Leadership Development Programs: What Works and How to Measure It
August 2, 2026 · Leadership · 9 min read
Leadership development programmes can improve leadership knowledge, behaviour and organisational outcomes, but their effectiveness depends heavily on how they are designed, delivered and evaluated. The evidence does not support a simple formula such as “spend more on leadership training and performance will rise.”
A stronger approach starts with the leadership problem the organisation needs to solve, builds practice and feedback into the programme, creates opportunities to apply new behaviours at work, and measures whether those behaviours actually change.
This 2026 guide reviews what current evidence says about effective leadership development, which popular claims should be treated cautiously, and how HR and L&D teams can design programmes that are easier to evaluate and improve.
What the evidence says about leadership training
One of the most comprehensive studies of leadership training is a meta-analysis published in the Journal of Applied Psychology. It examined 335 independent samples and found positive effects across four categories: participant reactions, learning, transfer to the workplace and results.
The important finding was not simply that leadership training can work. Programme design changed the size of the effects. The analysis found support for features including needs analysis, feedback, multiple delivery methods, opportunities for practice and spaced training sessions.
That means leadership development should be treated as a designed behaviour-change intervention rather than as a collection of presentations or inspirational sessions.
Source: Lacerenza et al., Leadership training design, delivery, and implementation: A meta-analysis
Managers matter, but development should target specific behaviours
Gallup’s current workplace research says managers account for 70% of the variance in team-level engagement. Gallup’s 2025 State of the Global Workplace report also reported that fewer than half of managers worldwide said they had received management training.
Gallup reports positive engagement and management-performance outcomes among managers receiving its best-practice training. Those findings reinforce the importance of manager development, but organisations should still avoid assuming that any leadership course will reproduce the same results.
The practical question is: which manager behaviours need to improve in this organisation?
Examples may include:
- setting clear expectations;
- giving useful feedback;
- coaching employees;
- delegating effectively;
- handling difficult conversations;
- making decisions under uncertainty;
- leading change;
- building trust and psychological safety;
- managing performance fairly;
- communicating across cultures and functions.
Those are measurable targets. “Become a better leader” is not.
Source: Gallup, Manager Development
Five design principles supported by the evidence
1. Start with needs analysis
The leadership-training meta-analysis found support for needs analysis as a design feature. Before selecting content, identify the situations in which managers are underperforming or where the organisation expects new leadership demands.
Needs analysis can combine business priorities, employee feedback, manager interviews, performance data, customer issues, engagement results and observed leadership behaviours. It should produce a short list of capabilities the programme is intended to change.
2. Build in repeated practice
Leadership is not primarily a knowledge problem. A participant can understand a feedback model and still struggle to use it in a tense conversation. Practice should therefore be built around realistic situations, with feedback and another opportunity to try.
Role practice, simulations, case discussions, action learning and real workplace assignments can all contribute. The choice should reflect the behaviour being developed rather than a fixed percentage formula such as “70-20-10.”
The 70-20-10 framework is commonly used as a planning heuristic, but its precise ratios should not be presented as a validated law of how leadership learning occurs.
3. Space development over time
Spaced training allows participants to learn, apply, reflect and return with evidence from real work. A programme can therefore use shorter sessions over several weeks or months rather than concentrating everything into one event.
Spacing also creates a natural place for application assignments, manager check-ins and peer discussion.
4. Use feedback deliberately
Feedback is one of the recurring design features in leadership-development research. It can come from facilitators, peers, direct reports, managers or structured multi-source tools.
A 2025 umbrella review of leadership training in healthcare found that experiential learning, coaching or mentoring, longitudinal designs, goal-setting and 360-degree feedback were among the approaches associated with stronger outcomes. Because that review is healthcare-specific, it should not be treated as proof that the same design will produce identical effects in every sector. It does, however, add to the broader evidence that leadership development benefits from feedback, practice and sustained application rather than one-off content delivery.
Source: Leadership training in healthcare: a systematic umbrella review, 2025
5. Connect learning to the work environment
A leadership programme can teach a behaviour that the organisation then makes difficult to use. For example, managers may be taught to coach and delegate while workloads, approval structures or senior-leader behaviour reward control and speed instead.
Programme design should therefore include the environment around the participant. Managers of participants need to know what is being developed, senior leaders should reinforce the desired behaviours, and participants need real opportunities to apply them.
Coaching, mentoring and action learning: useful tools, not automatic ROI machines
Coaching and mentoring are frequently included in leadership development because they provide individualised reflection and feedback. Reviews in healthcare leadership have found positive evidence around coaching, mentoring and project-based experiential learning.
However, claims such as “executive coaching returns 5-7 times its cost” should not be treated as a universal benchmark. ROI depends on the participant, the objective, programme cost, measurement method and the business outcome being valued.
A more useful question is whether coaching is helping the participant change the target behaviour and apply it to a real leadership challenge.
