Leadership Development Is Broken, Because We’re Asking the Wrong People If It’s Working

Most leadership development programs feel successful, but employees say they’re not actually creating better leaders. Here’s what really needs to change.

The multi-billion dollar global leadership development industry has a dirty secret: most leadership development programs are evaluated by the very people who design and deliver them, not by the employees who are supposed to benefit.

It’s like asking chefs to rate their own cooking while ignoring the diners who actually have to eat the meal. This fundamental flaw in evaluation methodology explains why leadership training continues to disappoint despite massive corporate investment in developing leaders.

After surveying over 150,000 employees, managers, and executives across hundreds of organizations, the evidence is clear: we’ve been measuring effective leadership development all wrong. While training departments celebrate completion rates and executives praise leadership program design, the people actually led by these “developed” leaders tell a dramatically different story—one that should force every organization to fundamentally rethink how they approach professional development for future leaders.

The Illusion of Effectiveness: Why Feel-Good Training Fails

The leadership development industry has perfected the art of creating development programs that feel successful without actually producing effective leaders. Walk into any corporate leadership training session and you’ll find enthusiastic facilitators, polished materials, and participants who leave feeling energized about new leadership competencies and methodologies. Post-training surveys show high satisfaction scores, completion rates hit targets, and HR leaders report glowing success metrics to senior leaders.

But here’s the problem: none of these measures actually indicate whether leaders have developed essential leadership skills or become more effective at leading people. In fact, research from Leadership IQ reveals a shocking disconnect between leadership program satisfaction and real-world leadership effectiveness. Organizations routinely report successful leadership development initiatives while their employees simultaneously report widespread dissatisfaction with their leaders’ actual leadership behaviors and leadership quality.

Consider the sobering reality uncovered in a study called The State of Leadership Development. When 21,008 employees were asked to evaluate their leaders across seven critical leadership competencies, the results were devastating for the leadership development industry.

Only 29% of employees say their leader’s vision for the future is aligned with organizational goals. Despite countless hours spent in strategic leadership training programs, communication workshops, and vision-setting seminars for emerging leaders, more than two-thirds of employees see their leaders as misaligned with organizational direction. This suggests that leadership development programs are either failing to teach important leadership capabilities or leaders aren’t applying what they’ve learned in their leadership role.

Only 20% of employees say their leader always shares the challenges the organization is facing. Transparency and honest communication represent core components of virtually every leadership development program, yet four out of five employees report that their leaders fail to demonstrate these supposedly “developed” leadership skills in practice.

Only 27% of employees say their leader always encourages and recognizes suggestions for improvement. Creative leadership, inclusive management, and employee engagement have become buzzwords in professional development, but the vast majority of employees report that their leaders don’t actually encourage their input or ideas—fundamental aspects of effective leadership.

These findings become even more damning when we examine the business impact. Employees who believe their leaders demonstrate strong leadership are dramatically more engaged and productive. The study “The Risks Of Ignoring Employee Feedback” revealed that those who say their leader always shares organizational challenges are 10 times more likely to recommend their company as a great employer. Employees whose leaders encourage suggestions for improvement are 12 times more likely to recommend their organization. The ROI potential is enormous—if leadership development actually produced effective leaders.

The disconnect reveals itself most clearly in an analysis of leadership training effectiveness across 18 critical leadership skills that every good leader should master. While organizations invest heavily in developing these leadership competencies through various leadership initiatives, the results show systematic failure:

• Only 19% of leaders are adept at reducing employee burnout—despite burnout being identified as a critical organizational challenge requiring successful leadership.
• Only 26% of leaders have mastered developing middle performers into high performers—an essential leadership skill taught in virtually every leadership development program.
• Only 28% of leaders are skilled at managing hybrid teams—despite this being a fundamental requirement for organizational leaders in today’s workplace.
• Only 43% of leaders can deliver constructive feedback that changes behavior—one of the most basic leadership abilities.

The pattern is unmistakable: leadership development programs are producing future leaders who may understand concepts intellectually but cannot apply them effectively in real-world leadership situations. The traditional evaluation approach—measuring leadership program satisfaction, knowledge retention, and completion rates—completely misses this application gap that prevents emerging leaders from becoming truly effective leaders.

