ROI for leadership development

One of the things I often get asked is “how do you measure the effectiveness of leadership development?” Quite frankly, the question bamboozles me, but I think I may have come up with something. I do need to do a bit more work around it, but this blog is kind of my thinking out loud about how to go about this.  Thanks Rustica Lamb for prompting the inspiration!

To set the scene, I am not a fan of using engagement scores, business productivity, quality, or cost as a way to measure leadership effectiveness. I think engagement scores have something to add but can someone show me the objective research around engagement scores and business performance? Like ‘evidence’ presented around lean manufacturing, information on ‘engagement’ is more often than not coming from consultants. I’d love to be set straight here. Furthermore, from the research I’ve done, teams can have a really bad leader and still show significant improvements to quality, speed and cost. Of course, this is what businesses want. But I question whether this can be sustained long-term.

So how do you measure the effectiveness of a leadership development course? Particularly when that course involves participants spread across different businesses? I think it’s helpful to look at changes to individual performance, or perceptions thereof.

Individual performance is very much contingent on the abilty (A), opportunity (O), and motivation (M) to perform. This has been evidenced in very practical research, including Boxall and Purcell (2011) and Sterling and Boxall (forthcoming). (I just had to cite myself there, still buzzing about being published in the Human Resource Management Journal soon!) The AMO model is one that applies to managers, leaders and the people they lead/manage. Indeed, what the research shows is that management (or leadership) has a direct impact on these variables. Managers/leaders need to have the ability, motivation and opportunity to perform to enable the people they manage/lead to have the same.

Therefore, when measuring the effectiveness of a leadership development program it makes sense to examine changes to leadership performance in terms of the AMO model.

I think the leadership development course I have designed is very much concerned with these principles. It is enabling leadership ability (A) through greater awareness of personal leadership style, it provides the motivation (M) to perform by identifying individual values, motivation and purpose, and it provides the opportunity (O) by enabling support networks and integration between work and life. Changes to these variables should be manifested in the work environment. But how do I measure that?

As part of the research paper I am putting together for the HRINZ research forum on the 15th November is a framework for successful implementation of HR practices using the AMO model.  I need to take this framework and ask “how could you measure that?” What I’m thinking is a questionnaire around perceptions of ability, motivation and opportunity to perform pre and post the leadership development course.

Do you think this will help address ROI for leadership development?

References

Boxall, P. and Purcell, J. (2011). Strategy and Human Resource Management (3rd edn), Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Sterling, A., Boxall, P. (forthcoming). Lean production, employee learning and workplace outcomes: a case analysis through the AMO framework. Human Resources Management Journal. – yeah I’m referencing it!

... and you can register for the HRINZ forum here.