One of the many things I learned during my 12 years in the military was that missions and projects don’t commence on the last day of the specific activity. Rather, it stretches into the evaluation phase, where observations, insights, and data will be gathered. This final stage ensures the program is effective so that investments related to it will always be maximized.
Evaluating leadership development programs is a vital aspect of business functions. It lets you target the most crucial key performance indicators (KPIs) and helps you stay on track with regard to achieving set goals. Evaluations let you know whether or not the program is effective.
Let’s talk about why it’s important to always evaluate leadership development programs and what benefits you can enjoy if you don’t skip this crucial step. We’ll also talk about why you must avoid making the same mistakes many businesses commit when it comes to program evaluations. Then, I’ll give some tips on how you can accurately evaluate the effectiveness and relevance of your leadership development program.
Why Evaluate Leadership Development Programs?
The biggest mistake businesses can make is not accurately and promptly evaluating their leadership development program. Proper evaluation is the only way to know whether or not the goals were met and if changes are necessary to make the program more effective. If you don’t properly evaluate your leadership development program, investments (both time and money) will go to waste.
Take a look at all the benefits you can enjoy if you promptly and accurately evaluate your leadership development program:
- Determines the effectiveness of the program
- Helps ensure the program objectives are aligned with company goals
- Helps ensure the program objectives are aligned with the career growth needs of employees and leaders
- Gauge whether or not your set goals were met
- Helps determine what changes need to be made to make future programs more effective
- Determines how much value was added by the program to your leadership roster and various business functions
- Determines the impact on critical business aspects, such as employee turnover, engagement, costs, productivity, profits, and return on investments
How To Evaluate Leadership Development Programs
Your leadership development program assessment can be broken down into 4 levels so you can focus on pertinent aspects at a time.
Here is a quick guide …
1. Participants’ Feedback
This is the most basic way to evaluate a leadership development program. Typically, “smile sheets” are utilized here to determine participants’ satisfaction levels with the program’s different aspects.
However, note that this technique merely gathers reactions and may not give you more in-depth data on which program factors are more effective, which ones need modifications, and which ones you might as well do without. It may also not give you a clear picture of whether the business benefits from the learnings acquired from the program.
That being the case, gathering reactions and feedback from program participants will still provide valuable information. To help make the data you collect more useful, consider asking open-ended questions, such as:
- Is the program relevant to your current responsibilities and tasks in the workplace?
- Did you like the learning process? Can you highlight specific aspects you liked best?
- Did you acquire new information from the program?
- Will you recommend this program to others?
- Which aspects of the program need to be improved?
2. Learnings
It would be great to find out what skills the participants learned or developed because of the leadership development program. The learnings acquired and skills enhanced will be instrumental in developing leaders who will take your business to new heights and spearhead efforts toward achieving set goals.
Consider these questions:
- Did the program teach you new skills relevant to your job?
- How was the program instrumental in enhancing the leadership skills you already possess?
- Do you feel confident about applying these new learnings and skills in the workplace?
- Are there any additional skills you would recommend future programs to focus more on?
Think about conducting a capstone project for your leadership development program. Use this as a culminating experience for program participants, where they will be given a chance to demonstrate the learnings and skills they acquired in simulated workplace scenarios.
Typically, this would be a group activity where participants study a specific scenario commonly encountered in the workplace. They will apply the skills and techniques they learned from the leadership development program by writing an essay describing their chosen action plans and their rationale. Then, they will brainstorm on possible results, finally analyzing each of their decisions and inferred outcomes.
A capstone project is similar to writing a dissertation before graduating from university. Its aim is to challenge learners to be critical thinkers and provide solutions for complex yet realistic problems, thus demonstrating their readiness to thrive in their chosen field.
3. Workplace Application
Proper application and implementation of the knowledge and skills learned during leadership development training is the best way to evaluate the program’s effectiveness. Through this type of evaluation, it can clearly be seen what value the program has added to the business.
Some of the most crucial questions at this point are:
- Were you able to apply your learnings and skills to real-life workplace scenarios? How?
- What behavioral differences did you notice in your behavior in the workplace that can be attributed to the program?
- Are the behavioral changes sustained?
4. Business Impact
This level of evaluation aims to assess the impact of the leadership development program on various aspects of the business. Ideally, it should have positively impacted the most crucial facets, so much that the effects can be felt at the bottom line — productivity and profits.
You can utilize business performance measures, as well as the set goals, in determining the program’s effectiveness. Here are some questions that might be useful at this level:
- Which key performance indicators (KPIs) are relevant to this evaluation?
- Are there significant differences in costs and productivity resulting from improved team collaboration and efficiency?
- Does leadership development have an impact on the company’s employee turnover rate?
Other Ways To Evaluate Leadership Development Programs
Aside from the survey-type methods discussed above, there are other ways you can evaluate the effectiveness of a leadership development program. Here are some of them:
- Observation. Since observations are conducted as the program unfolds, you can gather accurate information as they occur. This technique offers real-time feedback and flexibility to make adjustments as soon as problems arise.
- Interviews. Use this to go deeper into participants’ feelings and insights. However, interviews may take up much time and produce highly subjective results.
- Focus group discussions. Two heads are better than one — that is, in exploring various relevant topics related to the leadership development program. Participants can share their experiences, observations, and insights freely.
Final Thoughts
Evaluations are meant to determine the effectiveness of a leadership development program and whether or not participants find value in how the learning and skills they acquire will impact their work.
At Sancus Leadership, we can help you design accurate, relevant, and practical evaluation techniques for your leadership development program. Book us a free leadership call when you’re ready to discover how a tailor-fitted evaluation plan can significantly boost the impact of leadership development in your business.
