Introduction
In Part Two, we explored best practices for navigating leadership capabilities. Next, we’ll guide you through best practices for assessing the impact of coaching and mentoring programs, with a focus on our behavioral-science-backed evaluation methodologies. Reviewing this article now gives you a head start when it comes time to dive into the software and tackle the detailed setup content in our Admin Orientation Guides.
Written Walkthrough
Designing and implementing an evaluation methodology is essential for measuring program outcomes and participant experiences and capturing how the experience shapes leader development. We recommend using Sounding Board’s behavioral science-backed core surveys designed to measure leader development, capture diverse perspectives, and fuel our in-app insight dashboards, all in a ready-to-use format.
Our integrated evaluation approach ensures that survey results automatically populate your insight dashboards, giving you real-time visibility into the impact of leadership development across your organization. Additionally, tracking survey completion rates allows you to proactively drive participation, ensuring more accurate and comprehensive insights within the app.
If you prefer a custom survey approach, you can create your own surveys. However, keep in mind that custom surveys won’t integrate into our insight dashboards, meaning you’ll need to manually analyze the data using SB exports and your visualization tools.
Best Practices
To help you get started, here are some of our Strategic Planning Best Practices for navigating surveys:
- Involve Key Stakeholders Early: Schedule an initial planning meeting with key stakeholders to discuss program goals and evaluation methods.
- Maximize Built-in Core Surveys for Deeper Insights: Our pre-built core surveys sync automatically with your admin and sponsor dashboards, making it easy to track and analyze leader development impact—no extra work needed.
- Choose an Evaluation Method: Whether using pre-built core Sounding Board surveys or creating custom ones, admins should understand how the selected evaluation method fits within their broader leadership development strategy. By default, we’ve included our 'core' surveys in the survey list. Whether using Sounding Board’s pre-built core surveys or creating custom ones, admins should understand how their chosen method aligns with the broader leadership development strategy. Our core surveys are included by default in the survey list.
- Consider the Trade-offs of Custom Surveys: If you develop custom surveys, ensure they align with the specific leadership development and business outcomes you want to measure. Keep in mind that custom surveys won’t be integrated into our in-app insights dashboards, so you’ll need to visualize and analyze the results using your organizational data visualization systems outside of the Sounding Board platform.
- Capture Diverse Perspectives for a Well-Rounded View: Develop a game plan for capturing diverse perspectives by gathering feedback from multiple audiences. Engaging leaders, managers, coaches, and mentors not only supports those participating in the coaching and mentoring programs but also provides valuable organizational insights into the leadership development happening across the organization.
For more details on our surveys and orienting yourself to the software, check out our Coaching Admin Orientation and Quick Start Guide and Mentoring Admin Orientation and Quick Start Guide.
Readiness Questions
- What additional steps do you need to take to get organized around your evaluation approach?
- Who must be involved in decision-making to ensure alignment?
- How does your evaluation methodology and approach fit with your organization's leadership development strategy? And do you see a clear link between what you're measuring and the leadership outcomes you aim to advance?
- What questions do you still have? What might be helpful to talk through? *Please follow up with your customer team
We hope this gave you a clearer understanding of how to assess the impact of your coaching and mentoring programs using surveys, and helped you think through the strategic planning needed for a smooth rollout.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact your customer team.
Next, check out our Core Software Features, Coaching Admin Orientation & Quick Start Guide & Mentoring Admin Orientation and Quick Start Guide.