How long should a leadership development programme be?
There is no universally correct duration. The required length depends on the capability, participant population and amount of workplace application needed.
A short workshop can be appropriate for a tightly defined skill. A broader transition into management or senior leadership may require a longer programme with repeated learning, practice and feedback.
The evidence supports spacing and longitudinal development, but not a rule that every effective programme must last six, twelve or eighteen months.
How to evaluate leadership development properly
Many programmes are evaluated primarily through attendance and participant satisfaction. Those measures tell you whether people took part and how they experienced the programme, but they do not establish behaviour change or organisational impact.
A stronger evaluation model uses several levels.
Level 1: Participation and experience
- attendance and completion;
- participation in practice and assignments;
- relevance of the content to the participant’s role;
- quality of facilitation and learning experience.
Level 2: Capability
- knowledge or skill assessments;
- scenario performance;
- observed practice;
- confidence used cautiously alongside objective measures.
Level 3: Behaviour transfer
- employee or manager feedback;
- 360-degree data where appropriate;
- observation of target behaviours;
- evidence from real assignments;
- frequency and quality of coaching, feedback or delegation behaviours.
Level 4: Organisational outcomes
The final measures depend on why the programme exists. They might include engagement, voluntary turnover, internal mobility, customer outcomes, project delivery, quality, safety, decision speed or other operational indicators.
Organisational outcomes should be interpreted carefully because many factors influence them. A leadership programme can contribute to an outcome without being its sole cause.
Why long-term and organisational evidence is harder
Recent reviews continue to find that leadership-development evaluations often rely on self-reported outcomes and short-term measures. A 2025 umbrella review found that organisational and clinical outcomes were assessed less often than individual outcomes, and that long-term impact and ROI remained uncertain.
This is not an argument against leadership development. It is an argument for better evaluation.
If an organisation is spending heavily on a programme, it should decide before delivery what evidence would make the investment credible six or twelve months later.
Leadership development for GCC, African and Asian organisations
Leadership development should be adapted to the context in which participants actually lead. Organisations across the GCC, Africa and Asia can differ greatly in workforce composition, regulation, organisational hierarchy, language, nationalisation policies, ownership structures and market conditions.
Contextualisation can include local cases, realistic stakeholder scenarios, multilingual considerations, public- versus private-sector realities, multicultural team dynamics and the actual strategic challenges participants face.
Context should improve relevance, not become an excuse for unsupported claims. Statements such as “Western programmes do not work in the GCC” or “high-power-distance cultures require a particular leadership style” are too broad without evidence tied to the specific population and outcome.
Leadership development for workforce nationalisation
In GCC organisations, nationalisation policies can create a genuine need for accelerated development as national employees move into broader professional and leadership responsibilities. The development challenge is not solved by title progression alone.
A practical programme can combine role-specific capability development, leadership practice, mentoring, exposure to real business decisions, clear performance expectations and opportunities to lead meaningful work.
The success measure should be capability and performance in role, not simply participation in a development programme.
A practical programme blueprint
For organisations building a leadership programme, the following sequence is more defensible than starting with a catalogue of topics:
- Define the business challenge. What requires different leadership behaviour?
- Identify the target population. First-time managers, middle managers, senior leaders and project leaders may need different development.
- Specify observable behaviours. Translate broad competencies into actions that can be practised and measured.
- Assess the baseline. Use interviews, surveys, performance evidence, observation or 360-degree feedback as appropriate.
- Design learning and practice. Combine explanation with realistic practice, feedback and workplace application.
- Build reinforcement. Add manager involvement, peer learning, coaching, mentoring or follow-up assignments where useful.
- Measure transfer. Check whether target behaviours are appearing in real work.
- Measure the intended outcome. Track the business or people metric the programme was designed to influence.
- Refine the programme. Use the evidence to adjust content, practice, reinforcement and participant selection.
What organisations should avoid
- using large global-spend figures as proof that leadership training is valuable;
- claiming a universal ROI multiple for coaching or development;
- treating 70-20-10 as a scientifically precise allocation rule;
- measuring success only through participant satisfaction;
- running generic programmes disconnected from real leadership challenges;
- assuming a programme will reduce turnover, raise profit or improve engagement without measuring those outcomes;
- promoting people into leadership roles without giving them support to develop the capabilities the role requires.
Leadership development at MATSH
MATSH offers leadership and management development for professionals and organisations across its wider professional-development portfolio. A useful starting point for newer managers is the Leadership Fundamentals for Young Leaders course. Organisations planning a larger programme should begin with the leadership behaviours and business outcomes they need to change, then choose or design development around those requirements.
Sources
- Lacerenza et al. – Leadership training design, delivery, and implementation: A meta-analysis
- Gallup – Manager Development
- Gallup – State of the Global Workplace 2025
- Leadership training in healthcare: a systematic umbrella review
- Leadership development programmes in healthcare research: systematic review and meta-analysis
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