Leadership Development Has to Leave Evidence

Companies spend a lot of money developing leaders. I think there’s a question worth asking after every workshop, retreat, assessment, or leadership program:

Would your leaders be any different today if they had NOT attended the last one?

Seriously.

I’m not asking whether they enjoyed it. I’m not asking whether the speaker was good, whether the material was useful, or whether people left with pages of notes.

I’m asking whether anything actually changed afterward.

Because that’s where leadership development gets interesting to me.

A person can hear a great idea and agree with every word of it. They can learn some new language, recognize themselves in a story, and walk out genuinely motivated to do something differently.

And then Tuesday happens…

An employee misses an expectation. A customer is upset. Two people on the team are frustrated with each other. Something important gets pushed aside because something urgent showed up.

And now we find out whether anything was actually developed.

Maybe the leader handles the conversation differently than they would have six months ago. Maybe they ask a better question before jumping to a conclusion. Maybe they address something sooner because they’ve learned what happens when they let it sit. Maybe they notice that they’re about to rescue someone from a problem they actually need to learn how to solve themselves.

That’s evidence.

I think we’ve made leadership development too easy to measure if it’s only measured on participation.

It’s easy to measure whether the right people attended, how many hours they completed, whether they liked the facilitator, or whether they would recommend the training to someone else.

Those things can tell you whether the experience was worthwhile.

But don’t miss this: they don’t necessarily tell you whether someone became a better leader because of it.

That distinction matters.

Because if your company is investing real time and money into developing people, there should eventually be something different to observe.

A conversation goes better. An important decision gets made differently. Someone takes greater ownership. A leader becomes more aware of the effect they have on other people. A person becomes more capable because someone led them better.

I believe leadership development has to leave evidence behind.

And I believe the people doing this work should be willing to have their work judged that way.

Mine included.

That doesn’t mean every workshop should produce some dramatic transformation by Friday afternoon. Human beings don’t work that way.

But over time, something should change: the way a person thinks should begin changing the way they lead.

Without that evidence, it’s possible that we’ve only created a good experience without actually creating much development.

That’s a distinction I’ve become less willing to ignore.

I’ve spent enough time with leaders after the workshop, after the retreat, and after the assessment to know that knowing something and living it are very different things.

“Knowing something and living it are very different things.”

Development happens when an idea survives contact with real work.

When the person uses it in a difficult conversation. When they catch themselves repeating an old pattern and make a different choice. When the people around them begin experiencing their leadership differently.

That’s what I want to see.

And maybe that’s a useful question for any of us who are responsible for developing people:

What evidence would tell me this person is actually becoming a better leader?

If we can’t answer that, I’m increasingly convinced that just attending is never enough.

— James

This is one of the reasons I value coaching alongside leadership development. Knowing something and living it are very different things. Coaching gives a leader somewhere to work through the real conversation, decision, relationship, or problem while it’s actually happening.

If you’re thinking about how to develop leaders in your company in a way that produces visible change, schedule a conversation with me.