Show Your Work: Proving Leadership ROI to the Board
Impactful Conversations with Dr Glenn Wallis and Nejmi Alexander
Key takeaways
Demonstrate, don't prove. Market uplift, restructures and external factors all move the numbers. Claim contribution honestly rather than attribution you can't defend — your SLT will trust the first and dismantle the second.
Measurement comes first. You can't target development at the behaviours creating the greatest drag until you've measured how leadership is actually experienced. A 360 baseline before design decides where to intervene — and gives you the before/after a board can see.
If you can describe it, you can design it. If you can measure it, you can move it. Behaviour change follows a sequence: see the gap, locate why it matters in your context, get input, apply it with real stakes, be held to account.
ROI is part of the story, not the silver bullet. Kirkpatrick's levels — experience, learning, behaviour change, outcomes — build the case; ROI translates it for a financially-minded audience. On its own it proves nothing.
Re-baseline at least six months after the learning ends. Day-zero feedback flatters everyone. The pattern that signals real change: peer-visible behaviour scores improve while self-scores narrow — leaders have recalibrated what exceptional looks like.
Episode summary
Leadership development ROI is demonstrated, not proven. The credible approach is to measure leadership behaviour before development starts, target development at the gaps that measurement reveals, and re-baseline at least six months after the learning ends. In this episode, we unpack how to show a board the commercial impact of leadership development: why measurement has to come first, why happy sheets and ROI figures alone mislead, and what the data actually shows when development works — peer-visible behaviour scores rise while self-scores narrow, as self-awareness catches up with reality.
Listen for
03:39 — Why "demonstrate" beats "prove"
07:30 — Commercial impact as a people-leader discipline, not an HR chore
13:24 — The behaviour-change sequence: describe → design → measure → move
16:16 — Kirkpatrick's levels, and the one that matters least
19:06 — ROI is part of the story, not the silver bullet
24:28 — Measurement comes first: running the Leadership Baseline+ before designing anything
29:50 — When to measure: the four-week pulse and confidence recalibration
33:00 — Re-baselining at six months: what the data shows when it's worked
40:10 — What to do on Monday
How do you show your work?
Glenn: Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Impactful Conversations podcast with myself, Dr Glenn Wallis, and my very good friend and co-host, Nejmi Alexander. Today we're exploring a topic that's dear to both of our hearts — and in my view should be dear to the hearts of anyone listening: showing your work. How do leaders in organisations — those that buy leadership development, those that experience it — show the impact of their work? Who do they show it to? Where's the demand coming from? And what tactics can you use to do that in a way that's rigorous enough that your audience feels it's a fair reflection of what's happened against the investment?
When the economy is struggling, as it has been here in the UK, there's a duty to be really clear on demonstrating the impact of development — because you recognise your clients are feeling the pinch.
Nejmi: That's fair. The business case for developing your leaders: what does impact genuinely look like? How do you measure it? How do you prove that the work you do improves the skills, capabilities and awareness of your leadership community and translates into real, tangible business value? Depending on your vantage point — whether you're the provider, the buyer or the CFO — you might have a slightly different view of what good looks like. So what does the burden of proof look like? How do you get to a good, appropriate, accurate measure of impact — and at what level do you want to demonstrate it in a way that feels true and tangible?
Why "demonstrate" beats "prove"
Glenn: You've used some language there that I think is really important. There's something about demonstrating the impact rather than proving it. How do you know the change you brought about is actually due to the development — and not the fact that there's been a massive uptick in the market, and everybody's going along nicely and claiming it was something to do with the development programme? I'm not trying to dilute the language; I'm trying to be honest and transparent about it. There's a contribution here that the development has made, and we're demonstrating that contribution in the following ways — rather than going straight in and saying "here's proof."
Nejmi: Fair — and I think that's part of the trap when this is done badly: trying to prove something the data doesn't entirely prove. In my career through strategy consulting, I developed skills around business-casing — return on investment, net present value, the hard-nosed financial measures. And I came to realise that a lot of it feels quite hypothetical. You can find measurables and point logically to how the work would contribute to them. But can all of the change you're measuring be attributed to the work itself, rather than external factors? Often not. So what you don't want to do is fall into the trap of trying to prove something your data doesn't prove. Instead, demonstrate the value and the measurability of the work in a way that's appropriate, proportionate and as accurate as can be.
