FLY-Professional Effectiveness Study: A 26% Improvement in Real-World Work Habits
How do you know if leadership training actually changes behavior — not just how people feel about a workshop, but how they act at their desk three months later?
CMI's FLY-Professional Effectiveness Study answers that question by asking people who work closely with each participant — colleagues, managers, peers — to observe and rate real-world behavior across five non-cognitive skills: Conscientiousness, Taking Initiative, Perseverance, Innovativeness, and Problem Solving. Observers rate the participant once before training and again roughly three months after, without input from the participant themselves.
The results: an average improvement of 26% across all five skills, with every skill showing double-digit gains — from 21% (Problem Solving) to 30% (Taking Initiative). Because these are independent, third-party observations rather than self-reported progress, the shift reflects change other people actually noticed in day-to-day work.
As of Dec 2023, the study draws on 24 participants with matched before/after evaluations, set against a broader baseline of 215+ observer responses establishing typical starting scores. It's an interim result — CMI's data collection is ongoing, and the full picture will grow as the sample does.
Download the full report below.