The measure of a man(ager)
360 surveys, organizational KPIs, behavioral insights and skills assessments.
On average, organizations spend about 12% of their L&D budget on management training, the second highest portion after compliance training. But it’s one of the most difficult areas to measure return on investment.
How can you tell if a manager is effective at coaching, for example? Does coaching in a product team look the same as coaching on a sales team? Do managers in healthcare need to coach as often as managers in finance?
Since the launch of our Manager Skills Assessment at the tail end of 2024, I’ve spent much of my time each week discussing these questions with clients.
Almost universally, there’s an appetite for measuring maangers in some way. ‘Showing value’ ranked 7th in this year’s Global Sentiment Survey from Donald Taylor.
But more than just showing that they are doing a good job, L&D professionals want to:
🔍 Develop an understanding of management capability across their organization;
🏆 Gain an insight into their talent pipeline (and whether to worry about succession plans);
🎨 Factor those insights into the design of their management programs, targeting specific organizational capability gaps;
🗺️ Provide personalized pathways to managers based on their strengths and areas for development;
⚖️ Measure change in managers at the individual level, to gauge the efficacy of their programs;
💰 Measure change in managers at the aggregate level, to demonstrate impact (and protect next year’s budget!).
How our clients achieve this varies. And, if you’re responsible for management development, you have a few options.
🛞 360 assessments
Everyone loves 360 assessments, right? Both taking part, and being the subject of one...
An email is sent to the direct reports, peers, managers and clients of Person A, asking a series of questions about their skills, behaviors and performance. Everyone then contorts themselves into knots, trying to avoid saying something too banal or too critical - while panicking that their inimitable writing style is going to give them away.
On the plus side, 360 assessments provide a wealth of qualitative insights. The comments might make for awkward reading, but they offer more nuance and context than a survey.
On the downside, they’re complicated to administer and incredibly subjective. Writing in Harvard Business Review, Maury Peiperl argued:
‘More times than not, [a 360] exacerbates bureaucracy, heightens political tensions, and consumes enormous numbers of hours.’
A sales consultant I met recently put it more bluntly:
‘I love 360s. Either the manager’s team thinks they suck, or their boss does. Either way, I can sell them something else.’
🎯 Performance reviews and KPIs
More quantitative and objective than 360s is the goal-based approach, or ‘Measurement by Objectives’. The organization has overall objectives, which cascade down to departments, to teams, to individuals.
A manager can then be measured by whether they are delivering on their objectives or not, typically by reporting on KPIs.
This approach is useful for measuring past performance, and for feeding into pay and reward discussions. At least, when meaningful SMART goals are set.
It’s less helpful for identifying capability gaps.
If a manager in HR hits most of their objectives, but a manager in sales misses all of theirs, is the HR person a better manager? It depends.
What support does each person need to develop as a manager? Not clear.
Which of them should go on our prestige management development program? The one who is already succeeding, or the one who is falling behind?
🤹 Psychometric tests
A few years ago, the Custom team are Mindtools each took an Insights Discovery test. Alternatives include the DISC Assessment.
These psychometric tests provide an insight into individual personality types and team dynamics.
Personally, I was “yellow”: optimistic and energetic.
The majority of the team were “Green”: caring, empathetic and good listeners.
On reviewing our results as a group, we realized that this exercise helped explain why the team are so good at working with clients and understanding the needs of our end users. While I need to follow the advice of Hamilton’s Aaron Burr: ‘Talk less…’
Predictably, I’ve failed miserably at this. And I think this highlights the challenge of using psychometric tests to improve manager performance: It’s difficult to get better at your personality. ‘I yam what I yam.’
🚀 Skills-based assessments
Finally, there’s a growing provision of skills-based assessments available to L&D teams. And, cards on the table, this is what we prefer to use here at Mindtools.
While some assessments ask managers to rate themselves, there are clear problems with this: most people overestimate their abilities (see the Dunning-Kruger effect).
Or, as John Cleese said:
‘Stupid people have no idea how stupid they are.’
This is slightly snarky and judgmental. After all, half of us are dumber than average (that’s not an opinion, it’s just the math).
But the point stands, we can’t trust ourselves to accurately judge our skills. Instead, we should borrow from those nerds in academia who spend their lives doing the work for us.
For example, we know that ‘social sensitivity’ is a crucial skill for managers, no matter the discipline or industry they work in, with a measurable impact on team performance, satisfaction and decision-making.
And we know how to measure it: the ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test’ is a well-established method whereby participants are shown an image of someone’s eyes and have to decide what emotion that person is feeling.
This experimental-based approach to assessment offers clear benefits:
🧪 The tests replicate the real-world application of that skill.
