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Leadership is not just for leaders anymore. Top companies are beginning to understand that sustainingpeak performance requires a firm-wide commitment todeveloping leaders that is tightly aligned to organiza-tional objectives — a commitment much easier tounderstand than to achieve. Organizations must findways to cascade leadership from senior management tomen and women at all levels. As retired HarvardBusiness School professor John P. Kotter eloquentlynoted in the previous issue of strategy+business, this ulti-mately means we must “create 100 million new leaders”throughout our society. (See “Leading Witnesses,” s+b,Summer 2004.)

Organizational experts Paul Hersey and KennethBlanchard have defined leadership as “working with andthrough others to achieve objectives.” Many companies

are stepping up to the challenge of leadership develop-ment and their results are quite tangible. In Leading theWay: Three Truths from the Top Companies for Leaders(John Wiley & Sons, 2004), a study of the top 20 com-panies for leadership development, Marc Effron andRobert Gandossy show that companies that excel atdeveloping leaders tend to achieve higher long-termprofitability.

But it sometimes seems there are as many approach-es to leadership development as there are leadershipdevelopers. One increasingly popular tool for developingleaders is executive coaching. Hay Group, a humanresources consultancy, reported that half of 150 compa-nies surveyed in 2002 said that they had increased theiruse of executive coaching, and 16 percent reported usingcoaches for the first time.

LeadershipIsaContactSport The “Follow-up Factor” in

Management Development

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Yet even “executive coaching” is a broad category. Inreviewing a spate of books on coaching last year, DesDearlove and Stuart Crainer identified at least threetypes of coaching: behavioral change coaching, personalproductivity coaching, and “energy coaching.” (See “MyCoach and I,” s+b, Summer 2003.) Our own upcomingbook, The Art and Practice of Leadership Coaching: 50Top Executive Coaches Reveal Their Secrets (written withPhil Harkins, to be published by John Wiley & Sons inDecember 2004), includes discussions about five typesof leadership coaching: strategic, organizationalchange/execution, leadership development, personal/lifeplanning, and behavioral.

Given the increasingly competitive economic envi-ronment and the significant human and financial capi-tal expended on leadership development, it is not onlyfair but necessary for those charged with running com-panies to ask, “Does any of this work? And if so, how?”What type of developmental activities will have thegreatest impact on increasing executives’ effectiveness?How can leaders achieve positive long-term changes inbehavior? With admitted self-interest — our work wasdescribed in the Crainer–Dearlove article, and is fre-quently cited in reviews of and articles about leadershipcoaching — we wanted to see if there were consistentprinciples of success underlying these differentapproaches to leadership development.

We reviewed leadership development programs ineight major corporations. Although all eight companieshad the same overarching goals — to determine thedesired behaviors for leaders in their organizations andto help leaders increase their effectiveness by betteraligning actual practices with these desired behaviors —they used different leadership development methodolo-

gies: offsite training versus onsite coaching, short duration versus long duration, internal coaches versusexternal coaches, and traditional classroom-based train-ing versus on-the-job interaction.

Rather than just evaluating “participant happiness”at the end of a program, each of the eight companiesmeasured the participants’ perceived increase in leader-ship effectiveness over time. “Increased effectiveness”was not determined by the participants in the develop-ment effort; it was assessed by preselected co-workersand stakeholders.

Time and again, one variable emerged as central tothe achievement of positive long-term change: the par-ticipants’ ongoing interaction and follow-up with col-leagues. Leaders who discussed their own improvementpriorities with their co-workers, and then regularly fol-lowed up with these co-workers, showed strikingimprovement. Leaders who did not have ongoing dia-logue with colleagues showed improvement that barelyexceeded random chance. This was true whether theleader had an external coach, an internal coach, or nocoach. It was also true whether the participants went toa training program for five days, went for one day, or didnot attend a training program at all.

The development of leaders, we have concluded, isa contact sport.

Eight Approaches The eight companies whose leadership developmentprograms we studied were drawn from our own roster ofclients over the past 16 years. Although all are large cor-porations, each company is in a different sector and eachfaces very different competitive pressures.

