Businesses are increasingly held responsible for expenditures, and the HR department must also give very good reasons supporting their programs and provide results. Leadership scorecards will aid HR in assessing and putting dollar figures on the benefits of leadership development programs (leadership training classes, professional coaching, mentoring, developmental job assignments, and feedback programs).

How can you evaluate the leadership efforts of managers and supervisors? Before setting up the scorecard, you need to categorize the leadership attempts from small to large scale:

Convincing leaders to do something new;

Influencing peers to act or think differently;

Selling news idea to your superior;

Getting the HR department to modify small but important processes;

Convincing the HR department to accept larger scale changes;

Influencing the entire organization to change direction; and

Convincing the organization to implement this major change.

You can also think of other categories. Monitor how often in each week the managers and supervisors show leadership at each level. The above list will encourage you to start small. If they have successfully shown leadership many times at the first levels, then you might be certain enough to elevate your game to much higher levels.

Specifically, you can also answer the following questions to evaluate managers and supervisors: Are the leaders promoted from within really demonstrating leadership competence, or were they chosen because they were the only ones "left standing"? Do they exhibit maturity and reliability? Are they capable of establishing healthy working relationships with other people? Do they learn when receiving supervision? Are they passionate about their jobs? Have their inferiors developed extra skills? Are there "results" from the processes they manage or supervise? Can they delegate effectively? Do they possess the skills in motivating their staff? Do they exhibit can-do, positive attitudes?

In addition, do the managers and supervisors take on complicated tasks? Is there regular individual supervision? Do they hang out with their subordinates outside the office hours? Do they get what they need from such departments as finance, HR, communication, and facilities? Do they recognize the dedication, hard work, and good work of their subordinates? Do they make written "goals" to pursue? Are their work aligned with organizational goals?

Why should you bother in evaluating the leadership of managers and supervisors? The major motivation for it is that their confidence could be boosted and it might cheer them up to demonstrate even more leadership. They probably show their leadership competence in many ways daily without even noticing it. They can easily fail to notice the seemingly little things they perform each day, not aware that they have affected people around them. They may discount things that seem easy or obvious for them. Often, many leaders do not consider such things as major concerns; however, they might be very difficult and new for others. Therefore, if you do not use the scorecard, then the managers and supervisors may think they are not actually showing anything at all; when in fact, they are showing leadership competence.

There is an old adage: What gets quantified gets done. This also applies to leadership. A leadership scorecard measures leadership potentials and can provide justification to your leadership development programs.