I’ve flourished in various industries in my professional life, from joining the military as an Army Officer to being an Explosive Ordnance Disposal team leader to being a sports coach, logistics manager, and instructor. Through all these, and especially now as a business owner and entrepreneur, leadership development remains one of my advocacies. Leadership development ensures business longevity, especially when measured accurately.
To measure leadership development, you must be specific and direct when asking for feedback. You must also be precise when measuring the benchmarks you’ve set. These are how you can determine if any adjustments need to be made, tactics to be abolished, or if you need a total revamp.
Let’s discuss further what benefits you can gain from accurately measuring your leadership development programs and what mistakes you should avoid. We will also talk about ways you can measure leadership development by focusing on key factors, including relevance, engagement rates, success in advancing key leadership competencies, productivity, and return on investments.
The Biggest Mistake in Measuring Leadership Development
Measuring leadership development may seem like a simple task. After all, how hard could it be to find out if the program was effective or not, right? Don’t you just have to ask your leaders and employees for feedback?
This may be true to some extent, but will merely asking your organization for feedback provide accurate information on what kind of impact a leadership development program had? Shouldn’t you be more clear-cut to gather the exact information you need?
The biggest mistake when measuring leadership development is sending out a generic questionnaire or survey. The results you’ll get won’t be explicit and won’t provide you enough valuable data that might be helpful in the future.
It’s like asking your child, “How was school today?” Time and again, you’ll get the same reply, “It was okay.” But if you tweak your questions to, “Who did you eat with at lunch today?” or “Did you get to read your story aloud in class?” you’ll get a more detailed, satisfying, and enthusiastic reply.
Why It’s Essential To Measure Leadership Development
Accurately measuring leadership development is crucial to any business because this helps you determine whether or not your efforts are instrumental in achieving organizational goals. In leadership development, the end goal is to develop well-rounded, proficient, and top-tier leaders to help ensure your business will always be in good hands.
Let’s take a look at the benefits of measuring leadership development:
- Allows you to gather feedback on the program’s effectiveness from the perspective of leaders and employees.
- Helps increase satisfaction rates with regard to continuing education.
- Helps promote a sense of security for employees keen on working on their career path.
- Contributes to reducing employee turnover rates.
- Aids in pinpointing Leadership skills and KPIs that need to be focused on.
Ways To Measure Leadership Development
It’s not enough to just deploy a leadership development program for your business. You must also ensure that you accurately measure its effectiveness and impact.
The Global Leadership Forecast of 2018 found that only 18% of businesses measure the impact of their leadership development programs. This data suggests an imbalance between the goals these businesses have set and what they have actually realized.
Remember, measuring leadership development should never be just an afterthought. It should be part and parcel of the program because the defined metrics will provide you with crucial information for future leadership decisions.
These questions for program participants might serve as helpful guides when measuring leadership development:
Are you satisfied with how the leadership development program was conducted?
Did you learn something new and useful?
Have there been changes in your mindset and behavior that resulted from what you’ve learned?
How did the program impact the way you accomplish your tasks?
Measuring leadership development programs is simply about acquiring proof of the results. Let’s take a look at some of the ways you can illustrate the outcomes:
1. Measure the Response
It would be great to find out how leaders and employees responded to the leadership development program. Some aspects you might want to look into might include:
- Level of engagement. How involved were the participants in contributing to the learning experience and exchanging of ideas in the program?
- Timeliness/Relevance. Do the participants think the program dealt with issues relevant to the current situation? Will they be able to apply their acquired learnings to real-life business scenarios?
- Participation rate. Was the program able to tap the majority of the target participants?
- Completion rate. What percentage of the participants pulled through until the end?
- Degree of motivation. Were the participants, particularly the leaders, invested in the program?
2. Measure Learnings and Behavioral Changes
Your leadership development program won’t make much of a difference in your business if your participants do not assimilate the facts, strategies, and practices discussed. All the time, energy, and resources spent on training will be wasted if the learnings remain mere concepts and ideas rather than translated into spoken words and actions.
The best way to measure the absorption of learnings from leadership development programs is by applying the concepts discussed. Key performance indicators (KPIs) and leadership skills need to be enforced and put to good use for the benefit of the business and can be clearly seen through behavioral changes within the team.
Here are some revealing aspects worth observing to measure the effectiveness of your leadership development program:
- Interpersonal skills. Note changes in how participants interact with one another in the workplace. Ideally, behavioral changes should result in better collaboration, engagement, and productivity.
- Communication skills. Having the ability to accurately deliver information and express ideas is essential in ensuring business success. When the lines of communication between leaders and team members are always open, problems are quickly addressed, opportunities are maximized, and there is always a healthy exchange of insights to benefit the business.
- Creative thinking. Innovativeness is one sure sign that your leaders and employees are engaged, inspired, and driven. Any business will thrive and grow with creative thinkers at its helm.
- Decision-making. Making decisions as a group is one of the secret ingredients in a collaborative, synergistic team. Transparency in decision-making can be promoted in many ways, including using tools like decision trees and influence diagrams.
- Resourcefulness. The ability to come up with clever ways to address workplace issues and present viable solutions to the most pressing persons is a telltale sign your leaders and employees are engaged, productive, and united in working toward common goals.
- Sense of diversity. Organizations these days thrive in diversity, and leaders and employees must learn to flourish in this kind of environment and culture. They must be capable of working efficiently together regardless of gender, nationality, and sexual orientation.
- Openness to change. In any organization, change is inevitable, and one of the marks of a highly productive team is its ability to embrace change.
3. Measure the Results
What better way to measure the effectiveness of a leadership development program than by studying the bottom-line results? At the end of the day, the impact must be felt in crucial business aspects, particularly those concerning productivity and revenues.
Take a look at some of the most vital aspects you can utilize to measure a leadership development program’s success:
- Turnover. Employees and leaders alike will not want to stay with a company that doesn’t make them feel appreciated, valued, and secure. A reduced employee turnover rate indicates that more people trust your business and are confident they’re in good hands.
- ROI. For instance, in businesses where sales is the driving force, the return on investments can be easily calculated based on the cost of the leadership development program and sales increase documented thereafter.
- Productivity. This can be measured by comparing the number of set goals versus the number of goals that have actually been achieved. A
Key Takeaways
Developing new leaders is a critical need for most organizations. As your business grows, employees will leave, others will retire, while others will choose to stay. Leadership development is one way to ensure your business thrives amidst challenges and to keep your employees motivated, inspired, and engaged.
When you’re ready to take your leadership development programs up a notch, book us a call at Sancus Leadership. We’ve helped tailor-fit leadership development programs for countless businesses, and we can’t wait for you to experience how this can positively affect your organization, too!