Each company customized its leadership develop-

Marshall Goldsmith (marshall@marshallgoldsmith.com) is afounder of Marshall GoldsmithPartners, a leadership coach-ing network. He has workedwith more than 70 major CEOsand their management teamsand is the author or coauthorof 18 books on leadership andcoaching. His most recentbook is Global Leadership: TheNext Generation (FinancialTimes Prentice Hall, 2003).

Howard Morgan (howard@howardjmorgan.com) is thefounder of 50 Top Coaches, a collective of many of theworld’s leading executive advi-sors. He specializes in execu-tive coaching as a strategicchange-management tool. Heis co-editor of the forthcomingbook The Art and Practice ofLeadership Coaching: 50 TopExecutive Coaches RevealTheir Secrets (John Wiley &Sons, December 2004).

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ment approach to its specific needs. Five of the eightfocused on the development of high-potential leaders,and between 73 and 354 participants were involved intheir programs. The three other companies includedalmost all managers (above midlevel), and involvedbetween 1,528 and 6,748 managers. The degree of inter-national representation varied among organizations. Attwo companies, almost all of the participants wereAmerican. Non-U.S. executives made up almost half ofthe participants in one company’s program. The otherfive had varying levels of international participation.

Some of the companies used traditional classroom-based training in their development effort. In each ofthese companies, participants would attend an offsiteprogram and receive instruction on what the desiredcharacteristics were for leaders in their organizations,why these characteristics were important, and how participants might better align their own leadershipbehavior with the desired model. Some companies, bycontrast, used continuing coaching, a methodology thatdid not necessarily involve offsite training, but did relyon regular interaction with a personal coach. Some com-panies used both offsite training and coaching.

Along with differences, there were commonalitiesamong the programs. Each company had spent exten-sive time reviewing the challenges it believed its leaderswould uniquely face as its business evolved. Each haddeveloped a profile of desired leadership behaviors thathad been approved by upper management. After ensur-ing that these desired leadership behaviors were alignedwith the company vision and values, each companydeveloped a 360-degree feedback process to help leadersunderstand the extent to which their own behavior (asperceived by co-workers) matched the desired behaviorfor leaders in the corporation. All eight placed a set ofexpectations upon participants. The developing leaderswere expected to:

• Review their 360-degree feedback with an inter-nal or external consultant.

• Identify one to three areas for improvement.• Discuss their areas for improvement with key

co-workers.• Ask colleagues for suggestions on how to increase

effectiveness in selected areas for change.• Follow up with co-workers to get ideas for

improvement.• Have co-worker respondents complete a confi-

dential custom-designed “mini-survey” three to 15months after the start of their programs.

Each participant received mini-survey summaryfeedback from three to 16 co-workers. Colleagues wereasked to rate the participants’ increased effectiveness inthe specific selected behaviors as well as participants’overall increase (or decrease) in leadership effectiveness.Co-workers were also asked to measure the degree of follow-up they had with the participant. In total, we col-lected more than 86,000 mini-survey responses for the11,480 managers who participated in leadership development activities. This huge database gave us theopportunity to explore the points of commonality anddistinction among these eight very different leadershipdevelopment efforts.

Three of the organizations permitted their names tobe used in articles or conference presentations, enablingus to reference them in this report; the rest have request-ed anonymity, although we are able to describe their sec-tor and activities. Two of the organizations also haveallowed their results to be published elsewhere, withoutdisclosure of the organization’s name. The companieswhose programs we studied were:

• An aerospace/defense contractor: 1,528 managers(ranging from midlevel to the CEO and his team)received training for two and a half days. Each personreviewed his or her 360-degree feedback in person withan outside consultant. All received at least threereminder notes to help ensure that they would follow upwith their co-workers.

• A financial-services organization: At GE Capital,178 high-potential managers received training that last-ed five days. Each leader was assigned a personal humanresources coach from inside the company. Each coachhad one-on-one sessions with his or her client on anongoing basis (either in person or by phone).

