| Evaluating Leadership Development: Who Needs It? by Ruth Belling
Originally published in the October 2003 Issue of Link & Learn.
What has your leadership development done for you lately? It's a sad fact that many organisations do not know what benefits they are deriving from their leadership and development activities. Why? Because they never ask. Again, why? Most organizations claim that they don't evaluate their leadership development efforts because of:
- Lack of time;
- Lack of skills/resources; and
- Difficulties in measuring results.
But how can this be, when there are so many methods for evaluation, depending what you want to know?
So let's ask a different question - not "Why don't you evaluate?" but "Why should you evaluate that all important leadership development?" Following are ten compelling reasons for evaluating your leadership development efforts:
1) Gain Information
Information is crucial. Without evaluation of leadership development initiatives, your business cannot show how learning and development contributes to moving your organisation successfully towards its strategic goals.
2) Identify Impact and Subsequent Change
Evaluation enables those responsible for/involved in the design and delivery of leadership development to know what is being achieved by their efforts. A 'happy sheet' completed immediately following a training session is a start -- but not sufficient, by itself. Leaders may love a presentation, get excited about a particular exercise, and be more than glad to tell you so. But what did your leaders take away from the training? What did they do differently and how did their behaviours change afterwards? If something significant changed, you'll never know unless you evaluate.
3) Align Leadership with Your Business Strategy
Evaluation can help to identify how your leaders are delivering against your business' strategy. Evaluation results are a great way to open up dialogue about how leaders are acting in ways that help move the company in the direction of achieving organizational goals. Preferably, this will lead to discussions about the future of your business.
4) Identifying Leadership Capabilities Gaps
Evaluation helps identify the gaps between current and desired leadership capabilities.
5) Consistency and Compatibility with Strategic Objectives
An evaluation framework can act as a critical, integrating force, connecting many disparate forms of leadership training and development activities, which then tie in to your business' needs.
6) Avoid Wasting Valuable Money
The first thing you need to figure out about leadership development training is, is it worth it for your organization, in your current circumstances, to do in the first place? Afterwards, you need to find out if it was effective. Why waste precious resources and money on something that isn't necessary - or doesn't effectively do its intended job? Spend your money on something that is valuable, and let your business reap the rewards.
7) Improve Your Leadership Development
Evaluation can help you improve the quality and effectiveness of your leadership development activities. If something's not working about your leadership development, only post-program evaluation provides you with the information you need to know to change it. If your goals were achieved, then evaluation can help you make leadership development activities even more effective next time -- by identifying out what's working well and what's redundant.
8) Pinpoint the Success of Individual Leadership Development Activities
Evaluation can help you identify what a particular programme can and cannot achieve in relation to your business needs. Sometimes we expect too much of a training or development activity. Set out your overall business needs as clearly and precisely as you can. Then match each individual leadership programme against these needs. Be realistic about what each single programme can and cannot do. You'll be better placed to spot critical gaps in your leaders' capacities to do what you need them to do - lead your business to a better future. And once you've identified these gaps, if one programme did not help close the gap, find some other way.
9) Gain Competitive Advantage
Evaluation can put your business ahead of your competition. Remember, most organisations fall shy of evaluating their leadership training and development. As a result, these organisations are not thinking as strategically as they might believe. Don't let yours be one of them. Focus instead on learning and impact - and stay ahead of the competition!
10) Maintain Momentum
Now you've started; don't stop! You have already taken the first valuable steps -- thinking strategically about what evaluation can contribute to developing your leaders and improving your business. Now, decide what it is that you most want to know and then start finding out the answers. Don't wait to begin designing your leadership development evaluation techniques - or selecting the best evaluation methods for your organization from the many that currently exist out there. You'll be amazed just how much evaluation can do both for you and your business.
Copyright © Ruth Belling, 2003.
Dr. Ruth Belling is an evaluator and researcher specialising in management development and learning transfer, and author of The Evaluation Maze™: Your expert guide to designing better management development, learning and training evaluations. Free articles on how to improve your evaluations available at: http://www.evaluationworks.co.uk
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