Should You Invest in Leadership Training? What is the ROI?

Business owners tell me they want to develop leadership skills.  My response is usually, “Why?” If we start with the Why in Mind, we will be much better able to choose the right trainings and be able to measure our progress.

Here are some tips to help you measure the business impact and avoid some common missteps when choosing a training program:

1.       Start by understanding the specific business needs.  Are we training to increase opportunities for growth; to increase efficiency and save money; or to increase high-level redundancy and reduce risk?

2.       Look at not only the bottom line but also the behaviors that must occur to address those needs.  Make sure you are as specific as possible

3.       Identify skill gaps that are going to give your organization the most bang for your buck. If possible, use 360-degree assessments or data from performance management system.

4.       Build data collection into whatever you choose asking the participants initially and then doing a look-back over time to see whether what you are teaching is being applied, what is the calculated ROI over time and what are the intangibles like teamwork or communication increases.

While everything worth doing should be measured, it might not be practical to evaluate some inexpensive programs this extensively but reviewing overall your leadership training programs and making sure you have improvement in key business measures is critical to long-term success.