There is much discussion among HR and L&D professionals about whether leadership development programs are a worthwhile return on investment for the board.
A 2025 global study by Harvard Business Publishing highlights that most L&D leaders are under pressure to prove ROI to retain budget.
Less than half measure leadership effectiveness
Why is proving ROI such an issue? Often because organizations aren’t measuring some of the most consequential changes or properly connecting the value of improving human skills with impact on productivity.
In fact, a 2024 LeadX survey found that less than half of leadership development professionals measure behavior change (39%) or business impact (22%).
A 2025 Forbes survey of more than 150,000 employees, managers and executives revealed a similar gap. They found that while executives praise leadership program design, the people being led by these ‘developed’ leaders report little real change. It’s a discrepancy, suggests Forbes, that should force every organization to rethink their approach.
To measure the effectiveness of leadership development programs, we must look to the desired outcomes for participating leaders, and for the colleagues, clients or projects affected by their work.
Most L&D leaders we work with are deeply familiar with the link between engagement and performance. What we should focus on is a leader’s ability to create psychological safety and communicate more effectively, both of which have a huge impact on discretionary effort.
After all, consistently high performers are those who feel supported and inspired by their leaders. They feel listened to, heard and understood. That kind of trust doesn’t happen by accident. It takes a self-aware leader who understands enough to appreciate their impact on others. One who knows how to get the best from colleagues and clients who think and work differently.
Human leadership skills are worth measuring
These very human skills should be tracked as a business metric.
A recent Harvard Business leadership impact report reinforces this point, identifying emotional and social intelligence as the leadership capabilities most critical to current and future business success. Nearly half of the respondents said these skills are even more important than they were in previous years.
In the people development industry, we know better than to dismiss this as touchy-feely ‘soft’ stuff. Knowing how to create, nurture and maintain positive working relationships, even with the most difficult players we meet, is the bedrock of good business.
It can be challenging to prove this to boards and executive leadership teams, but it can be done.
How to measure a leader’s progress?
At Insights, we favor measurement approaches like those described in the mid-section of the Kirkpatrick and Phillips training evaluation models.
The Kirkpatrick model reinforces the need to measure learning effectiveness beyond just content delivery.
Too many organizations stop at Level 1 (reaction to training) and Level 2 (what has been learned).
But the real shift happens at Level 3 (behavior change). Level 4 is as important, focusing on impact KPIs like profits, turnaround time and costs and customer and employee retention.
Levels 3 and 4 are key to measuring how better leadership skills improve day-to-day working practice and business outcomes. Have leaders learned to start mission-critical conversations differently? Are they able to readily pivot their communication style when tough situations or difficult characters call for it?
In our work with organizations across the world, Insights regularly conducts impact measurement surveys -it’s part of the service. This exercise includes, for example, real-world questions about how likely someone is to talk to their manager about a difficult issue.
By tracking behavior change over time, we can identify tangible evidence of leadership impact. The kind of data that earns attention at the board level.
Changing behavior means changing performance outcomes
Level 3-type surveys are the gold standard as they can be cost-effective and offer robust stats on behavior change that can be confidently shared with executive teams.
Of course, this depends on teams recognising and respecting the link between engagement and performance. And also that between communicating effectively, psychological safety and discretionary effort.
When tracking behavior change, it’s important to drill down and measure the everyday, real-world impact that the employees being led are experiencing.
If employees don’t trust their leader, they won’t be as engaged or as productive. If they’re not productive, that will affect tangible metrics like retention, revenue, customer satisfaction and repeat business.
We should be asking: how do peers and direct reports feel about their leader’s effectiveness? This makes experience surveys and 360 feedback an essential part of assessing whether a leader’s interpersonal skills and relationship awareness have improved.
Ultimately, these human skills like emotional intelligence (EQ) matter as much as other business-critical skills like strategic thinking and decision-making. And EQ needs to start with self-awareness; understanding your personality, your behavior, your reactions and your impact on others.
From soft skills to measurable power skills
The once-common industry narrative that it’s difficult to measure impact or justify investment in human (“soft”) skills is outdated.
If leaders don’t behave in a way that inspires, motivates, nurtures and recognizes the differences in colleagues they work with, they simply won’t be as effective.
What should your L&D program measurement ask?
Making the business case for L&D program measurement
Defining how to measure leadership development can be challenging. It can mean revisiting what gets tracked, how success is defined, and what data is shared with upper management.
Real ROI is only possible if a leader’s workplace behavior and the behavior of the people they lead change for the better.
Let’s get better at measuring this!
Even the World Economic Forum agrees that the most in-demand leadership skills aren’t technical or all about strategy, and that it’s the human skills that count.
For leaders and the people they lead, better self-awareness means better conversations, better adaptability to change, better problem-solving, better conflict management and better business relationships.
How is that not worth measuring?
Proven ROI: How Insights Discovery delivered over 2000% return for indeed
Discover how Indeed achieved over $10M in measurable benefits form the Insights Discovery program resulting in a benefit-cost ratio of 21:1.
