Abstract
A search on Amazon revealed more than 6,000 books related to leadership development. The Business Source database has more than 700 articles with the word leadership in the title, published between 2005 and 2015. This suggests that leadership is a topic in which many are interested. Clearly, leadership makes a difference in an organization’s performance, and healthcare systems are no exception. The focus on leadership development in health care arose after the Institute of Medicine’s report, To Err is Human, highlighting the number of medical errors that occurred regularly in the United States. Approximately 50% of hospitals have leadership-development programs. Few have a theoretical framework through which they view leadership development. Most leadership-development programs described in the literature focus on acquisition of certain skills and behaviors without assessing participants’ developmental stage. A framework that measures individual leader’s assumptions, attitudes, and mindsets, might provide the potential for developing even better leaders. Constructive-developmental theory is such a framework. This mixed-methods program evaluation examined the influence of a leadership-development program on leadership effectiveness through the lens of constructive-developmental theory. The analysis of the quantitative data revealed that the leadership-development program participants had a statistically significant change in their perceived leadership effectiveness after attending the program. However, the participants’ evaluators did not note a statistically significant change in the participants’ leadership effectiveness. The qualitative data analysis provided information about the groups’ aggregate strengths and challenges. Therefore, following the analysis, recommendations are included for the future development and evaluation of leadership- development programs.