Evaluating the effectiveness of Leadership Development in Healthcare

Organisations across both public and commercial sectors consider leadership to be important but the evidence for a link to organisational performance is complicated. Nonetheless, much of the literature on leadership development indicates that the hallmarks of successful leadership development programmes are those that are clearly and transparently linked to strategic organisational aims and objectives. in the context of a financially challenged and publicly scrutinised NHS, this led to the development of the LeaDER framework. The LeaDER framework combines Theory Based Evaluation (TBE), Realistic Evaluation (RE) and the Kirkpatrick model of evaluation in examining the context, Theories of Change (ToC) and emergent outcomes in leadership development as well as hypothesising about anticipated and measurable impacts. This current research project sought to review the national adoption of this model, to make suggestions for its further improvement and offer insights into the nature and effectiveness of leadership development