Follow-UpMarshall Goldsmith and colleagues compared five different leader-
ship development programs involving more than twenty thousand
individuals in five corporations.^2 Programs varied in length from
one day to one week. All of them included 360-degree feedback.
Some offered coaching from external advisers, some offered coach-
ing from internal HR, and some provided no formal coaching.
Three to six months following the leadership development
experience, contributors to the original 360-degree feedback were
asked to complete a short new survey. The survey included their
assessment of the degree of change (from –3 to +3) in the program
participant’s effectiveness and the extent to which the participant
had “followed up” (from “no follow-up” to “consistent or repeated
follow-up”).
In every program, some individuals were rated as having signif-
icantly (+2) to markedly (+3) improved, indicating that leadership
development programs can and do produce meaningful changes in
effectiveness. Others were rated as unchanged or worse.
In every program studied, the degree of improvement corre-
lated directly to the extent of the individual’s follow-up. Those who
were perceived to have done “no follow-up” were also judged to
have made no improvement in leadership effectiveness. Those who
the raters felt had done “consistent or periodic follow-up” were
almost uniformly rated as improved, the majority as significantly or
markedly improved. Goldsmith and his colleagues concluded that
regardless of the instruction method, program length, or source of
coaching, the amount of follow-up is the single most important
determinant of change in leadership effectiveness.
These findings are consistent with David Goleman’s work on
the role of emotional intelligence in business and leadership
success. Effective leadership requires a range of complex skills
that depend on emotional intelligence as much as or more than
knowledge and intellectual ability. For most managers, improving
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