How do you design your leadership development program? How do you evaluate it — and, most important, how do you redesign it?
Many organizations invest in leadership development without being able to show clear, lasting impact. MIT Sloan Management Review recently framed this problem clearly: leadership development programs are often expensive, but companies still struggle to connect them to organizational needs and meaningful outcomes.[1]
Some of the key characteristics of a successful leadership development program are:
• A blended approach: mentoring, workshops, group assignments, on-the-job assignments, reading, time to reflect, blending online and offline, on various locations. The Center for Creative Leadership’s 70-20-10 framework supports this: leadership development is driven primarily by challenging experiences and assignments, then developmental relationships, and finally coursework and training.[2]
• Build a platform of enduring learning and leadership development; the larger part of learning takes place at work, while on the job. CCL’s research emphasizes that leadership can be learned and that challenging assignments are a primary source of growth.[2]
• Design a customer- and workforce-centric program, instead of a leadership-centric program. In MIT Sloan’s summary of the 2024 article, effective programs are tied to specific organizational goals and outcomes, not just individual participant satisfaction.[1]
• Deploy nowadays’ technology that inspires, engages, and provokes people’s thoughts and behaviours. AI-enabled support, collaborative learning, and behavioral nudges are increasingly used to strengthen development processes, although the value depends on whether they are used to improve real-world application rather than only to automate training.[1]
• Design with reality as well as the future in mind: collect vetted insights through collective intelligence approaches to learn about priorities, challenges, and upcoming changes that require new leadership. MIT Sloan’s article stresses that providers and buyers need better questions and sharper alignment to strategic priorities.[1]
A recent MIT Sloan Management Review article by Hannes Leroy, Moran Anisman-Razin, and Jim Detert inspired us to cluster and assess our own experiences and those of our customers.[1]
The article’s key insight is simple but important: an effective leadership development program should have specific goals, use the most appropriate curriculum and teaching methods, and produce outcomes directly relevant to organizational needs. That means asking harder questions up front and being explicit about what success looks like.[1]
CircleLytics is applied to collect qualitative, validated insights and recommendations, far beyond what focus groups and surveys can deliver. That matters because the design of a leadership program should be based on evidence about what people actually need, not just on assumptions from the top. MIT Sloan’s article also underscores that companies need to articulate development needs more clearly and ask more relevant questions of providers.[1]
Some of our own reflections
Prepare to follow up on results of your evaluation and alter your program accordingly. While evaluating, don’t ask questions about things you won’t change. That is acceptable, but it should be intentional.
You may have valid reasons beyond participants’ views for keeping certain elements in place, yet you should still monitor how your assumptions work out over time. That is especially important when the environment changes or when the program is supposed to serve organizational goals, not just individual preferences.[1]
By corollary, deliberately identify dynamic aspects of the program that can and should be redesigned once evaluation supports that need. When working with external vendors, select ones that are clearly open to feedback and redesign. Don’t hold back on improving your program simply because a vendor says “other companies want this” if participant feedback shows a different need.
LDP managers are more likely to value evaluation and redesign once they have the right tools. Traditional surveys and focus groups often do not provide enough depth to guide meaningful change, whereas a collective-intelligence or dialogue-based approach can generate richer insight.[1]
Why timing matters
When evaluating your leadership programs, take into account that learning fades quickly when it is not reinforced. CCL’s 70-20-10 framework is built around the idea that real development happens through experience, relationships, and repeated practice rather than one-time exposure.[2]
That is why evaluations should be repeated, preferably after 3 weeks, 6 weeks, and 20 weeks, or at any cadence that fits your context. Over time, you can better assess impact, strengths, and weaknesses, and you can use each follow-up as a reinforcement moment rather than a mere measurement exercise.
In addition to evaluation, open questions also refresh participants’ awareness. They remind people of the program, how they acted on it, and what they changed in practice. That fits the broader logic of experience-driven learning: development becomes stronger when people repeatedly reflect on what they did and what happened next.[2]
What prompts leaders’ and managers’ thinking and acting?
