Most organizations “measure” leadership development by counting participants or reviewing post-training surveys.
That’s not measurement. That’s attendance.
If we want to know whether leadership development works, we have to begin with a harder question:
Why are we doing it in the first place?
Organizations typically invest in leadership development to:
- Reduce turnover
- Increase the number of ready-now leaders
- Improve collaboration or culture
- Strengthen leadership effectiveness
- Improve business performance
If the purpose isn’t clear, the measurement won’t be either.
1. Start with the Business Need
The goal must drive the metric. Different objectives require different leadership development metrics—and not all outcomes can reasonably be attributed to a single program in the short term.
Metrics should also meet the SMART criteria: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely.
This is where some commonly used leadership development metrics fall apart.
Turnover reduction is measurable, but it is influenced by compensation, labor markets, and strategy shifts. It often fails the Timely criterion and may also stretch Achievable in certain environments.
Succession readiness can be tracked, but without a structured evaluation process (such as periodic 360-degree assessments) to replace individual senior-leader judgment, it lacks Relevance and invites bias. When readiness is judged by an individual, research suggests the metric fails the test for reliability. Further, Buckingham and Goodall argue that the strength of followership—not simply competency judgments—is central to leadership effectiveness (Nine Lies About Work, 2019).
Collaboration improvement is meaningful, but it is typically slow-moving. As a direct short-term measure of a leadership development program, it often fails Timely.
So what measure can meet the SMART criteria?
Let’s consider a broader aim: improving business performance by strengthening culture.
Peter Drucker famously said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Leaders are the primary architects of culture. If leadership development is effective, it should measurably improve the culture leaders create.
2. Measure the Culture Leaders Create
Culture can be measured. It requires discipline and consistency.
Regular team-level surveys can assess factors such as engagement and psychological safety. Validated frameworks—such as those used by Gallup or the research of Amy Edmondson—provide reliable structures for measurement.
Unlike turnover or long-cycle business metrics, team culture can shift relatively quickly. In our work with groups of 5-15 leaders leading 50-250 employees, culture scores improved between 4.5% and 11% within three months of completing our leadership development program. Leadership behavior changes can influence team experience far faster than structural metrics like retention.
Importantly, culture metrics should not exist solely to evaluate a leadership development program. They are also operational tools leaders use to respond to their teams.
In one plant leadership team, we used our culture survey results to facilitate candid conversations across departments. When some voiced frustrations were outside our control (e.g., benefits policy), we escalated those concerns appropriately. With grievances within our realm of influence, we addressed them as a team through dialogue and problem-solving. Further, the act of responding—not just surveying—drove engagement and subsequent score improvement.
Surveying the culture and responding to results demonstrated that leadership cared. Follow-up built trust and engagement. Even modest improvements reinforced credibility.
Measurement without response erodes trust. Measurement with action builds it.
3. Ensure Relevance
Research consistently links engagement and psychological safety to performance outcomes. Gallup’s studies connect engagement to productivity, profitability, and retention. Google’s Project Aristotle identified psychological safety as the most critical factor in team effectiveness.
This makes culture metrics highly relevant—not only for measuring leadership development effectiveness, but also for advancing organizational performance.
If leadership development is working, culture should improve. If culture improves, performance indicators tend to follow.
That’s a coherent causal chain.
What to Avoid
If you are serious about measuring leadership development impact, avoid these traps:
1. Measuring knowledge instead of behavior
Passing a quiz or rating a workshop highly does not change culture. Measuring culture and team experience assesses the outcomes of leadership behaviors.
2. Ignoring the people being led
The clearest signal of leadership effectiveness comes from those experiencing leadership daily. Their feedback should be central and balanced with performance and peer data so it does not become a popularity contest.
What Real Impact Looks Like
In summary, assess leadership development program success by measuring its impact on team culture. Additionally, hold leaders accountable for driving cultural improvement in their teams.
If leadership development is working, you should see:
- Stronger culture metrics
- Higher engagement
- Increased psychological safety
And over time, these improvements can support:
- Greater leadership readiness
- Improved retention
- Stronger collaboration
- Sustained team performance
- Improved business results
If you only measure training activity or workshop quality, you don’t have a leadership development strategy.
You have a training calendar and an attendance program.
Author Bio:
After leading teams of various sizes for 29 years, I served as a Leadership
Development Program Manager for 4 years. In that capacity, I reviewed research on what makes leadership development programs effective and applied those learnings in a new program that I created called HUMan-Based Leadership development (HUM-B- LE). This program was successfully applied across 5 operations leadership teams and ultimately resulted in a measurable improvement in culture for the broader team of employees.
I earned my BS in Industrial Engineering from the University of Michigan and an MBA from the University of Colorado. In 2018 I earned a Certified Professional Coach designation and use these skills in support of helping leaders improve. I enjoy helping leaders grow a culture of psychological safety and employee engagement. Research demonstrates that these attributes correlate with high performance and improved business results. My base purpose is to make a difference in the lives of employees by helping leaders create these environments.
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