Leadership Impact: Key Insights from Six Years of Longitudinal Data
We are proud of the growth our leaders report.
Across six years of longitudinal Academy data, participants have reported significant gains in their leadership confidence, effectiveness, and capacity. Just as important, many describe the Academy as transformational, producing growth not only in how they lead, but in who they are as people.
The Executive Education Academy is organized around five core leadership competencies. Together, they provide the foundation for the learning, executive coaching, reflection, and assessment participants experience throughout the program. They also provide a consistent framework for measuring how leaders perceive their development from the beginning of the Academy to its conclusion.
Leadership Growth That Is Both Sustained and Current
Across six years and 438 participants, Academy leaders reported substantial growth in each of the five competencies required to lead people, change, stakeholders, organizations, and results. The percentage rating themselves in the high-capacity range of 8-10 increased by 57 to 70 percentage points across the five competencies.
The results reflect more than a single successful cohort. They reveal a sustained pattern of leadership growth over time, while the 2025-2026 Cohort 17 results confirm that the pattern continues. Download the full report here. executive-education-academy-impact-report-2026v2.pdf
The table below shows the substantial shift in participants rating themselves 8-10 before and after the Academy. Note the overall shift from ratings of 8-10 before and after the academy.
Below is the chart with each competency and how participants rated themselves before and after the academy. The blue bars are pre-academy ratings. The green bars are post-academy ratings.
We also asked our participants to rank their Overall Leadership Ability before and after the academy.
The same pattern appears when participants assess their overall leadership ability. The percentage rating themselves 8-10 increased from 15% before the Academy to 90% after the Academy.
Interpreting Leadership Growth
Across all five core competencies, leaders reported dramatic gains in confidence, most notably in Leading Change (a 325% increase in 8-10 ratings) and Overall Leadership Ability .
These shifts indicate that our Academy is not only building capacity in technical leadership skills but also significantly advancing leaders’ belief in their ability to influence systems and outcomes.
While the quantitative data give a strong view of impact, qualitative replies reveal an equally powerful transformation.
What Changed Beneath the Numbers
The quantitative findings show a sustained pattern of leadership growth. Across six years of participant feedback, the qualitative comments reveal several recurring developmental shifts. Leaders consistently described becoming more self-aware, more intentional, more confident, and better able to translate learning into practice.
Enduring Themes Across Six Years
Deeper Self-Awareness and Leadership Identity
Leaders consistently described gaining a clearer understanding of their strengths, blind spots, patterns, and leadership identity. Assessment, coaching, and reflection helped participants see themselves more clearly and lead with greater self-knowledge.
“Knowing myself and reflecting on practice.”
“I have learned a lot about myself throughout this process.”
“My most powerful takeaway is knowing that I can trust myself to learn new things.”
“This has been the most reflective and active I’ve been in my career, and it has been so rewarding.”
Executive Coaching That Converts Insight Into Action
Executive coaching repeatedly emerged as one of the Academy’s most powerful features. Participants described coaching as a place to interpret feedback, think through difficult challenges, and turn insight into more intentional leadership behavior.
“Be a reflective leader, lead with intention, take care of yourself.”
“The coaching experience made a HUGE impact on my leadership.”
“Lead Self First before others.”
Intentional, Reflective, and Authentic Leadership
Participants described becoming more thoughtful about how they communicate, make decisions, and influence others. Many emphasized leading with greater clarity, purpose, and authenticity.
“The coaching experience made a HUGE impact on my leadership.”
“The 360 survey and having the executive coaching sessions with my personal coach were most powerful for me.”
“Wow, there were a lot but I truly learned so much from the executive coaching sessions.”
Confidence, Resilience, and Sustained Well-Being
Leaders reported greater confidence and a stronger sense of personal grounding. They also described well-being, emotional regulation, and self-care as essential to sustaining effective leadership over time.
“Self-care and reflective practices being shared.”
_“BREATHE — Just breathe — In our first session with Kim, she taught us the power of breathing.”
“Take care of myself and what I need so that I can better take care of others.”_
Practical Application to Leadership Work
Participants consistently valued learning that could be connected to real leadership challenges. They described applying Academy ideas to communication, team leadership, culture, change, and school improvement.
“I am ready to lead, and the experience has confirmed that.”
“This program works on the whole leader.”
“I will be more intentional each day with my interactions on the campus.”
Impact on Others and Leadership Practice
Many connected their personal development with their ability to positively influence others, expressing a renewed commitment to effective and empathetic leadership.
“Showing up as our best selves allows us to see the best in others.”
“Investing in myself will benefit the people that I serve!”
“Leadership takes work and balance.”
These themes have remained consistent across Academy cohorts. The 2025-2026 Cohort 17 findings reinforce the same developmental pattern while also offering a more detailed view of how participants currently experience, value, and apply the Academy.