That's a really useful conversation for any people leader feeling the need to demonstrate the value of the work they're leading or bringing in — and for the other side of the coin: the CFO who might be a little more cynical about the investment, looking for impact translated into measures that make sense in their world.
Commercial impact is a people-leader discipline
Glenn: That last phrase is key — as a people leader. You could listen to the first five minutes of this and think: I'm not in HR and I'm not the CFO, so I'm not that worried about the return. Those parties matter, but I'd go further. If you're a leader and you've invested in coaching for someone on your team, you should be asking: I've spent thousands of pounds on this person's development — what's changed as a result? Two things happen. One, it makes you more commercially aware. Two, where it works and you can demonstrate it, you reinforce the importance and the value of development. It becomes a virtuous spiral. "Soft skills" get a hard time because the development has often felt soft — there are no hard measures being held against it.
Nejmi: For me, the hard measure is commercial impact. The savviness as a people leader is to always be as close as possible to the commercial impact of any decision you make — and to be able to demonstrate it. If you're backing an investment in a person, then six or twelve months down the line you want to be able to point to the commercial impact of that decision. That's just good practice — even more so in big, complex, matrix organisations where the day-to-day impact is less visible. Being able to make that case, and being comfortable with what the case is, is always a good idea.
Don't rely on happy sheets
Glenn: So we've set the ground on why it matters and who it should matter to. Let's shift to the how: what can we measure, and how might we go about it? An initial plea: don't rely only on smile sheets — happy sheets, as we used to call them — as your only form of information about the success of a programme. Worse than that is not measuring at all: somebody told me to run a leadership development programme, I ran it, people attended — or frankly didn't — job done. You need a very ethical supplier to call that out for you if you're not measuring it yourself.
Nejmi: With anything, you want to be focused not just on the inputs, or even the outputs, but the outcomes — and how you can measure the difference between the starting point, the baseline, and the outcome you arrived at. There are levels to it. The happy sheet is the direct reaction to the work — how the experience felt on the day. That's valid, useful information. But that's not the point of leadership development — that it feels like a great experience. The proof is in the pudding: what happens after those sessions? How does it translate into doing things differently — and how does that then link to commercial impact?
The behaviour-change sequence
Nejmi: The foundation principle of the work I do is that you need to be able to move behaviours in order to demonstrate the impact of the work — and that is measurable. If you can describe it, you can design it. And if you can measure it, you can move it.
We look at the behaviours an organisation wants to move forward on — or what they anecdotally recognise as a gap. We look first at how those behaviours are experienced day to day: the participant's view of how they perform, not just on capability but on consistency — and a 360 view from the people around them. Then we look at the difference between the two. That's the starting point for true behaviour change.
Behaviour change happens in a sequence. A leader needs to see that there's a gap. They need to locate what's meaningful for them, in their context, about closing it. They need input — development, mentorship, coaching, training. Then they need real, practical opportunities, with real stakes and real jeopardy, to do something with that learning — and to be held to account for doing something with it. Over time, that experimentation and application starts to produce visible change: people demonstrably seeing a difference in how this person operates.
Measurement comes first in that process, and measurement sits at the end — so you can tangibly see what's shifting in these leaders. And then you have the foundation to demonstrate commercial impact, because you can translate it into what's actually happening on the ground.
Kirkpatrick's levels — and tying development to strategy
Glenn: You've just beautifully described Kirkpatrick's four levels — we'll come back to that. The other thing: there are conversations that need to happen, among lots of parties, before development starts — getting crystal clear not just on what changes need to be delivered, but on their connection to the organisation's strategy. I spend more time in the diagnostic and in creating the objectives of development than almost any other stage. The clearer you are on that, the clearer your measures become, the easier it is to track, and the easier it is at the end to demonstrate whether you've moved those things forward. If you're broadly saying "our leaders need to be better" — I have no idea what that means.
For those not familiar with Kirkpatrick, it's four levels — and I love it because it's simple. What was the experience? That's the one I'm least interested in, but it's still important. What was the learning? What change happened as a result of that learning? And what were the outcomes of those changes? That's about as simple as it gets, but it's really powerful. The fifth level is the commercial ROI. For all the reinvention of things, some things were right first time — Kirkpatrick is as good a process for gathering information to demonstrate the impact of development as you could look for.