Here are a few questions to consider, and to ask again after some more weeks and months so you can see how effectiveness evolves. Remember, thinking precedes acting.
• How did the program change your habits regarding [ ……. ] and can you explain what happened, so others can learn from that?
• What aspect of the program affected you most, on a personal level, and can you share what this means for your leadership at the organization?
• How did the program change your thinking about [ ……. ] and can you explain the benefits to the organization?
• Can you critically reflect on the most striking impact on your team, since and because of joining the program?
• How would you alternatively have spent 25% of the money on this program, now that you’ve finished the full program?
• What situation(s) did you encounter by putting to work what you’ve learned?
• What one suggestion do you have to significantly improve the program’s effectiveness for future candidates, and what is the expected benefit of this suggestion?
• What do you consider an aspect of our company — systems, culture, or anything else — that holds you back from deploying all you’ve learned?
• How would you alternatively have spent 50% of the time this program has taken?
• What did the program bring you that changed the way you lead, yet diminished over time? Why do you think that happened, and can you change it back?
• What surprised you most after [ … ] in the way you lead others to perform?
• Is anything blocking you from leading others and developing our organization that should be addressed in these programs?
• What changed in markets, culture, or anything else that impacts how we should lead the organization?
MIT Sloan’s article specifically argues for better questions that are more closely tied to the organization’s real development needs and outcomes. CCL’s research also reinforces the value of assigning meaningful work and learning through experience rather than relying only on classroom-style training.[2][1]
Don’t forget: leadership development should bring value to people and to organizational development, with positive customer and revenue-driven outcomes. That is consistent with MIT Sloan’s point that leadership development should be tied to strategic priorities and measured against relevant organizational outcomes.[1]
Ask employees of participants’ departments what their reflection is on their leadership’s development, impact on culture, and quality of management. MIT Sloan’s “Make Better Allies of Your Workforce” article highlights that actively involving employees in strategic decisions improves organizational outcomes and reduces conflict. Since employee perceptions of leadership are critical for engagement and retention, it makes sense to include those perspectives in the evaluation.[1]
This also means leadership programs should not be designed purely top-down without sufficient input from employees, especially newly onboarded talent. They often notice things that long-tenured leaders and participants may no longer see.
You can ask questions such as:
• What do you wish for your leadership to develop better, for the benefits of the whole department/company?
• What do you see your leadership improving at, and what’s the meaning for the team in your eyes?
• What’s needed most from leadership to help you develop and commit to the long term at our company?
• How would you promote our leadership style to job applicants?
• What do you doubt or don’t like most about leadership in general at our company, and what’s the effect right now?
• What do you doubt or don’t like most about your specific leadership, and what would be the positive outcome of changing this?
Preparation is part of the program
CircleLytics Dialogue can also be deployed to prepare for upcoming programs or modules. This allows you to run check-ins, assign tasks, set expectations, and learn about what people expect.
That approach fits the 70-20-10 logic well: people learn not only from formal modules but also from experiences and developmental relationships, so preparation before a module helps create better learning transfer. Consider these questions to ask a few days, but no more than two weeks, in advance:[2]
• In a few [days/weeks], you’re invited to module N of the program. What do you expect to be better at, for the people you lead, upon finishing this module?
• What do you bring to the table during this upcoming module, and how can you unleash that value or experience?
• Can you work on the following three challenges to prepare for the next part of the program? Others will learn from your perspectives, as you can from theirs.
It’s in your hands
In all of the above instances, open questions ignite people’s thinking, and CircleLytics’ approach secures their learning from others’ different perspectives.
Design, evaluate, and redesign based on collective intelligence from employees, alumni leaders, managers, and prospective participants. MIT Sloan’s article makes the same broader point: leadership development programs need sharper alignment with actual needs and stronger accountability for results.[1]
Leadership development programs require first of all your leadership — open to multiple perspectives to create value that lasts. Again and again.
If you want, I can now do one of these three things next:
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make the citations more academic and formal,
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shorten the article for LinkedIn, or
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add a compact source list at the bottom in APA style.
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