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• An electronics manufacturer: 258 upper-levelmanagers received in-person coaching from an externalcoach. They did not attend an offsite training program.They were then each assigned an internal coach who hadbeen trained in effective coaching skills. This coach fol-lowed up with the managers every three to four months.

• A diversified services company: 6,748 managers(ranging from midlevel to the CEO and his team)received one-on-one feedback from an external coachduring two training programs, each two and a half dayslong, which were conducted 15 months apart. Althoughthere was no formal follow-up provided by the coach,participants knew they were going to be measured ontheir follow-up efforts.

• A media company: 354 managers (including theCEO and his team) received one-on-one coaching andfeedback during a one-day program. An external coachprovided follow-up coaching every three to fourmonths.

• A telecommunications company: 281 managers(including the CEO and his team) received training for one day. Each leader was given an external coach,who had continuing one-on-one sessions with his or her client.

• A pharmaceutical/health-care organization: John-son & Johnson involved 2,060 executives and managers,starting with the CEO and his team, in one and a halfdays of leadership training. Each person reviewed his orher initial 360-degree feedback with an outside consult-ant (almost all by phone). Participants received at leastthree reminder notes to help ensure that they would fol-low up with their co-workers.

• A high-tech manufacturing company: At AgilentTechnologies Inc., 73 high-potential leaders receivedcoaching for one year from an external coach, an effortunconnected to any training program. Each coach hadone-on-one sessions with his or her client on an ongoingbasis, either in person or by phone.

Personal TouchThe overarching conclusion distilled from the surveys inall the programs was that personal contact mattered —and mattered greatly.

Five of the corporations used the same measure-ment methodologies, while three used a slightly dif-ferent approach. All eight companies measured the frequency of managers’ discussions and follow-up withco-workers and compared this measure with the per-ceived increase in leadership effectiveness, as judged by

co-workers in the mini-surveys. The first five firms —the aerospace/defense contractor, GE Capital, the elec-tronics manufacturer, the diversified services company,and the media company — used a seven-point scale,from –3 to +3, to measure perceived change in leader-ship effectiveness, and a five-point scale to plot theamount of follow-up, ranging from a low of “no follow-up” to a high of “consistent or periodic follow-up.” They then compared the two sets of measurements byplotting the effectiveness scores and the follow-up tallieson charts.

The remaining three firms used slightly differentmeasurement criteria. The telecommunications compa-ny used a “percentage improvement” scale to measureperceived increases in leadership effectiveness, as judgedby co-workers. It then compared “percentage improve-ment” on leadership effectiveness with each level of follow-up. Johnson & Johnson and Agilent measuredleadership improvement using the same seven-pointscale employed by the first five companies, but they didnot categorize the degree of follow-up beyond the sim-ple “followed up” vs. “did not follow up.”

As noted earlier, follow-up here refers to efforts thatleaders make to solicit continuing and updated ideas forimprovement from their co-workers. In the two compa-nies that compared “followed up” with “did not followup,” participants who followed up were viewed by theircolleagues as far more effective than the leaders who didnot. In the companies that measured the degree of follow-up, leaders who had “frequent” or “periodic/con-sistent” interaction with co-workers were reliably seen ashaving improved their effectiveness far more than lead-ers who had “little” or “no” interaction with co-workers.

Exhibits 1 to 5, on pages 76–77, show the resultsamong the first five companies, which, despite their dif-ferent leadership development programs, used the samemeasurement methodology. This apples-to-apples com-parison shows strong correlations across all five compa-nies between the degree of follow-up and the perceivedchange in leadership effectiveness.

In the exhibits, “perceived change” refers to therespondents’ perception of their co-worker’s change inleadership effectiveness; for example, a rating of “+3”would indicate that the co-worker was seen as becominga much more effective leader; a rating of “0” would indi-cate no change in leadership effectiveness. “Percent”refers to the percentage of survey respondents groupedaround a given rating; for example, in Exhibit 1,between 30 and 42 percent of respondents gave a “0”

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rating — that is, they saw no change — to leaders who“did no follow-up.”

Leadership, it’s clear from this research, is a rela-tionship. And the most important participants in thisrelationship are not the coach and the “coachee.” Theyare the leader and the colleague.