This failure is particularly concerning when we consider that even senior leaders struggle with fundamental leadership capabilities. For example, when looking at deficiencies in essential leadership skills:

• Only 31% of leaders are highly proficient at managing difficult personalities—a crucial leadership ability for any leadership role.
• Only 40% of leaders are well-versed in overcoming resistance to change—an important leadership capability in today’s dynamic business environment.
• Only 50% of leaders are accomplished at holding employees accountable—a fundamental aspect of effective leadership.

These gaps suggest that leadership development programs focus on theoretical knowledge while ignoring practical application skills that employees actually experience. The result is a generation of potential leaders who have attended extensive leadership training but lack the leadership behaviors necessary for successful leadership in their leadership journey.

How Real Employees Rate Their Leaders (and Why It Matters More)

The most revolutionary aspect of the research cited above involves asking the people who actually experience leadership on a daily basis: the employees being led. This employee-centric evaluation approach reveals truths that traditional assessment methods systematically miss, providing crucial insights into whether leadership development programs actually develop effective leaders.

In the oft-cited research on performance appraisals , involving 48,012 employees, managers, and CEOs, only 13% of employees and managers think their organization’s performance appraisal system is useful, and a staggering 88% said their current performance review negatively impacts their opinion of HR. Even more telling, only 6% of CEOs think their performance appraisal process is useful.

These results expose a fundamental failure in developing leaders and leadership development programs. If leaders cannot conduct meaningful performance conversations—one of their most basic leadership responsibilities—then what exactly are leadership training programs teaching? The data suggests that professional development focuses on theoretical knowledge while ignoring practical application skills that employees actually experience from their leaders.

For instance, the analysis identified two primary problems with leader development that traditional leadership development programs fail to address:

Problem #1: Undifferentiated Recognition

Despite 96% of employees agreeing that effective leaders should differentiate between high and low performers, only 22% believe their leader actually distinguishes between high and low performers. This failure creates a cascade of disengagement, particularly among high performers who see their excellent work treated the same as mediocre effort—a clear sign that leadership development programs aren’t producing good leaders.

The business impact is profound. High performers who see their leaders failing to differentiate performance are significantly more likely to become disengaged and eventually leave the organization. Leadership development programs teach recognition and feedback as core leadership competencies, but employees report that these leadership skills aren’t being applied effectively in practice by emerging leaders or senior leaders.

Problem #2: Irrelevant Feedback

Only 14% of employees believe their performance appraisal provides relevant and meaningful feedback, despite feedback being a cornerstone of leadership development curricula and an essential leadership skill. This gap between leadership training content and practical application suggests that leadership programs teach feedback concepts without ensuring leaders can deliver them effectively—a critical flaw in developing leadership capabilities.

The employee perspective reveals additional leadership failures that traditional evaluation methods miss entirely.

The research on employee engagement shows that in 42% of organizations, high performers are less engaged than low performers—a stunning indictment of leadership effectiveness and the failure of leadership development programs to create effective leaders. High-performing employees report feeling less motivated, less recognized, and less supported than their lower-performing colleagues, suggesting systematic failures in organizational leadership.

When we dig deeper into employee experiences, the leadership development gap becomes even more apparent across multiple dimensions of effective leadership:

Recognition and Motivation Failures: High performers consistently report feeling underrecognized while low performers receive positive reinforcement. This pattern indicates that leaders often lack the practical leadership skills to identify and appropriately reward excellent performance—despite recognition being taught in virtually every leadership development program. The failure suggests that leadership training doesn’t adequately prepare future leaders for this fundamental leadership ability.

Accountability Gaps: Employees report widespread failures in leadership accountability, a cornerstone of strong leadership. High performers become frustrated watching low performers face no consequences for poor work, while they themselves receive little recognition for excellence. This suggests that leadership development programs teach accountability concepts without ensuring leaders can implement them effectively—a critical gap in developing leaders.

Career Development Neglect: When it comes to career growth, a survey of 3,577 employees revealed that only 18% are always excited about their career growth and progress, and only 19% see a path to advance their career at their current employer. These findings indicate that leaders consistently fail to develop their people effectively—another core leadership responsibility that leadership development programs apparently aren’t addressing successfully. Good leaders should excel at developing future leaders, but the data suggests this essential leadership skill is underdeveloped.

