The Challenge
Focusing on the Wrong Outcomes
Talent professionals often judge the success of leadership development initiatives using measures that don’t factor in organizational impact.
For example, they might rely on subjective feedback from leaders or look at leaders’ career outcomes following the program. Did leaders enjoy the experience? Did they perform a positive self-evaluation? Were they promoted? Did they score well on performance ratings?
While the answers to these questions can offer some insight, they can’t tell you whether the program made a difference in organizational performance. After all, even promotions and performance ratings can happen without a development program—especially considering who gets into leadership development programs and why.
The Solution
Refocus Outcomes
When we define leadership in terms of performance and not status, leader effectiveness is more easily observable and measurable.
Instead of considering whether an executive was rated highly by their boss, who likely nominated them to the program to groom them for a future role, what if we were to look for behavioral change?
These questions are more relevant: Did the executives set relevant, actionable change goals? Did the leaders act on these goals? Did any measure of team effectiveness improve following the program? Did the leaders show any improvement in post-program 360 scores?