Leadership Development Programs generate an estimated annual spend of ~$45 billion, and an annual median per company spend of $346,200 in the United States alone Such programs represent not only a significant financial investment, but also a sizeable time investment both for those who design them, and for those who participate. Despite this outlay, the return on investment is not always obvious, with both academics and practitioners calling for more clarity around what if any impact has been garnered.

Whilst research has been undertaken to better understand the impact of leadership development interventions, it has tended to focus on surface outcomes such as competency development and behavioral change, rather than examining more fundamental impacts, such as changes in cognitive framing, emotional recalibration, reappraisal of values and motivational variations.

Although such impacts may be more challenging to grasp, it is arguably a better proxy for what participants may perceive as truly transformative journeys-developmental voyages of discovery which incite them to undertake deeper reflection and embrace more significant and sustained changes touching their professional and personal arenas on a longer-term basis.

Indeed, research has tended to neglect the longer term impacts of leadership development with the associated risk of over focusing on quantitative post program snapshots of satisfaction, typically of a transitory and somewhat superficial character. More attention could, and arguably should be given, to analysing the more substantive and qualitative journeys that leadership development program participants embark upon.

Notwithstanding the challenges highlighted above, when leadership development program impact does receive attention, the obfuscation of program effectiveness is further compounded by a tendency to focus on what impact may or may not have occurred, rather than focusing on what may be underpinning or driving the impact in the first place.

There is a persistent lack of understanding concerning the design catalysts and pedagogical choices which serve to stimulate impact, with sustained calls for a more rigorous exploration of what is actually being developed or causing the observed change in leadership performance.

Scholars posit that little attention has been paid to the operation and effects of such programs, suggesting that the design choices, structural mechanisms and pedagogical processes underpinning the development, deployment and outcomes of leadership development programs, are not always fully understood by those tasked with designing them-what some scholars have called ‘’the black box'' of what works in the design, delivery and implementation of leadership training.

In this presentation I will present my empirical findings concerning the design considerations which enable substantive and transformative leadership development impact to occur.

Keywords: Learning Impact, Leadership Development, Instructional Design.