Cohort 17: The Most Recent Results
The 2025-2026 Cohort 17 results reinforce the Academy’s long-term pattern of leadership growth while offering a closer look at how participants currently experience the program. The findings suggest that the Academy is not viewed as a collection of disconnected professional development sessions. Participants experienced it as a coherent leadership development system that connects assessment, executive coaching, university-based learning, reflection, practical application, and cohort support.
More Than Satisfaction
Although 95% rated the Academy as the best or among the best leadership development they had experienced, the deeper story is developmental. Participants reported greater self-awareness, stronger leadership confidence, clearer diagnosis of conditions, and practical strategies they were already applying in their roles.
The highest-rated elements span assessment, coaching, university instruction, environment, coherence, and application, reinforcing that the Academy’s value comes from its architecture rather than any one isolated activity.
Leadership Actions Shape Conditions
Cohort 17 participants reported stronger grounding, self-awareness, diagnosis, and intentional action.
Cohort 17 participants reported that the Academy helped them move from broad impressions about leadership toward more specific reflection, diagnosis, and action. Every respondent agreed that the Academy helped them consider how specific leadership actions can strengthen conditions in a school or district.
Strategies Leaders Are Applying
The Cohort 17 findings suggest that participants are not simply reporting greater confidence or satisfaction. Many are already using, or plan to use, specific strategies from the Academy in their leadership work.
What Cohort 17 Participants Said
Participants’ comments reinforce the quantitative findings. They described an experience that helped them see themselves more clearly, apply learning to real challenges, regain confidence and purpose, and feel less alone in the work of leadership.
Seeing Themselves More Clearly
Participants described gaining greater clarity about their strengths, blind spots, patterns, and leadership identity.
“The 360 profile and meeting with Executive Coach gave me clarity on strengths and blind spots.”
Coaching That Converts Insight Into Action
Executive coaching helped participants connect Academy learning to real leadership situations and decisions.
“Executive Coaching was absolutely a game changer for me.”
Confidence, Grounding, and Renewed Purpose
Leaders described leaving the Academy with greater confidence, affirmation, resilience, and clarity about their role.
“This academy is what refueled the love and passion I have to LEAD.”
Practical Tools for Real Leadership Challenges
Participants valued learning that was sustained, relevant, and directly connected to communication, culture, change, and team leadership.
“Many times in PD you learn about something that really doesn’t translate, but this academy was different.”
Connection and Reduced Isolation
Participants valued the cohort relationships and the reassurance that they do not have to carry the work alone.
“It helped me feel like I am not alone in this work and that I can make a difference.”
Why the Cohort 17 Results Matter
Cohort 17 reinforces the Academy’s long-term impact while clarifying its theory of action. The Academy appears to work because assessment, coaching, faculty learning, reflection, practical tools, and relationships reinforce one another. Together, they help leaders better understand themselves, act with greater intention, diagnose conditions more clearly, and apply learning to the real demands of leadership.
This is the central distinction of the Executive Education Academy: it is not a series of leadership workshops. It is a coherent leadership development system designed to strengthen the whole leader.
Why This Investment Matters
The findings across six years and 438 participants provide compelling evidence of perceived leadership growth. Leaders reported stronger capacity across all five leadership competencies, greater confidence in their overall leadership ability, and meaningful changes in how they understand themselves, influence others, diagnose conditions, and respond to real leadership challenges.
These findings matter because school leaders influence far more than their own individual performance. Research synthesized by The Wallace Foundation shows that effective principals contribute to student learning, teacher retention, attendance, school climate, and other important outcomes. Their influence occurs largely through the people, practices, cultures, and organizational conditions they shape every day.
Leadership Development That Works as a System
The Cohort 17 findings help explain why the Academy produces these reported changes. Participants did not experience assessment, executive coaching, Rice faculty, Leadership Partners sessions, reflection, practical application, and cohort learning as isolated activities. They experienced them as parts of one coherent leadership development system.
That distinction is important. Research on principal learning and leadership pipelines suggests that sustained, aligned systems of preparation and support are more promising than disconnected learning experiences. The Academy reflects that principle by developing the whole leader while connecting personal insight to leadership practice, organizational conditions, and improved outcomes.
Leadership is an inside job, but its effects do not remain inside the leader. Greater self-awareness influences how leaders communicate. Stronger judgment influences how they respond to challenges. Greater confidence influences whether they persist. More intentional leadership shapes trust, culture, collaboration, instruction, and the conditions in which adults and students do their best work.
Our Continuing Commitment
Since 2008, first through the Rice Education Entrepreneurship Program and now through Leadership Partners, we have remained committed to helping leaders become the best versions of themselves so they can create meaningful change, build stronger teams, and sustain the people they lead.
This work is strengthened by our enduring partnership with Executive Education in Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business. Their commitment to educational leadership, executive learning, and the development of school leaders has been essential to the Academy’s growth and impact.
The results tell a consistent story: leadership development is most powerful when it is personal, sustained, reflective, practical, and connected to the real conditions leaders are responsible for shaping.
Explore the next Executive Education Academy cohort or learn more about Leadership Partners’ executive coaching services.
Leaders receive a credential from Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business at the culmination of the program.
