When the training ends, what actually changed?
- TopLeader
- Jun 7
- 3 min read
Updated: 7 days ago
Leadership and manager development remains a top priority for HR, but investment alone does not guarantee stronger outcomes. Gartner reported in 2024 that 75% of organisations had made significant updates to their leadership development programs and more than half were increasing spending on leader development — yet they were still not seeing the results they expected. The challenge is no longer whether companies develop their leaders. It is whether that development carries into daily practice after the workshop, coaching session or academy ends.
Source: Gartner, Gartner Survey Finds Leader and Manager Development Tops HR Leaders’ List of 2025 Priorities for Third Consecutive Year, 15 October 2024.
In a leadership program at a mid-sized SaaS company (Pricefx), TopLeader worked with 18 leaders: 16 started the program — an 88% start rate — and 90% of those who started completed all five sessions. Participation like that isn't proof of business impact on its own. But it's the necessary condition: if people don't engage with a program, you can't even begin to ask whether it changed behavior.
This is a summary of our webinar, with the full recording below.
Why don't leadership programs carry into practice?
Most programs handle the start and the activity itself well. The weak spot is what happens between sessions and after they end. Feedback is positive and attendance is high, but momentum fades — usually because no single role owns the continuity. Development becomes real in the small steps people take between activities, not in the session.
Who is responsible for making development stick?
HR can't carry it alone, and not because HR does anything wrong. Development becomes real only when three roles play their part: HR sets the framework and structure; the manager supports continuity in daily practice — support, not control; and the program sponsor defines the business goal or change the development connects to. Without sponsor context, programs drift from reality.
How do you measure leadership development impact when there's no clean ROI number?
At the level of leadership development, one clean ROI figure usually isn't honest. Instead of a single universal KPI, measure in three layers: make engagement and progress visible; track whether participants take small actions between sessions; and give HR and sponsors an aggregated view of engagement, themes, momentum, and progress — without exposing confidential coaching content.
What's shifted in what HR is expected to show?
The expectation has moved from activity to capability. It used to be enough to report that a program ran, people attended, and feedback was positive. Today, sponsors and business leaders ask what changed in behavior, in how managers work, and in how teams function — not how many sessions people attended.
How can HR show progress without surveillance?
Visibility doesn't mean reading coaching notes or personal reflections. HR sees aggregated, program-level signals: engagement, recurring themes, momentum, session usage, and progress over time. That's not surveillance — it's a clear program-level signals layer. It turns "the program happened" into "the program is alive," and gives HR a stronger conversation with sponsors.
A practical model: diagnose → personalize → act → measure
Diagnose — understand where each person starts: their goal, context, and what's holding them back.
Personalize — work on something concrete (feedback, delegation, difficult conversations, prioritization), not "leadership in general."
Act — small steps between sessions, where development either becomes real or disappears.
Measure — what HR and sponsors can see without breaching confidentiality: signals that the program is alive, and where momentum is dropping.
We said this openly in the webinar: there's no magic bullet, and no simple way to prove the impact of every program with 100% certainty. Participation is a necessary condition, not final proof. We'd rather be honest about that than sell certainty that doesn't exist.
Next step
The next step is a focused 30-minute walkthrough. Bring a current leadership or talent program, development priority or planned initiative. We’ll show how TopLeader could support the participant journey, weekly practice and sponsor visibility — and be clear if it is not the right fit.
Speakers: Milan Vlček (Founder, TopLeader) and Tomáš Bakos (HR / People & Culture / leadership development).
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