Cambridge Business Association
Measuring Leadership Development
Book

Measuring Leadership Development

Quantify Your Program’s Impact and ROI on Organizational Performance

Jack Phillips, Patricia Pulliam Phillips and Rebecca L. Ray
McGraw-Hill, 2012
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

Human resources professionals and leaders know it’s important to measure, track and evaluate their investments in human capital programs, yet HR is notoriously behind other areas of business in making budget decisions based on evidence and data. HR gurus Jack Phillips and Patricia Pulliam Phillips teach constantly about measurement; they publish at least one book each year, often for HR professionals. In this volume, writing with learning expert Rebecca L. Ray, they focus on leadership development, offering a clear, credible process for collecting, measuring and reporting on training outcomes and for improving, expanding or ending those programs based on hard evidence. getAbstract recommends their packed-tight manual to readers seeking the skill and knowledge to evaluate leadership development programs and to help their firms make better decisions.

Summary

Who Really Cares About Leadership Development?

Executives all claim to care about leadership, but few consistently demonstrate their companies’ commitment to that philosophy. Corporations promote workers to managers and managers to executives based on performance, often with an incomplete consideration of the new executive’s leadership potential. Does your organization make people into supervisors, managers and executives based largely on their technical skills, their contribution or their leadership skills?

Chief executives consistently rate talent as a pressing concern. Command and control techniques alienate creative employees and stifle innovation, but so does neglect. Skilled, white-collar workers need leaders with increasingly sophisticated competencies and skills, both hard and soft, and with a keen sense of when to offer help and direction and when to hold back. Leaders are most effective when they drive team performance – that means engaging, inspiring and coaching, doing fewer tasks themselves and spending more time helping others achieve better results.

Moving from individual contributor to neophyte leader and from manager to executive are transformational...

About the Authors

Former bank president and HR executive, Jack Phillips has written or edited more than 50 books. Patricia Pulliam Phillips, writer or editor of more than 30 books on evaluation, heads the ROI Institute. Rebecca L. Ray leads human capital at the Conference Board.

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    A. B. 1 decade ago
    At a glance, this appears to be a big step towards narrowing the gap between the "Leaders are from Mercury/Trainers are from Saturn" type thinking and lack of collaboration to achieve goals. I'll have to review more closely to test applicability. If the end result is not better leaders, the ROI is organizational dysfunction which is measurable i.e. high turn-over, grievances and low engagement etc.
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    J. S. 1 decade ago
    It would have been good to reference the Kirkpatrick levels of evaluation. It felt like an over simplification of ROI linkage although it did acknowledge the indirect impacts