How to Tell Whether Leadership Development Is Working

Leadership development is working when a manager changes a specific behavior and the people affected can describe the difference. Define that behavior before a course or coaching engagement, check progress during it, and review the resulting team or business outcome afterward. Attendance and satisfaction scores show participation; they cannot establish that leadership changed.

In his BambooHR HR Virtual Summit 2026 session, coach Hank Wethington challenged the habit of sending every struggling leader to the same program. He distinguished a missing skill from three other possible blockers: identity, self-knowledge, and awareness of one’s impact. His example of a capable vice president who kept reclaiming his team’s work called for a different conversation from a manager who simply had not learned how to delegate.

Wethington then described how he measures his own coaching engagements. He and the leader set objectives at the start, share them with the leader’s manager, review progress midway, and return to that manager at the end to ask what changed. That process can be adapted to a training program without assuming every leader needs coaching.

What should leadership development aim to change?

Leadership development should aim to change an observable action tied to a real problem in the leader’s work. “Be more strategic” gives a coach or trainer little to work with. “Let team leads make routine client decisions within agreed limits, then review exceptions weekly” names a behavior that colleagues can see and the organization can evaluate.

Wethington’s first step was diagnosis. If a leader knows how to delegate but repeatedly takes work back, another presentation on delegation may leave the cause untouched. If a leader has never had to give difficult feedback, practice and guidance may be exactly what is missing. Ask for a recent example, what the leader did, what their team experienced, and what the manager overseeing them expects to be different.

My colleague Guy J. Giguère’s article on high-performing managers who harm their teams explores why a leader’s individual output can hide damage to other people’s work. A development objective should account for the team, not merely the manager’s own delivery.

Which measures show whether a leader's behavior changed?

Measures should capture the behavior itself and its effect on the people who depend on it. The Center for Creative Leadership’s impact framework separates changes within a leader from changes in the group and organization. For a delegation goal, review who owns decisions, how often work is taken back, and whether team members can explain their authority. For feedback, ask employees whether they receive timely, useful guidance, then look at examples of the conversations and follow-up actions.

The leader’s manager can observe decisions and results, but should not be the only witness. Gallup found that only 42% of surveyed US employees had a formal opportunity to provide feedback to their manager. Wethington’s third blocker was a gap between a leader’s intent and their impact. Team feedback can reveal that gap when it is collected in a way employees trust.

Agree on a baseline before the intervention. A later improvement is easier to interpret when the same behavior is checked at the start, midpoint, and end. If the team’s work also changes during that period, describe the change rather than crediting every result to the program.

When should HR review a leadership development program?

HR should review the leader’s progress during the program and again after there has been time to use the new behavior at work. Wethington described a midpoint conversation that asks what is working and adjusts the support. At the close, he brings back the leader’s manager to compare the original objectives with what that manager has seen.

This is more demanding than counting course completions, but it can be simpler than a large evaluation exercise. Select a few objectives that matter to the leader’s actual role. Record an example before the support begins. At the midpoint, ask the leader and manager whether the planned practice is happening. At the end, ask employees or clients affected by the behavior what changed. If the answer is “nothing,” inspect whether the support addressed the wrong problem, lacked practice, or met an organizational barrier.

Our article on protecting a leader’s time for important work considers one such barrier. A manager may learn to coach employees yet have a calendar that leaves no room to do it. A good development review can reveal a problem in the job design as well as in the leader’s habits.

What result justifies continued investment in leadership development?

Continued investment is justified when leaders practice the intended behavior and teams or clients gain a result the organization values. Wethington contrasted that evidence with a favorable program rating. A 4.2-out-of-5 satisfaction score says participants liked the experience. It cannot tell an HR team whether a hesitant manager now makes timely decisions or whether employees are getting the support they were missing.

The measure should be modest enough to verify and important enough to matter. If the objective was fewer last-minute rescues by a manager, check whether the team now completes the work with clear ownership and acceptable quality. If the objective was better feedback, ask employees whether they know what to improve and have had a chance to act on it. The program has done its job when the change survives the classroom and becomes part of ordinary work.