My organization is struggling with holding Leaders accountable for what many call the soft skills of Leadership (motivating employees, developing employees, etc.) We do include a question around this on our company wide, annual employee survey. What I'm looking for is how others measure this on a individual Leader level? Is it an automatic, prefilled goal on all Leaders Performance Review form, etc. Any ideas would really be appreciated. THANKS in advance for your help!

In several organizations I have worked for we had predetermined annual objectives for all managers.
They were:
Communication
Attract, Develop and Retain Top Talent
Fiscal Responsibility.

Managers were able to craft their own deliverables, but they had to have these specific objectives in their plan.

In one organization I worked in, we used the Gallup Q12 survey. Given that this approach measures team and leaders, it kept leaders accountable.

Typically, most organizations have a terrible time attempting to measure leadership because they're trying to focus on soft skills (which are either behaviors or traits). It's not that these things can't be measured--they can. It's that you're measuring the wrong thing. The Gallup Q12 is one of the better instruments but it's still flawed in this regard.

We assume that if a manager gets good communication scores, they're a good manager. I'd argue that's not so--it's a reductionist way to performance evaluation and it's treating everyone as if they're the same and all situations are similar.

Instead, we need to start with the outcomes each manager is accountable for. Then you identify the tasks/steps/traits/behavior that is critical to achieve those outcomes. For instance, if I work in a department with veteran employees and no need for teamwork (work is autonomous), than communicating a lot is a bad thing. While someone who is new to the department (and has to earn credibility) or with a staff unclear of roles or expectations or with new tasks--communicating a lot is critical.

The best way to evaluate soft skills is to start by identifying the outcomes you want specific to each work situation. Then determine what traits/tasks/steps/skills are the most critical if you're going to achieve that outcome. Hint: this is why most competency models are a waste of time or generic at best--they treat all managers as if they were the same, their situations were the same and the results they were supposed to produce were the same (so therefore they all need the same skill set and behaviors). And that just isn't so.

Let me use an analogy to explain this. I've written 4 professional books, about 10 articles and 7 chapters for other professional books. So let's assume that we develop a list of specific competencies or tasks for what I use to write effectively. Then, let's judge you on that list. You might score very highly (at things like: drafting detailed, sequential outline, researching diverse resources for background material, identifying interesting and insightful quotes) and yet never published a thing (meaning: you're not writer). Or (just as likely) you've published even more than I have--but you use a different writing process (and thus different skills and steps). It's different from how I do it yet just as effective (maybe even more so) because we're different as people or the type of writing you do is different and your situation is different from mine. So why should you be forced to write the way I do? And why should we assume that if you do the same things I do, you'll publish books too?

I know this isn't a comfortable answer to receive. Because it means that some real serious thinking and analysis needs to occur with each manager or leader or executive. It means generic models or something used in another department or even another business isn't relevant (other than as possible inspiration).

Ultimately, I think the best way to make leaders accountable is to have specific, time-bound, measurable goals for each leader. And identify the 5-6 things that leader needs to do that have the most influence on whether or not that goal is achieved. Than evaluate how good (or poor) that leader is at those things. And track the progress on the goal and look at "next steps" when progress is lagging.