Most of the leaders in this study work in knowledgeenvironments — in companies where the value of theproduct or service derives less and less from manufac-turing scale and, to use Peter Drucker’s formulation,more and more from the processing and creation ofinformation to define and solve problems. In discussingleadership with knowledge workers, Professor Druckerhas said, “The leader of the past was a person who knewhow to tell. The leader of the future will be a person whoknows how to ask.” Our studies show that leaders whoregularly ask for input are seen as increasing in effective-ness. Leaders who don’t follow up are not necessarily badleaders; they are just not seen as getting better.

Ask and ReceiveIn a way, our work reinforces a key learning from theHawthorne studies. These classic observations of factoryworkers at suburban Chicago’s Western ElectricHawthorne Works, which Harvard professor EltonMayo made nearly 80 years ago, showed that productiv-ity tended to increase when workers perceived leadershipinterest and involvement in their work, as evidenced bypurposeful change in the workplace environment. Ourstudies show that when co-workers are involved in lead-ership development, the leaders they are helping tend tobecome more effective. Leaders who ask for input andthen follow up to see if progress is being made are seenas people who care. Co-workers might well infer that

leaders who don’t respond to feedback must not carevery much.

Historically, a great deal of leadership developmenthas focused on the importance of an event. This eventcould be a training program, a motivational speech, oran offsite executive meeting. The experience of the eightcompanies we studied indicates that real leadership de-velopment involves a process that occurs over time, not aninspiration or transformation that occurs in a meeting.

Physical exercise provides a useful analogy. Imaginehaving out-of-shape people sit in a room and listen to aspeech on the importance of exercising, then watchsome tapes on how to exercise, and perhaps practiceexercising. Would you ever wonder why these peoplewere still unfit a year later? The source of physical fitnessis not understanding the theory of working out; it isengaging in exercise. As Arnold Schwarzenegger hassaid, “Nobody ever got muscles by watching me workout!” So, too, with leadership development. As ProfessorDrucker, Dr. Hersey, and Dr. Blanchard have pointedout, leadership involves a reliance on other co-workers toachieve objectives. Who better than these same co-work-ers to help the leader increase effectiveness?

Indeed, the executive coach is, in many ways, like apersonal trainer. The trainer’s role is to “remind” the per-son being trained to do what he or she knows should bedone. Good personal trainers spend far more time onexecution than on theory. The same seems to be true forleadership development. Most leaders already knowwhat to do. They have read the same books and listenedto the same gurus giving the same speeches. Hence, ourcore conclusion from this research: For most leaders, thegreat challenge is not understanding the practice of leader-ship: It is practicing their understanding of leadership.

Leadership is a relationship, not between the coach and the “coachee,” but

between the leader and the colleague.

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Exhibit 1: My Co-Worker Did No Follow-Up

-3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3

60

40

20

Per

cent

Perceived Change

Company A Company B Company C Company D Company E Mean Leader

Exhibit 2: My Co-Worker Did a Little Follow-Up

-3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3

60

40

20

Per

cent

Perceived Change

Company A Company B Company C Company D Company E Mean Leader

Exhibit 3: My Co-Worker Did Some Follow-Up

-3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3

60

40

20

Per

cent

Perceived Change

Company A Company B Company C Company D Company E Mean Leader

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— several other conclusions arise from our research. Forexample, the eight-program study indicates that the follow-up factor correlates with improved leadership effec-tiveness among both U.S. and non-U.S. executives.

As companies globalize, many executives havebegun to wrestle with issues of cultural differencesamong their executives and employees. Recent researchinvolving high-potential leaders from around the worldhas shown that cross-cultural understanding is seen as akey to effectiveness for the global leader. (See, for exam-ple, Marshall Goldsmith et al., Global Leadership: TheNext Generation, Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2003.)

Our study addressed this issue as it affects leader-ship development programs. Nearly 10,000 of therespondents in the eight companies whose programs wereviewed — almost 12 percent of our mini-survey sam-

ple — were located outside the United States. We foundthat the degree of follow-up was as critical to changingperceived leadership effectiveness internationally as itwas domestically. This was true for both training andcoaching initiatives.

