How’s your leadership development program doing? If you can answer that question you’re in very select company. DDI says that only one company in ten evaluates the effectiveness of their leadership development program. That matches my experience.
Just about every company where I did training over a couple of decades evaluated training using that famous “bingo card.†You know what I mean. Participants are asked to rate things like “The speaker was knowledgeable†and items like room temperature and the quality of lunch.
I’ve often wondered what happened to all those responses. In the era of Big Data, companies could dig deep and discover if a high-protein lunch correlated with higher speaker ratings. But wouldn’t it be better for all of us if we measured the important stuff?
Here are two ways to measure whether your program is producing the right outcomes. There will be no bingo cards.
Leadership development measured by the pipeline
How many qualified candidates do you have for each position, from first line supervisor to CEO? Three’s a good number. Every quarter or so, check and see how you’re doing.
Leadership development measured by leadership results
This really more “assessment†than measurement, since you won’t be counting much. Every year or six months, check out the current performance of the leaders you trained. How many are doing well? What problems do you need to address?
Leadership development and the breakfast of champions
You’ve heard feedback called “the breakfast of champions.†Leaders rarely get better without it. Leadership development programs are the same. And bingo cards don’t do the job.
Wally, this is a very important post. Leadership development programs are a waste of time, money, and effort (and a downer for morale) if they don’t have an impact on individual, team, and organizational performance. Another way to measure is to tell the leader’s story, i.e., what did she learn, what did she apply, and what happened because of it. Constructing this narrative might be the best and only way to truly understand the link between leadership development and results.