Leader self-development: A contemporary context for leader development evaluation

Organizations are moving toward self-development as a means to supplement formal leader development programs. However, the highly individualized nature of self-development presents unique challenges for evaluation. We suggest a mixed methods approach, including not only a summative evaluation (i.e., examining self-development outcomes), but also emphasizing a formative evaluation (i.e., examining why certain self-development activities are more or less effective). Accordingly, the purpose of this article is threefold. We first introduce a taxonomy of attributes indicative of the effectiveness level of a leader self-development activity. Second, we present a methodology for utilizing this taxonomy to evaluate whether a given self-development activity, or collection of activities, is higher or lower in effectiveness. We also describe some data from two field studies to illustrate the link between this taxonomy and the performance outcomes of task performance, team performance, and leader adaptive performance. Finally, we discuss the practical implications of undertaking an evaluation utilizing this taxonomy.