ROI is part of the story, not the silver bullet
Nejmi: You can absolutely go a step further and measure the ROI of the work. My honest opinion: that level is harder to demonstrate than provable shifts in behaviour, and it's harder to isolate. That doesn't mean it's not a worthwhile endeavour. You always want to make the story as understandable to your audience as possible — and if you have a CFO stakeholder with an economically-minded focus, and sometimes a cynicism around some of this work, you want to translate the story in a way that makes sense in their world.
ROI can be a useful measure to help translate the story — but it's part of the story, not the silver bullet. You need to be able to tell the full picture. And development is not a linear process; it happens in phases, in cycles. The design of the development effort has to fit the participants, their learning needs, their context, and the space and capacity they have — often tight, because everybody's busy — so the work is de-risked and set up to deliver the impact it set out to achieve.
Glenn: I've had times when people bring you in because they're great fans of, say, coaching — and when you hear the objectives they're trying to achieve, you think: coaching isn't the right way to go here. You've got the wrong solution for the right set of problems. You want to sheep-dip 500 leaders through a big programme, when actually four of them need one-to-one coaching and the rest need a little information. The clearer that early stage, the better the fit of the solution you buy or build — and the easier it is to relate the outcomes back to the objectives you set. There are providers who'd rub their hands at being asked to develop 500 leaders when it's not the right fit.
This is where I'd circle back on ROI: if you exclude it from the set of measures, you're not being as accountable to the organisation's financial security as you might otherwise be. ROI can be both helpful and protective as a measure.
Measurement comes first: the Leadership Baseline+
Nejmi: It's worth looking at this in phases. I genuinely believe measurement has to come first — you need to know what you're working with. There are a variety of ways to get that data: an employee survey, a training needs analysis. In our work, we run what we call the Leadership Baseline+ — an activity that captures that 360 view at the outset. Where are the gaps between self-awareness and how leadership behaviours are actually experienced day to day? On which behaviours are the gaps biggest? Are there teams where a very different leadership culture shows up?
We measure behaviours, we see what the experience is — and that tells you which levers to pull to have the biggest impact for this organisation. Rather than diving headlong into one-size-fits-all for a community of leaders, a diagnostic up front gives you the insight to design the right setup for the work — more return, more impact, meeting leaders where they actually need to be met. I have a real aversion to the programmatic view of putting 50 or 100 leaders through the same process — of course you lose return on investment by taking that approach.
Glenn: The problem with a lot of those programmes is that they don't actually work. They sort of cover everybody and don't really work for anybody specifically. The individualised approach is more challenging, but this is where all leaders have a role: hold regular performance-type conversations — not the quarterly or annual thing. Understanding your people really well gives you insight into their specific development needs and how that ties back to your function's success, and then the organisation's. You can draw a red thread from organisational performance right through to the performance of that individual. And it's more cost-effective than doing nothing. In economic downturns, development is often the first budget cut — and my argument, from thousands of conversations with leaders over twenty-six years, is that's exactly when they need the most support, not the least.
So broadly: be really clear on the organisational impact you're looking for from any development, and whether you can draw the red thread through to the outcomes of the intervention. Then baseline — the 360 approach is a brilliant way of doing it, because you can make it specific to your organisation rather than buying an off-the-shelf psychometric. Then put measures in place during and at the end — something like Kirkpatrick, adding ROI where it's useful — and then re-measure to see where the changes have been.
When to measure — and the confidence recalibration
Glenn: A quick question. If I measure the impact of a programme on the second afternoon of a two-day event, I'll get a very different set of responses — people have just come off it, exhausted but motivated. They'll say one thing at day zero and another at three, six, nine months down the line. What's your view on timelines of measurement?
Nejmi: Capturing feedback live after a really great session, unsurprisingly, gets really great results — and everyone can pat themselves on the back and go home for a job well done. But that doesn't always turn into impact for the organisation. A dutiful partner keeps looking at the impact of the work, because the value doesn't show itself overnight.
We'll always capture information on the day — fresh insights are useful. But a four-week pulse after the event is often where it gets interesting: you committed to these things — how has it gone? What's worked, what hasn't? Honest reflection on the application of the learning. I also find a recalibration of confidence levels helpful at that stage: where were your confidence levels at the beginning of the journey versus now? Capture it on day zero, then compare and contrast — it helps eliminate the bias of being fresh-faced at the beginning of the experience versus the hard edge of actually applying the work.
