The dilemma of leadership development

Abstract

Purpose

In the field of leadership development, a dilemma exists with many executives, who often support and fund leadership development programs. Executives know that great leaders are needed to drive results, and for the most part, they must develop those leaders internally. At the same time, the leadership development providers are content with showing executives that they have changed leader behavior. The same providers are reluctant to connect behavior change to meaningful and important business measures. Yet, when used properly, leader behavior will drive all types of important impact measures in an organization. That is what executives want to see. This purpose of this article is to show how leadership development providers can connect their programs to important business measures and deliver value at the Impact and ROI Levels using the ROI Methodology.

Design/methodology/approach

Executives prefer to have leader behavior connected to impact, which is their No. 1 measure and return on investment (ROI), their No. 2 measure. Impact and ROI is the world they live in. Executives know that new leader behavior is necessary for impact and often have input into the behaviors they would like to see. When it comes to measuring success, they want to see how the program connects to the organization and the value the new behavior delivers. To avoid the possibility of disappointing results, implement the ROI Methodology framework to design the leadership development program to deliver the desired results and make sure that everyone involved is helping to deliver the needed success.

Findings

Leadership development providers must address the challenge of showing the value of leadership development. It is not that difficult to show the impact and ROI of major programs. Literally, hundreds of organizations are doing this now. The authors have published four books with different publishers on the value of leadership development, with case studies, and more will be published.

Originality/value

This level of evaluation can set the leadership development program apart from the others.

Citation

Phillips, P.P. and Phillips, J.J. (2024), "The dilemma of leadership development", Strategic HR Review, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/SHR-01-2024-0006