Developing leadership skills and resilience in turbulent times: A quasi-experimental evaluation study

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a leadership program in a way that captures leadership self-efficacy, political skills (PS) and resilience in the form of indicators of health and well-being that would have relevance for leadership roles in turbulent organizations.

Design/methodology/approach

The design was quasi-experimental with pre- and post-measurement with unequal controls. Measurement was made through a mail survey before and after the leadership development program. n=107.

Findings

Program participants differed from the control group in the post-measurement in that they reported higher levels on leadership self-efficacy and had better health compared to a year earlier.

Research limitations/implications

Concepts like leadership self-efficacy, PS and measures of health and well-being can be used to operationalize and measure broad and contextually relevant outcomes of leadership development.

Practical implications

Evaluation of leadership development can benefit from including these more psychologically relevant and generic outcomes.

Originality/value

The study illustrates how psychologically based concepts can help to elucidate key outcomes of leadership development that can be critical for meeting the challenges in the turbulent and fluid work situation managers currently meet.

Citation

Holmberg, R., Larsson, M. and Bäckström, M. (2016), "Developing leadership skills and resilience in turbulent times: A quasi-experimental evaluation study", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 35 No. 2, pp. 154-169. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMD-09-2014-0093