Is satisfaction really enough? How to demonstrate genuine ROI behind leadership programmes

Are you struggling to combat cynicism and get leaders to wholeheartedly and genuinely buy into your development programmes? Fresh off winning Gold for the Best Results of a Learning Programme at the Brandon Hall Excellence Awards, our CEO and founder Mike Straw explains how we’re never satisfied with customer satisfaction metrics – we’re looking to deliver real transformation.

What makes for a good leadership development programme? If you look at the measurement scores from a well-regarded scheme, you’re likely to see results such as: 86% satisfaction with the virtual classroom; 89% satisfaction with coaching; 92% satisfaction with self-learning, and my personal favourite, 98% challenges being completed (still no mention of what business impact that made).

These are absolute nonsense! Who wants to be satisfied with satisfaction? There’s no tangible result there, so why should you care? In our mind, it’s the equivalent of going on a date with someone and afterwards them saying it was a nice evening! No one wants nice, they want brilliant and excellent. You want to knock their socks off!

So shame on us as an industry. We’ve got to do better. It’s criminal to be satisfied with satisfaction.

Going down to the bottom line

Given that those are the actual results of an award-winning leadership development programme (not designed by us!), it’s no wonder that managers are reluctant to enrol when invited to do so.

Because let’s be honest. When you work with engineers or scientists or any other professional, their idea of a good time is not going on development programmes. They want to find the next medicine or the next engineering breakthrough.

So you’ve got to make the programmes practical, with an impact on the things they want to happen: reducing development times, or getting products to clinic faster for scientists.

What we’ve learned is that for our programmes to be sticky, make a difference and be sustainable, they’ve got to be wrapped around what people do in the business. And that means going down to the bottom line.

Designing leadership programmes for business results

At Achieve Breakthrough, we set about unearthing why you as an L&D buyer are actually planning this leadership development programme. Right from the contracting stage, we’re asking: What are the business results and leadership metrics that need to shift? What change in culture do you want?

The question I always ask is: if this leadership programme were to be really successful, what would you expect to show up in the business results and KPIs? What would you want to observe in the leaders?

That’s how you ensure the programme delivers a business outcome and has an uplifting leadership capability. You look at the outcomes that are needed, and you start to work on them immediately. You prove your own hypothesis.

Connecting programmes with business metrics

Of course, every leadership development buyer wants to show ROI. So why are they settling for customer satisfaction metrics? Why is there so much investment in leadership development programmes without much need to show ROI?

I think it’s about vendors and suppliers, and having fallen into certain habits. There’s a mistaken feeling that you can’t measure the impact of a leadership programme – and it’s become acceptable and normal not to try.

So the L&D and HR people don’t do the work to connect programmes with business metrics: they believe the story that they’re too difficult to align.

How Achieve Breakthrough tracks programmes

We put the rigour behind the programme. We track it, measure it – and promise a return on investment.

Take our recent programme, for which we won gold medals for Best Results of a Learning Programme and Best Leadership Development Programme at the Brandon Hall Excellence Awards 2024, plus Best L&D Initiative – Private Sector at the CIPD Awards 2024. Our client had problem with attrition. That meant fewer staff to give customers a great experience, and more time wasted by bosses on recruitment.

We worked from the presupposition that if people are good managers, leaders and coaches to their teams, fewer staff will want to leave. We designed a programme to embed four key leadership behaviours: Ambition, Empowerment, Courage and Accountability, aligning with our client’s core values.

The business impact speaks for itself. Compared with leaders who have not been through the programme, leaders have reduced attrition by 14% in 6 months and there has been a 25% uplift in leadership effectiveness and 15% increase in employee loyalty.

And, leaders who have completed the programme already have a 6.7% better retention rate, £6.3m in benefit and a ROI of 12:1 within a six-month period!

So far, the programme has run in 19 languages and has reached over 2,700 leaders across all business areas and functions. It’s driving long-term, sustainable and seismic cultural shift across the organisation.

Achieve Breakthrough: your leadership development partner

By setting robust business metrics, you can demonstrate ROI and business value, and encourage enrolment in your leadership development course. You can also be proud of your own work: you’re making a difference and contributing to bottom line of the business.

Achieve Breakthrough will guide you through the process of determining your desired outcome, setting your metrics, and designing the right course.

We want to help you achieve the breakthrough necessary for real, lasting behavioural change and robust ROI. We won’t be satisfied with satisfaction.

Contact us today to discuss working together.