Why You Should NOT Measure Leadership Development
Tyler Small, M.S.
I help organizations boost profits by automating workflows with GenAI.
Are you a leadership development guru? Do you design, facilitate, participate in, or make decisions about leadership development? If so you might find this article of interest. If you’re in the (much broader) training industry, you might also enjoy this article if (in your mind) you substitute the words leadership development for the word training.
A Square Peg?
A highly respected colleague once asked me: Why do you feel like it is so important to measure the impact of leadership development?” This is a big thing for me – my natural bias is to measure things and I love data. I didn’t fully answer the question in that conversation. Instead, I listened to my respected colleague and learned why it is sometimes legitimately important to not measure the impact. The conversation really opened up my eyes to several possibilities I had never considered.
With this in mind, my genuine intent is to bring myself and others (who may be similarly biased toward the extreme end of function) closer to a balance with form. This article covers six possible circumstances in which you might wisely consider not measuring the impact of your leadership development experiences. My next article will cover the reverse (see link below).
Before we begin, I need to clarify what “measuring the impact of leadership development” means to me. It means going beyond the smile sheets to find out if participants were more competent leaders after the event than they were before. Did they gain additional leadership skills or abilities through the development experience?
Most of the time it seems like we measure the content or the delivery and we rarely consider the impact. This article and its other half relate to the measurement of impact.
Six Considerations – Why You Might NOT Want to Measure the Impact of Leadership Development Experiences
If the following six reasons make sense for you (in your role and organization), it may not make sense for you to measure the impact of your leadership development efforts:
#1: Measuring impact is not an organizational priority. Especially if you’re in a rapidly growing or rapidly changing organization. Consider your priorities. Leadership development is often a priority. However, is measuring the impact of leadership development in the top 10? Is it even in the top 100? It may not be.
#2: Learners perceive it’s going very well. You may already be measuring satisfaction and your smile sheets tell you whether people liked the experience. This is very important because if learners don’t like the experience many may avoid similar experiences in the future.
#3: Stakeholders perceive it’s going very well. If stakeholders perceive that it’s going well, it may feel redundant and superfluous to ask: “but did we really help participants improve leadership skills?”
#4: It takes too long and/or is too costly to measure the impact. Measuring activities is enough. For example, when discussing results you might list the following: We facilitated 93 hours of custom workshops, we created 15 e-learning courses, we ran 7 programs (2 were new), managed 74 hours of vendor-led workshops, and implemented a new XYZ platform. We were busy. Enough said.
#5: Your employees are so homogenous from one role to the next and from one department to the next that they all have more or less the same leadership development needs. You may think I’m being sarcastic in giving this as a reason. However, in many cases there has been so little leadership development provided in the past that it is likely just about everyone could substantially benefit from the experience being provided.
#6: Your department is recession-proof. Despite typical fluctuations in the long term economy, your department is not susceptible to contractions in personnel. You don’t need to prove to anyone that your effort contributes to the bottom line. This could be the case if your work is legally obligated.
Conclusion
Although you can see my bias for measuring the impact of leadership development experiences, your organization may not see it as a priority.
In fact, if your organization is so starved for development that anything is better than nothing, then measuring impact may not be necessary to demonstrate value. For now, there may be plenty of value in ensuring that participants and stakeholders are satisfied. And when they’re satisfied, just know that your efforts are valued and that’s enough for now.
Does your organization have an appetite for measuring the impact of your leadership development and/or trainings? Please share your comments below.
Related Articles
Why You SHOULD Measure Leadership Development: If these six considerations don’t describe your organization, this article might be more helpful to you.
Measuring Leadership With Real Numbers: If the above six considerations aligned with your situation - here are some ideas how to go about measuring the impact.
Learning is Overrated: Here I discuss why learning is so often over-glamorized and may not be a valuable goal.
Regional Director for Insights | Author | Keynote Speaker | Leadership & Organizational Development Virtuoso | Musician and Passionate About Making a Difference
6 年Thank you, Tyler. Very interesting and relevant article. I agree that measuring leadership development from an organizational perspective might not be worth the effort in a rapid growing company - but from a people perspective, it still could be. We have leaders assess them selves?and describe their most difficult leaderhip areas (where they struggle the most) before the training alongside a 360 degree assessment of the leader. Three months after the training we ask?them to do the same again and give a new 360 assessment - for the leader to keep. Not for us to report on ROI. If there are areas where the leader still struggle; we help with more focused training within that area.