What Impact does Leadership Development make in your organisation?
Every year, millions of pounds are invested in leadership programs. But there’s an uncomfortable question we need to ask ourselves: are those investments really paying off? Many of us have seen or experienced powerful shifts through leadership development, yet we often lack the meaningful data needed to show others the true impact.
Without such data, it’s hard to show that investments made in Leadership Development are worthwhile.
With budgets tightening, fewer resources, and growing pressure on service delivery, the demand on organisations has never been greater. At the same time, the world faces urgent social challenges that require bold and effective leadership. That’s why demonstrating the value of investing in our leaders and knowing which development activities deliver not just professional growth but wider, lasting impact, is more important than ever.
It’s important to recognise that leadership isn’t a one-size-fits-all set of behaviours. While research, frameworks and models can guide us, they can’t tell us what effective leadership looks like in the unique context of our own organisation. That’s why evaluation frameworks, tailored to your unique needs, goals and desired outcomes can bridge the gap between good intentions and meaningful change. A robust evaluation strategy will guide improvements where needed, as well as help you to understand which activities within your programme are particularly effective.
Common Challenges in Leadership Development evaluation
Most evaluations stop at quick wins: Did people enjoy it? Do they feel more confident? This information is useful up to a point. But that doesn’t tell us if new behaviours stick, if teams work more productively, or if organisations are achieving more impact as a result. Common challenges include:
- Too many programs measure outputs, not outcomes. Bums on seats. Modules completed. Hours of training logged. Sound familiar? These are all common ways to show that your leadership development activities happened, but they don’t tell you much about whether it changed anything. Perhaps you introduced a decision-making model that participants are now using daily in their teams, but that success won’t show up in your attendance stats. Maybe the real impact of your program isn’t the content at all, but the new connections and collaborations you’re facilitating. The question is: how do you know?
- Few track impact beyond the individual, into culture and systemic change. Why are you developing your leaders in the first place? Presumably it's not just for the benefit of their own professional development, but because you want them to go out and make more of an impact. How does your programme help them to do that? What changes wouldn't have happened if your programme didn't exist at all? How are teams, the organisation and your wider stakeholders benefit from your developed leaders? In other words - what are the ripple effects?
- Many miss the context - who benefits, who doesn’t, and why. It feels really good when we get positive feedback from our leadership development efforts, but are you actively seeking feedback that might be less comfortable? Whose voices aren't you hearing from? Who does your programme overlook? And what barriers to implementation exist in the organisation?
Common Challenges in Leadership Development evaluation
We’ve worked with organisations of all shapes and sizes on leadership development and evaluation. And here’s what we’ve discovered: most teams want to measure impact but end up stuck with surface-level data that doesn’t tell the real story.
Small tweaks in how you evaluate can unlock huge insights, make the most of your investment, and even show how leadership development contributes to wider social change.
So we've designed a quick quiz to help you identify:
- Where your evaluation is already strong
- Where it’s falling short
- What small changes could boost your impact
Give it a go! You might get some insights that will help you strengthen your evaluation and make your Leadership Development programme deliver even greater impact!