The employee perspective also reveals significant gaps in change leadership capabilities among organizational leaders. Leadership IQ’s analysis of over 79,000 employees found that only 15% of employees always understand the rationale behind their organization’s strategy. This communication failure suggests that leadership development programs aren’t producing leaders who can effectively explain strategic decisions and build employee buy-in for organizational changes—a critical aspect of successful leadership in today’s environment.

Perhaps most telling is the recent discovery that only 36% of employees are perceived by their managers to be delivering great work. This finding suggests either that leadership development programs aren’t teaching leaders how to inspire great performance, or that leaders lack the leadership competencies necessary to recognize and develop great work in their teams. Either explanation points to fundamental failures in how we approach developing leaders.

Creating Feedback Loops to Keep Leadership Learning Relevant

The solution to broken leadership development lies in fundamentally restructuring evaluation methodology to prioritize employee experience over leadership program satisfaction. Organizations must create systematic feedback loops that measure leadership effectiveness from the bottom up rather than the top down, ensuring that leadership training actually develops effective leaders rather than just satisfied participants.

Real-Time Employee Feedback Systems

Instead of relying on post-training surveys that measure participant satisfaction with leadership development programs, organizations should implement continuous employee feedback mechanisms that assess leader behavior change and the practical application of leadership skills. For example, monthly “Shoves and Tugs” conversations can identify specific leadership behaviors that motivate or demotivate employees, providing immediate data on leadership development program effectiveness.

This approach involves asking employees two simple questions monthly that reveal the true impact of professional development initiatives:

• “Tell me about a time in the past month when you felt demotivated or emotionally burned out.”
• “Tell me about a time in the past month when you felt motivated/excited/jazzed up.”

These conversations surface real leadership behaviors that impact employee experience, providing leadership development programs with actual performance data rather than theoretical knowledge retention. This feedback helps identify whether emerging leaders are actually developing the leadership competencies necessary for effective leadership.

360-Degree Impact Measurement

Traditional 360-degree feedback focuses on gathering input about leadership potential. Employee-centric evaluation examines leadership impact through measures that matter to business results and assess whether leadership development programs are creating effective leaders:

• Employee Engagement Correlation: How do engagement scores change in teams led by leadership program participants?
• Retention Analysis: Do teams led by “developed” leaders show improved retention rates?
• Performance Differentiation: Can leaders effectively distinguish and manage different performance levels—a crucial leadership ability?
• Innovation Metrics: Do employees feel more empowered to contribute ideas and suggestions under leaders who have completed leadership training?

The research shows that when employees feel their leaders encourage suggestions for improvement—an important leadership capability—they are 12 times more likely to recommend their organization as a great employer. This metric provides a clear, measurable outcome for leadership development effectiveness and demonstrates the business impact of developing leaders effectively.

Longitudinal Employee Experience Tracking

Organizations should track employee experience with specific leaders over extended periods to identify development program impact and assess whether leadership training is producing the leadership quality organizations need. Key metrics include:

• Trust and Transparency: Do employees report increased leader openness about organizational challenges—a fundamental aspect of effective leadership?
• Communication Effectiveness: Are employees receiving more meaningful feedback and recognition from leaders who have completed professional development?
• Development Support: Do employees see improved career growth opportunities and skill development from leaders trained in developing future leaders?
• Change Leadership: Do employees better understand strategic rationale and feel supported through organizational changes led by trained leaders?

Manager Capability Assessment

Our research reveals that only 48% of leaders have mastered conducting successful performance reviews, despite this being a fundamental leadership responsibility and essential leadership skill. Employee-centric evaluation would assess whether leadership development programs actually improve these practical leadership capabilities:

• Performance Conversation Quality: Do employees report more meaningful, actionable performance discussions with leaders who have completed leadership training?
• Recognition Frequency: Are high performers receiving appropriate acknowledgment for their contributions from developed leaders?
• Accountability Implementation: Do employees see appropriate consequences for both high and low performance—evidence of strong leadership?
• Development Planning: Are employees receiving clear guidance on career advancement and skill building from leaders committed to developing future leaders?

