Judging the Success of Leadership Development

Much has been written about measuring the ROI of leadership development. While it is important to find quantitative ways to measure things, those measures are often tricky and time consuming to create for leadership development efforts. That’s why we need to consider observational measures too. Ultimately, your leadership develop efforts are working if you are getting the performance, behaviors and results you want from your leaders.

Here are some clear ways we can judge leadership development success by looking at behaviors.

Some Observational Measures

Consider these behaviors as observational metrics of a leader’s effectiveness. I’ve written them as questions to make them easier to use as success criteria.

• Are their behaviors aligned with your culture and values? If not, there are likely many downstream challenges they create, even if “they get results.”
• What does their intra- and inter-team communication look like? The better the communication with their team and across team boundaries vertically and horizontally, the more likely they get great results with others in a collaborative way.
• Do their team members grow in skill and capability? The best leaders grow those around them to become more effective and able to take on new challenges and responsibilities.
• Do they generate and maintain trust? When people trust a leader, they will almost assuredly get better results.
• Are they flexible? Are they willing to adjust their approach to changing situations and contexts rather than leading in a particular style?
• Are they always learning? This is related to flexibility but not the same either. As work and the world changes, are they continuing to learn and grow? This is important personally, and to role model that for others.
• Are they confident? I’m not talking about cockiness or hubris, but quiet confidence in themselves and others. Without a level of confidence, the effectiveness on any dimension will be reduced.

Could we add to this list?

Of course – and you may have something you want to add. But do so with caution. The value of this list is two-fold:

• The criteria are meta-behaviors. These big picture behaviors have a trickle-down effect on more specific things you might look for in your organization.
• The list is short. If the list becomes too long it is unwieldy, and harder and less likely to be used.

Outcomes Matter

We typically want to judge investments in training to see if we got the return we wanted. While that is a valuable question, this set of criteria will help us see where we are, regardless of what got us to this point. This simple list can help you judge where your leaders are, because without that baseline, how can you determine what you need to do to help them get to your desired performance, behaviors and results?

Organizational or Personal?

I’ve written this as a map for observing leaders across an organization. But these same markers can be considered for an individual leader. If you are a mid-level leader with leaders reporting to you, use this rubric to determine how your leaders are doing and where their gaps might be.

And if you want to grow your personal leadership effectiveness, these criteria can help you too – but don’t only do a self-evaluation, ask others to give you feedback on these criteria too.

Two of the key items on this list – confidence and flexibility – are at the heart of my book, Flexible Leadership: Navigate Uncertainty and Lead with Confidence.