The Impact of Our Leadership Programs

We’re always looking to gain a better understanding of how our leadership programs are tracking and how we can improve. Over the years, we have made considerable improvements to the delivery of our programs, ensuring efficiency and accountability with the help of automation to reduce the time between sessions and increase completion rates. For the past few years, we have evaluated our programs to understand how participants perceive the quality of the programs.

To better understand the impact of our programs, a year and a half ago we added four new questions about outcomes. These are:

• I think the work people I work with say I am a more skilled leader as a result of participating in this program

• My participation in the program has improved my job satisfaction.

• My participation has improved my productivity at work.

• My participation in the program has improved my relationships at work.

Below is a summary of an analysis we recently conducted around these questions. In short, we have found good evidence of the impact our blended programs have (from a participant perspective) and gained a good understanding of how to best build a leadership program that achieves high outcomes for your organisation. (Note -these questions are self assessed and we are also gathering more data about behaviour change from self and others in our pre/post 180/360 surveys – to be shared later in 2024). 

Combining coaching and group sessions, investing in more leadership development hours, and spending more per participant are key factors that can lead to better outcomes in programs. Organisations can use this information to structure their programs and allocate resources more effectively to achieve their desired outcomes.

Schedule a 30 min Zoom call with a member of our team.

Moreover, organisations can use the insights from the analysis to tailor their programs to their specific needs. For example, if an organisation has time-poor executives, coaching may be the best option for achieving optimal outcomes within a limited timeframe. On the other hand, if an organisation has more time but is cost-constrained, investing in longer group sessions may be the most effective approach. By using the insights from the analysis, organisations can customise their leadership development programs to meet their unique needs and achieve their desired outcomes.

Executive Summary: Program Outcome Analysis May 2023

Introduction

From January 2022, Integral added the following questions to the program evaluations:

• I think the work people I work with say I am a more skilled leader as a result of participating in this program.

• My participation in the program has improved my job satisfaction.

• My participation has improved my productivity at work.

• My participation in the program has improved my relationships at work.

This analysis looks at what interventions (workshops, coaching, and their various shapes) lead to optimal outcomes.

Data overview

• 760 participants completed the post-program evaluations.

• Post-program evaluations are sent out at the final workshop or final coaching session, or both.

• Coaching means individual coaching.

• Workshops mean any group delivery, including group coaching.

• Data from 760 participants allow us to split the data into 3-6 sub-groups (depending on the distribution) and get enough data in each group to draw early conclusions.

• The standard deviation is relatively large (1.5), which indicates that the differences within the groups are generally greater than the differences between the groups. As a result, when running t-tests to determine if there is a significant difference in means, the outcomes are only sometimes found to be significant.

• More data is required to draw significant conclusions. With our automated data collection, this is just a matter of time.

Summary

Integral has conducted an analysis of program outcomes for 760 participants who completed programs between January 2022 and April 2023. We introduced four new outcomes questions to better measure the impact of its programs.

The analysis reveals notable differences (denoted with *) between programs. However, due to the high variation, more data is required to ensure significance for all results. The preliminary analysis highlights the following early trends and significant findings:

• The best outcomes are achieved when combining sufficient coaching (3+ sessions) with group sessions (workshops)*.

• More leadership development hours result in better outcomes:

  • More coaching sessions (4-6+) yield better outcomes than 1-3 coaching sessions.

  • More workshop hours (3 days+) lead to better outcomes.

  • Longer programs have better outcomes*.

• Coaching has a significantly higher impact per participant hour than workshops.

  • 4-6 hours of coaching result in equal to or higher outcomes than 4 days or more of workshops.

  • For participants who are time-poor (for example, executives), coaching provides the best outcomes for the least amount of time spent*.

• Spending more per participant results in better outcomes. This appears to be the strongest overall relationship with outcomes.

  • Coaching is significantly more expensive per hour per participant.

  • For organisations looking to minimise spending, but whose participants have more time to spend, workshops result in the best outcomes for a low financial investment, at a higher time investment.