Executive Coaching Integration

While executive coaching can provide valuable one-on-one leadership development, research suggests that even senior leaders who receive intensive coaching often struggle with basic leadership behaviors. Organizations should evaluate executive coaching effectiveness through employee experience measures rather than just coach satisfaction ratings or leadership potential assessments.

Business Impact Integration

The most sophisticated evaluation approach connects employee experience data with business outcomes, ensuring that leadership development programs contribute to organizational goals. Organizations should track correlations between employee-reported leader effectiveness and:

• Team Performance Metrics: Do teams with highly-rated leaders show superior business results?
• Innovation Indicators: Are teams with effective leaders generating more improvement suggestions and implementing more changes?
• Customer Satisfaction: Do customer experience scores correlate with employee reports of leader effectiveness?
• Financial Performance: Is there a measurable relationship between employee-rated leadership quality and business unit financial results?

Corrective Action Protocols

Employee-centric evaluation must include systematic responses to negative feedback about leadership effectiveness. When employees report leadership failures, organizations need structured approaches for:

• Targeted Skill Development: Addressing specific leadership competency gaps identified through employee feedback.
• Leadership Coaching Intervention: Providing intensive support for leaders struggling with practical application of leadership skills.
• Accountability Measures: Ensuring leadership development translates into actual behavior change and improved leadership effectiveness.
• Program Redesign: Modifying development programs curricula based on real-world effectiveness data and employee experience.

The Path Forward: Leadership Development That Actually Works

The evidence is overwhelming: leadership development often fails because we’ve been measuring the wrong things. Leadership program satisfaction and knowledge retention don’t predict leadership effectiveness. Completion rates and facilitator ratings don’t indicate behavior change. Training department success metrics don’t correlate with employee experience or the development of effective leaders.

Organizations serious about developing effective leaders must abandon feel-good evaluation methods in favor of employee-centric assessment. This means measuring leadership development success through the eyes of the people being led, not the people doing the leading or designing the leadership development programs.

The transformation requires fundamental shifts in evaluation methodology for all leadership initiatives:

From Satisfaction to Impact: Stop measuring how participants feel about leadership training and start measuring how their teams feel about their leadership effectiveness and leadership quality.

From Knowledge to Application: Stop testing what leaders know about leadership competencies and start assessing what they actually do in real workplace leadership situations.

From Completion to Change: Stop counting leadership training hours and start measuring behavior modification and the practical application of essential leadership skills.

From Internal to External: Stop relying on self-assessment and peer evaluation of leadership potential and start gathering systematic feedback from the people who experience leadership behaviors daily.

The business case for this transformation is compelling. The research shows that employees led by effective leaders who demonstrate strong leadership are dramatically more engaged, productive, and likely to recommend their organizations. The ROI potential of truly effective leadership development far exceeds the cost of implementing rigorous, employee-centric evaluation methods that actually measure leadership effectiveness.

But the change requires courage. It means acknowledging that many expensive, well-designed leadership development programs have failed to create effective leaders or develop the leadership competencies organizations need. It means accepting that satisfied participants and enthusiastic trainers don’t guarantee business impact or successful leadership. It means admitting that the leadership development industry has been selling the illusion of effectiveness while ignoring actual results and the real experience of developing leaders.

The organizations that embrace employee-centric evaluation will develop genuinely effective leaders who create engaged, productive, innovative teams. Those that continue asking the wrong people if leadership development works will continue investing billions in leadership programs that fail the people they’re supposed to serve, missing opportunities to develop great leaders who can drive organizational success.

The choice is clear: continue the comfortable fiction that leadership development works because trainers and participants say it does, or embrace the uncomfortable truth that effectiveness can only be measured by the employees who experience leadership every day. Whether leadership development programs actually develop good leaders with the essential leadership skills needed for their leadership journey can only be determined by those they lead.

The billion dollar question facing every organization is which path they will choose in their approach to developing leaders and leadership development programs. The answer will determine whether their investment in professional development creates effective leaders capable of strong leadership, or simply produces another generation of well-trained but ineffective leaders who fail to demonstrate the leadership behaviors and leadership quality their organizations desperately need.

By Mark Murphy, Senior Contributor