Re-baselining: what the data shows when it's worked
Nejmi: When it comes to behavioural change and its sustainability, we baseline against the behaviour after the development effort. Say the programme runs three to six months — a combination of workshops, group coaching, one-to-one coaching. We then come back to the same measures of behaviour and run a similar 360 at least six months after the learning has happened, to measure, compare and contrast behavioural change over the medium term. Wherever possible we ask the same participants who provided input at the beginning — people come and go, get promoted, move teams, so it's not a hundred-percent science — but it gives you a solid measure, across at least six touchpoints, of what that leadership has felt like to the people experiencing it first-hand.
Typically we see an improvement in peer-visible behaviours — capability that has improved, consistency that has improved. And we often see the confidence measures — the self-scores — go down slightly, and the distribution narrow. I put that down to rising self-awareness: a true view, without the rose-tinted glasses, of what exceptional looks like in these contexts. Recognising where you are exceptional — and recognising where there's real scope to improve your consistency and your skills. So the self-assessment range narrows, and the peer-visible range increases.
Glenn: That six-month piece is about right. You could try a longitudinal study, but there's so much water under the bridge by then that it's difficult to compare like with like. Six months, particularly with some touchpoints in between to keep things fresh, is a good one. And I love that you mentioned the self-rating dip — people have recalibrated what good looks like, and they were overestimating their capabilities. That's really important.
Hold development to account
Glenn: There's a lot here for leaders in every part of an organisation, because development is everybody's responsibility — whether you're being developed or sponsoring someone else's development. This is not an HR-only thing. It's not a people-function topic; it's not even a CFO topic. It's everybody's responsibility to engage in development you can tie to the performance of the organisation, and to demonstrate — not prove — those impacts as clearly as possible.
And be demanding of development. If you're not measuring it, you're not being demanding of it — which makes people more reticent to invest. Be demanding of it so you can be confident it's either worked or it hasn't. Sometimes it doesn't — but that's not necessarily the fault of the development. Stuff happens. At least you'll be able to have an informed conversation about it, rather than whinging that you've spent an awful lot of money and you're not quite sure what difference it's making.
Nejmi: Learning in itself is uncomfortable. I only have to look at my son — he's approaching five, learning to spell and to write, and he loves it... until something gets challenging, and then he's reluctant, or wants to pull away and find an easier avenue. He's five, but that translates for anyone throughout life, and it certainly carries into leadership. It's tempting to pull away from the things we find more challenging, the situations we find more uncomfortable.
The very nature of developing should be uncomfortable — we need to be comfortable with that as an idea. If you recognise that organisationally, then the rigour around the learning — the jeopardy, the accountability that sits within it — becomes fundamental. How do we make sure the work itself delivers the impact? It's in the design, it's in the measurement, it's in ensuring there's a need to do something with what's uncomfortable — to experiment, to learn, and to come out the other side better. I totally understand the hesitancy to put money behind something that feels difficult to generate return from. But we should be demanding of that work — demanding of providers, partners and internal teams — in order for it to generate the return. Learning and development is an amazing capability, and it's incredibly valuable — but it has to be done right.
What to do on Monday
Glenn: Let's finish with: what's the first thing a leader should do on Monday as a result of this conversation?
Nejmi: If you're invested in — or thinking about investing in — this kind of development work: look at how you prove the commercial impact of the work today. How is that being done? Do you believe it? If not, there's plenty in what we've covered on how it could be enhanced and reinforced. Run a bit of an audit on where the measurement isn't meeting the expectation you'd have — not the delivery, the impact.
And if you're a people leader investing your time, energy or budget in someone's development: get really clear on the development story. If somebody asked you what the point of that work was, what could you point to? What's your demonstration of value? What's your story? Get really clear on it — you should always have it in your back pocket. And if you're not clear on it, look at what commercial impact you could construct around it.
Glenn: I'm totally aligned with those — two really clear steps for two different people. The whole point of these conversations is that they have some impact. I've really enjoyed this one. At the end of the day, this is hard-earned money that your organisation has had to go out to its clients to get, that you're now investing back — and you should see some flow between those two things. From us both: go away, hold your development to account, and tell us about the impact you've brought about as a result. Until the next one — thank you very much, and goodbye.
Transcript lightly edited for clarity: filler, false starts and crosstalk removed; punctuation corrected. Content otherwise faithful to the recording.
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