How can we measure effective leadership?

How can we measure effective leadership?

Most organisations still measure leadership indirectly.

We track revenue, delivery, engagement, attrition, and customer outcomes. Then we infer whether leadership is “good”.

That approach is understandable. But it creates a blind spot. Leadership becomes a vibe rather than a capability.

When you look across research from Gallup, McKinsey, and reporting in the Financial Times, a consistent pattern emerges. The strongest approaches combine outcomes with behaviours.

1. Outcomes leaders strongly influence

Gallup’s research consistently shows that managers have an outsized impact on engagement, retention, and discretionary effort. If you want a hard proxy for leadership effectiveness, look at sustained engagement, internal mobility, attrition patterns, and team performance over time.

Leadership leaves fingerprints in the data, but only when you know where to look.

2. Behaviours, not personality

360 feedback can be useful, but only when it is treated as part of a system and clearly linked to development.

The most helpful questions are not “is this leader inspiring?” but:

• Do they listen well?
• Do they clarify decisions?
• Do they coach others effectively?
• Do they handle conflict constructively?

These are observable behaviours, not personality traits. And behaviours can be developed.

3. Humanity and accountability together

McKinsey’s work on leadership effectiveness repeatedly shows the same thing. The best leaders balance care for people with clarity on performance and standards.

Over-index on empathy without accountability and performance slips. Over-index on results without care and trust erodes. Effective leadership holds both at the same time.

4. Leading and lagging indicators

Lagging indicators tell you what has already happened. Leading indicators tell you what is likely to happen next.

Decision quality, follow-through, psychological safety, and clarity of ownership often show up long before the numbers do. By the time performance drops, leadership issues have usually been present for some time.

What if we measured leadership presence?

This leads me to a question I have been sitting with.

What if we used technology not just to track outputs, but to observe leadership presence?

Who speaks most in meetings?
Who interrupts?
Who creates space for others?
What happens to participation, pace, and quality of discussion when certain leaders are in the room?

Not as surveillance. But as feedback.

Leadership is experienced minute by minute, often most clearly in meetings. Meetings are one of the few places where behaviour, power, and impact are visible in real time.

If I had to reduce effective leadership measurement to one line, it would be this:

measure what leaders deliver, and what it feels like to work with them.

I am curious. What does your organisation currently use as evidence of effective leadership?

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