Leadership training fails because we are measuring success the wrong way
The corporate world invests billions annually in leadership development programs, yet organizations continue to struggle with disengaged employees, high turnover rates, and lackluster performance. The problem isn’t necessarily the quality of training materials or the credentials of facilitators. The real issue lies in how we measure success and whose opinions we prioritize when evaluating these initiatives.
The Feedback Loop That Misleads Us
Most organizations assess leadership development by surveying the participants themselves. Did executives enjoy the program? Do they feel more confident? Would they recommend it to colleagues? These metrics create a dangerous illusion of success. Leaders who attend these programs naturally want to believe their time was well spent and their investment worthwhile. They complete evaluations with fresh enthusiasm, armed with new frameworks and buzzwords that feel empowering in the moment.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: the people who can genuinely evaluate whether leadership development works aren’t sitting in the training room. They’re the employees who report to those leaders every single day. They’re the team members who experience the actual behavioral changes or lack thereof when their managers return from yet another leadership retreat.
Why Participants Make Poor Evaluators
Leaders attending development programs exist in an echo chamber. They’re surrounded by peers experiencing the same content, energized by the same speakers, and bonding over shared challenges. This environment creates a temporary bubble where everything feels transformative. The catered lunches, the scenic retreat locations, and the break from daily responsibilities all contribute to positive associations that have little to do with actual learning outcomes.
Furthermore, participants lack the perspective to assess their own blind spots. The very behaviors that require development are often invisible to the leaders themselves. An executive might genuinely believe they’ve become a better listener after a communication workshop, while their direct reports notice no meaningful change in how meetings are conducted or feedback is received.
The Real Measure of Leadership Success
Effective leadership development should be measured by the people who actually experience the leadership. When a manager completes a program on emotional intelligence, their team members will know within weeks whether anything has changed. Are conflicts being handled differently? Is feedback becoming more constructive? Does the leader show genuine interest in professional development conversations?
These observable behaviors in day-to-day interactions reveal far more than any post-training survey completed by enthusiastic participants. Employees notice when a leader starts asking better questions instead of immediately providing answers. They recognize when someone becomes more comfortable with ambiguity or begins delegating more effectively. They also quickly identify when nothing has actually changed despite the new vocabulary their manager has adopted.
The Courage Gap in Evaluation
Organizations rarely survey employees about their leaders’ development because they fear the answers. It’s easier to collect glowing reviews from grateful participants than to confront the reality that expensive programs might be producing minimal behavioral change. This approach also protects leaders from potentially harsh feedback that could damage morale or create tension within teams.
However, this protective instinct ultimately undermines the entire purpose of leadership development. If we’re not willing to honestly assess whether leaders are improving in ways that matter to their teams, we’re simply running expensive retreats with no accountability for results.
What Changes When We Ask The Right People
When organizations genuinely commit to evaluating leadership development through the eyes of employees, everything shifts. Program design becomes focused on observable behaviors rather than theoretical concepts. Follow-up mechanisms become essential rather than optional. Leaders face authentic accountability because they know their teams will assess whether training translated into action.
This approach also identifies which specific elements of leadership development actually drive results. Perhaps the formal training sessions matter less than the ongoing coaching conversations afterward. Maybe the most powerful learning happens when leaders receive real-time feedback on specific situations rather than generic principles delivered in a classroom setting.
Building Better Systems
The solution isn’t to eliminate participant feedback entirely, but to recognize its limitations. Organizations should implement 360-degree evaluations that specifically assess whether training objectives manifested in behavioral changes. These evaluations should happen months after programs conclude, allowing time for new habits to either form or fade away.
Anonymous employee surveys should directly ask whether they’ve noticed specific improvements in their leaders’ capabilities. Teams should be involved in identifying which leadership competencies need development in the first place, ensuring that programs address real needs rather than trendy topics.
The Path Forward
Leadership development will remain broken until we redirect our evaluation lens toward the people most affected by leadership quality. This requires organizational courage and a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths. It demands that we stop celebrating participation and start measuring transformation.
The executives attending leadership programs aren’t the customers their employees are. When we finally acknowledge this fundamental truth and build evaluation systems accordingly, leadership development might actually begin delivering the results that organizations desperately need.