👩🏻🔬 The tests have been validated multiple times in a variety of contexts.
⏰ They are easy to administer (our assessment takes about 30 minutes).
Results can be analyzed for correlations, providing greater insights into manager capability than just the 12 skills we measure (more on this later in 2025!)
However (and this is a peak behind the curtain), building an assessment like this is complicated and time consuming. Our ‘Building Better Managers’ report, the evidence-base for our assessment, involved a review of hundreds of studies, 100+ interviews and a survey of 2,000+ managers.
But we think it’s the most effective approach to measuring your managers as a standalone experience.
In the coming months, our Insights team are rolling it out to a host of new clients, some of whom are exploring how we can triangulate the results of our assessment with their own internal measures: like 360s, engagement surveys, and KPIs.
In the meantime, we’re factoring results from across our client base into our custom management programs and off-the-shelf products.
How are you measuring your managers? We’d love to hear your thoughts on the approaches outlined above. Hit ‘reply’ if you’re reading this in your inbox, or email custom@mindtools.com to get in touch!
🎧 On the podcast
Here at Mindtools, we’re big fans of taking insights from academia and translating them into meaningful workplace initiatives.
So last week on The Mindtools L&D Podcast, my colleagues Ross D and Dr Anna took turns to share the papers they think are interesting for L&D professionals.
First up, Ross D discussed the impact of generative AI tools on critical thinking. Spoiler: It’s not good.
Dr Anna revealed how consultants who use AI can adopt one of two approaches: centaurs, who demonstrate a clear split between human and AI tasks, and cyborgs who take a more integrated approach.
And then, just to be different, I avoided AI entirely to discuss the role of choice infrastructure in decision-making.
The episode was a lot of fun, and you cna check it out below. 👇
You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify or the podcast page of our website. Want to share your thoughts? Get in touch by emailing custom@mindtools.com
📖 Deep dive — Manager Skills Framework (1 of 12)
In the first of our Deep Dives into the 12 skills that make up our Manager Skills Framework, we’re looking at empathy.
A longitudinal study from 2024 explored the relationship between the empathy of managers and business results since the Covid-19 pandemic.
As discussed in popular media, empathy is growing in importance. Team members see evidence of empathy in the extent to which managers ask about thoughts and feelings, paraphrase what they have said, respond to their distress and share their feelings.
When managers demonstrate these traits, employee engagement and levels of productivity increase.
Up to a point.
Per my colleague Dr Anna Barnett:
‘The paper also considers the issue of having "too much" empathy (big green tick from me!) and found that managers/leaders who are too empathetic have a negative impact on productivity (even moreso than managers/leader who lack empathy).
Basically, for productivity, there's an optimum amount of empathy required. When managers care personally but do not challenge their employees, they deny them opportunities to grow and improve.’
It’s a nightmare when your boss lacks empathy. But a boss who cares too much about how you feel creates different problems.
Kaiser, R. B. (2024). Has empathy really become more important to leadership since the COVID-19 pandemic?. Consulting Psychology Journal.
👹 Missing links
🐮 I’m an artist! A bullsh*t artist
One of the great joys of my working life has been the increasing academicization of “bullsh*t” as a concept (the word “academicization” might be a good example). Christensen, Kärreman and Rasche (2019) focus in particular on bullsh*t within organizations, where ‘vacuous or unclarifiable talk’ results in colleagues neglecting problems based on the false confidence of the bullsh*tter, or because they believe their own.
Hat tip to the excellent Rob Briner who pulled a fun list of papers on this topic together via LinkedIn.
💔 "All ideas are welcome. Not all views are equally valid."
I loved this insight from Adam Grant, in a LinkedIn post discussing psychological safety. Similar to the insights into the empathy of managers in this week's 'Deep Dive', Grant points out that psychological safety is crucial for people to feel comfortable at work and to be able to learn. But that, while we want people to speak up without fear, a truly safe environment is one where people can criticize each other (constructively).
🥇 Leadership is a group process, not a personal one
One of the most interesting conversations I’ve seen in the leadership space in recent years is the ‘Social Identity Approach to Leadership’. Researchers argue that leadership development has historically been too focused on developing particular traits or following the examples of particular people (the so-called “Great Man” approach). In the Social Identity Approach, leadership is about the group - not the person. An effective leader creates a sense of 'us', champions the group, represents the group, and ensures that the group identity persists after they are gone.
👋 And finally…
Obviously my ‘inimitable writing style’ above was a comment on myself. But this image also captures my expression reading the recent anonymous feedback from my co-author Ross D.
👍 Thanks!
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