At Johnson & Johnson, there were almost no dif-ferences in scores among participants in Europe, LatinAmerica, and North America. The group seen asimproving the most was in Asia. In analyzing the find-ings, J&J determined that the higher scores in Asia weremore a function of dedicated local management than ofcultural differences, again supporting the correlationbetween a caring, contact-rich leadership and its per-ceived effectiveness.

That follow-up works globally contravenes assump-tions that different cultures will have differing levels ofreceptiveness to intimate conversations about workplace

Exhibit 4: My Co-Worker Did Frequent Follow-Up

-3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3

60

40

20

Per

cent

Perceived Change

Company A Company B Company C Company D Company E Mean Leader

Exhibit 5: My Co-Worker Did Consistent or Periodic Follow-Up

-3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3

60

40

20

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cent

Perceived Change

Company A Company B Company C Company D Company E Mean Leader

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behaviors. But the universality of the follow-up principledoesn’t imply universality in its application. Leaders learnfrom the people in their own environment, particularlyin a cross-cultural context. Indeed, research by theCenter for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, N.C., hasshown that “encouraging feedback” and “learning fromthose around us” are both central to success for leaders incross-cultural environments. Companies with successfulleadership development programs encourage executivesto adapt the universal principle of follow-up and the fre-quency of such conversations to fit the unique require-ments of the culture in which they working. Despiteother cultural differences, there seems to be no countryin the world where co-workers think, “I love it when youask me for my feedback and then ignore me.”

Inside and OutsideInteraction between the developing leader and his or hercolleagues is not the sole connection that counts. Alsovital is the contact between the leader and the coach. Ourthird major finding concerns that relationship: Bothinternal and external coaches can make a positive difference.

One reason coaching can be so effective is that itmay inspire leaders to follow up with their people.Agilent Technologies, for one, found a strong positivecorrelation between the number of times the coach fol-lowed up with the client and the number of times theclient followed up with co-workers.

The coach, however, does not have to be part of thecompany. This conclusion was readily apparent whenwe compared the two companies most distinct in thecomposition of their coaching corps. Agilent used onlyexternal coaches. GE Capital, by contrast, used onlyinternal coaches from human resources. Yet bothapproaches produced very positive long-term increasesin perceived leadership effectiveness.

Given the apparent ease of accessibility to internalcoaches, firms might naturally use this finding to justify“going inside.” But there are at least three importantvariables to consider in determining whether to use aninternal HR coach: time, credibility, and confidentiality.

In many organizations, internal coaches are notgiven the time they need for ongoing interaction withthe people they are coaching. In some cases, they maynot seem as credible as trained development experts. Inother cases, especially those that involve humanresources personnel filling multiple roles, there mayappear to be a conflict of interest between a profes-sional’s responsibilities as coach and as evaluator. If these

perceptions exist, then external coaches may well bepreferable to internal coaches.

But internal coaches can overcome these obstacles.At GE Capital, the internal coaches were HR profes-sionals who were given time to work with their“coachees.” Coaching was treated as an important partof their responsibility to the company and was not seenas an add-on “if they got around to it.” Moreover, thecoachees were given a choice of internal coaches andpicked coaches they saw as most credible. Finally, eachinternal coach worked with a leader in a different part ofthe business. They assured their coachees that thisprocess was for high-potential development, not evalua-tion. As a result of this thorough screening process,client satisfaction with internal coaches was high andresults achieved by internal coaches (as judged by co-workers) were very positive.

Inside or outside, we discovered that the mechanicsof the coach–leader relationship were not a major limit-ing factor. Our fourth finding was that feedback orcoaching by telephone works about as well as feedback orcoaching in person.

Intuitively, one might believe that feedback orcoaching is a very “personal” activity that is better doneface-to-face than by phone. However, the companies wereviewed do not support this supposition. One company,Johnson & Johnson, conducted almost all feedback bytelephone, yet produced “increased effectiveness” scoresalmost identical to those of the aerospace/defense organ-ization, which conducted all feedback in person.

