Measuring the Impact of Leadership Development: Gaining Influence through the Right Metrics

MIT Sloan Management Review published an article in Winter 2024 titled “Leadership Development Is Failing Us. Here’s How to Fix It.” In it, they note that their review of leadership development programs (LDPs) at several dozen business schools around the world illustrated the typical shortcomings:

“Few program directors we surveyed could identify how the design and evaluation of their leadership development offerings consistently meet scientific standards of desired impact. Instead of documenting improvement in participants’ capabilities, for example, the majority (70%) said they settle for positive reactions to the program or evidence of knowledge gained, at least in the short term (63%). None linked their programming to changes in participants’ career trajectories, followers’ attitudes or performance, or team- or organization-level outcomes.”

Working with companies on their leadership development priorities and initiatives for 30 years has led me to the same conclusion. For example, most L&D professionals are very familiar with Kirkpatrick’s Model of four levels of evaluation for L&D programs. However, as MIT notes, most only use Level 1 evaluations or reactions to programs. They rarely use Level 2 (measuring learning), Level 3 (measuring behavior change) or Level 4 (measuring results or KPIs such as increased sales). Measuring only “feel good” reactions to programs never goes a long way in influencing stakeholders about the importance of L&D work. As you move up the levels in evaluating initiative success, you move up the influence scale as well, with the greatest influence provided by Level 3 and Level 4 evaluations.

Level 3 evaluations or measuring behavior change is something very easily done as part of L&D initiatives. For example, almost every L&D program I’ve ever seen incorporates some type of assessment to help the people in the program gain insight about themselves. If the L&D program has a broad focus such as building leadership capabilities, the program often includes a 360-degree assessment to help people understand how their key stakeholders at work perceive them. This step is important because it does build insight, and insight can lead to change. However to know if change is really happening, there are additional steps that should happen:

• Include a “Time 2” type of 360 assessment – This will help measure individual change. But, to be most successful, the person needs clear identification of what they are working to improve after they complete the first 360. The organization can also specify certain capabilities that they need everyone to continue improving and these can be part of what is measured at the Time 2 assessment.
  
  
• Use group reporting, dashboards, and analytics – As easy as this is to do, it is often not done. More importantly than being easy though, this is one of the most influential steps L&D professionals can take to show change and results. Top level executive stakeholders may not fully recognize the value of things like 360 assessments until they see the group reporting. Group reporting and dashboards can reveal meaningful results such as:
  
  
  • Patterns of capability strengths and weaknesses across an organization from the original 360 results
  • How weaknesses have improved after L&D interventions using “Time 2” assessment results
    
    
• Use other survey results to show improvements over time after L&D interventions – Many organizations implement engagement surveys annually, but miss linking these to broad L&D initiatives, and the improvement results that could be gained in part from these initiatives.

Level 4 evaluations (results) of L&D success are easier to accomplish when the L&D effort is targeted to building specific capabilities (e.g., sales skills, customer service skills). In these cases, results (e.g., increased sales, improved customer feedback) can be measured before and after the L&D initiative. However, the impact of broader leadership development programs can also be measured. Asking up front what leadership impacts an L&D initiative is meant to change is important. Are you trying to improve employee engagement metrics, turnover metrics, customer feedback metrics, or business profitability metrics? How does the L&D initiative focus on improving these metrics and what results do you see before and after the initiative?

The Kirkpatrick Model has been around for decades and is easy to understand and to implement. Taking steps to move from Level 1 to Level 4 evaluations of L&D initiatives will result in greater understanding of the impact of L&D, and more influence for the L&D function and professional.

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