Finding KPIs for Leadership Roles
Insight from Milewalk
Walk into any COO's office and you'll see the same leadership KPIs plastered across their dashboards: employee satisfaction scores, retention rates, and that dreaded "engagement index."
These metrics are as useful for measuring leadership as judging someone's personality by their Spotify playlist.
Let's be real: Most leadership KPIs measure activity, not impact. We default to measuring what's convenient rather than what's meaningful.
Want proof? Look at the standard metrics below, then ask yourself: How many of these actually capture the difference between a good leader and a great one?
1. Team Performance
KPI | Description | Reality Check |
|---|---|---|
Goal Achievement Rate | Percentage of team goals met on time | It is a solid leading indicator, but only if goals are calibrated. |
Project Completion Rate | Ratio of projects completed on time and budget | Skip this. It measures project management, not leadership |
Productivity Score | Deliverables per employee vs baseline | Careful - it is easy to manipulate and often drives wrong behaviors |
Track: Goal Achievement + qualitative assessment of goal difficulty
2. Retention & Recruitment
KPI | Description | Reality Check |
|---|---|---|
Employee Retention Rate | Employee retention percentage over time | Critical, but context matters. Sometimes turnover is healthy |
Internal Promotions Rate | Number of internally promoted team members | Strong signal of leadership development capability |
Time-to-Hire | Average time to fill open roles | This is a recruiting metric, not a leadership one |
Track: Retention of top performers + internal promotion rate
3. Team Development
KPI | Description | Reality Check |
|---|---|---|
Training Hours | Learning and development hours per employee | Classic vanity metric - measures time, not growth |
Skill Development Rate | New certifications and skills acquired | Better, but it still focuses on inputs over outcomes |
1-on-1 Meeting Effectiveness | Time spent on coaching and feedback | Stop counting meetings. Start measuring outcomes |
Track: Skill deployment rate (how often are new skills actually used?)
4. Engagement
KPI | Description | Reality Check |
|---|---|---|
Employee NPS | Likelihood to recommend as a workplace | Useful but lagging indicator |
Pulse Survey Results | Regular feedback on engagement and morale | Good, if you ask the right questions |
Recognition Frequency | Frequency of public recognition | Another checkbox metric: quality matters more than quantity |
Track: Engagement trends, not absolute numbers
I've learned that effective measurement comes down to three principles:
Track outcomes over activities
Choose metrics that resist gaming
Select KPIs that encourage genuine leadership
Here's my advice: Start with 3-4 outcome-focused metrics. Watch how they change over time rather than fixating on absolute numbers. And please, retire those vanity metrics like "number of 1:1s completed."
The most effective operations leaders I work with have embraced this minimalist approach.
They've stopped trying to measure everything and instead focus on what truly matters. The rest is just corporate wallpaper.