Moreover, all the companies that used only externalcoaches similarly found little difference between tele-phone coaching and live coaching. These companiesmade sure that each coach had at least two one-on-onemeetings with individual executive clients. Some coachesdid this in person, whereas others interacted mostly byphone. There was no clear indication that either methodof coaching was more effective than the other.

Although sophisticated systems — involving somecombination of e-mail, intranets, extranets, and mobileconnectivity — are available, follow-up needn’t beexpensive. Internal coaches can make follow-up tele-phone calls. New computerized systems can send“reminder notes” and give ongoing suggestions.However it’s done, follow-up is the sine qua non of effec-tive leadership development. Too many companiesspend millions of dollars for the “program of the year”but almost nothing on follow-up and reinforcement.

Companies should also take care to measure the

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effectiveness of their leadership development initiatives,and not just the employees’ satisfaction with them. Ourresults indicate that when participants know that surveysor other methods of measuring program effectiveness areslated to occur three to 15 months from the date of theprogram, a higher level of commitment is createdamong them. This follow-up measurement creates afocus on long-term change and personal accountability.

Although measuring outcomes would seem to besecond nature for most companies, the success of lead-ership development programs has conventionally beenassessed through the satisfaction of the participants. Thismetric is of limited relevance. Among the companies inour study that offered leadership development training,virtually all participants came away highly satisfied. Atthe aerospace/defense contractor and Johnson &Johnson, the average satisfaction rating among morethan 3,500 participants was 4.7 out of a possible 5.0.Executives loved the training, but that didn’t mean theyused the training or improved because of it.

Learning to LearnOf even greater import is this: Continual contact withcolleagues regarding development issues is so effective itcan succeed even without a large, formal program.Agilent, for example, produced excellent results, eventhough its leaders received coaching that was completelydisconnected from any training. In fact, leaders who donot have coaches can be coached broadly by their co-workers. The key to changing behavior is “learning tolearn” from those around us, and then modifying our behavior on the basis of their suggestions. The aerospace/defense contractor and the telecommunica-tions company used very streamlined and efficient train-

ing processes and “reminder notes” to help leadersachieve a positive long-term change in effectiveness,without using coaches at all.

If the organization can teach the leader to reach outto co-workers, to listen and learn, and to focus on continuous development, both the leader and the organ-ization will benefit. After all, by following up with col-leagues, a leader demonstrates a commitment to self-improvement — and a determination to get better. Thisprocess does not have to take a lot of time or money.There’s something far more valuable: contact. +

Reprint No. 04307

Resources

Des Dearlove and Stuart Crainer, “My Coach and I,” s+b, Summer 2003;www.strategy-business.com/press/article/22062

Elizabeth Thach, “The Impact of Executive Coaching and 360 Feedbackon Leadership Effectiveness,” Leadership & Organization DevelopmentJournal, Vol. 23, No. 4, 2002; http://fiordiliji.emeraldinsight.com/vl=2762214/cl=12/nw=1/rpsv/lodj.htm

Marshall Goldsmith, “Ask, Learn, Follow Up, and Grow,” in The Leaderof the Future: New Visions, Strategies, and Practices for the Next Era, editedby Frances Hesselbein, Marshall Goldsmith, and Richard Beckhard (PeterDrucker Foundation and Jossey-Bass, 1996)

Linda Sharkey, “Leveraging HR: How to Develop Leaders in Real Time,”in Human Resources in the 21st Century, edited by Marc Effron, RobertGandossy, and Marshall Goldsmith (John Wiley & Sons, 2003)

Diane Anderson, Brian Underhill, and Robert Silva, “The Agilent APEXCase Study,” in Best Practices in Leadership Development — 2004, editedby Dave Ulrich, Louis Carter, and Marshall Goldsmith (Best PracticesPublications, forthcoming 2004)

Marshall Goldsmith, Cathy L. Greenberg, Alastair Robertson, and MayaHu-Chan, Global Leadership: The Next Generation (Financial TimesPrentice Hall, 2003)

Continual contact with colleaguesis so effective it can succeed even without

a formal program.