for data collection. Its validity and reliability were assured by using expert's comments and Cronbach's alpha (0.82) respectively. Data were analyzed by SPSS16 statistical software and descriptive statistical methods (spearman correlation coefficient) were used.
 Findings: findings showed that the mean and standard deviation based on exception aspect was 3.09±1.12, reward contingency was 2.82±1.08, contingent reward was 2.95±1.11, idealistic features were 2.22±0.99, personal consideration was 2.51±1.15 and motivational aspect 1.19±1.11.
 Discussion & Conclusion: Between empowerment and transactional leadership style dimensions including exception aspect, conditional reward, and contingency reward, there were significant relationship only between conditional reward and contingency reward and empowerment while there were no significant relationship between exception aspect and empowerment. There were significant relationship between evolutionary leadership style with empowerment dimensions just between idealistic features and personal considerations with empowerment, and there were no significant relationships between motivational dimension of evolutionary leadership style and empowerment. Taking into account the results of this research, any of transactional leadership styles, transformative and staff empowerment, staff empowerment in transformational leadership style is more powerful than transactional leadership style.