What Difference Does GLISI Make? Measuring Impact at Every Level.

By Erica Gilbertson | November 25, 2025

Nonprofit organizations like GLISI often get asked, “How do you know your programs make an impact?” It’s a fair question—and not always a simple one to answer. Leadership development doesn’t just impact one person; it ripples. Change happens through the interactions of individuals, teams, and the systems they inhabit. That’s why, to truly understand our impact, we measure growth at all three levels: individual, team, and system. As GLISI’s Director of Organizational Impact, I have the privilege of leading this work—capturing evidence of individual leader growth, team development, and system improvement. 

 

INDIVIDUAL LEADERS’ GROWTH

GLISI’s partnerships are designed to accelerate individual leaders’ growth by building self-efficacy and agency, improving actionable self-reflection, asking hard questions that challenge assumptions, and sharing knowledge and processes related to building more effective teams and leading lasting, continuous, and systemic improvement. 

 

What are some indicators we use to assess individual leaders’ growth?

 

GLISI measures impact at the individual leader level primarily by analyzing evidence of:

  • Increased leader capacity (e.g. growth in ability to cultivate trust)
  • Mindset shifts that result in new actions and behavior (e.g. “I used to think…and now I think”)
  • Increased self-efficacy and optimism for enacting change (e.g. leader hope index) 

 

We learn about the impact of GLISI programs on individual leaders through multiple sources of evidence, including participant surveys, public exhibitions, written reflections, and coaching logs that document leader growth over time. Our partnerships are designed with increasing leadership capacity as an essential learning outcome, which is consistently reflected in our data.  

 

For example, 97% of district/organization leaders agreed that our partnership increased the capacity of their leaders to help their district achieve its goals. What does that actually look like? It looks like leaders expressing more confidence, agency, and willingness to try something new. It looks like leaders building more cohesive and collaborative systems and breaking down old silos. It looks like activated and engaged teams rowing together toward a shared goal. 

 

It also — more often than not — looks like struggle. Leaders are human, and humans are often resistant to change. GLISI designs authentic opportunities to try, experiment, fail, fall back, and try again as leaders work to adopt new actions and mindsets to lead more effectively.  One leader described their partnership with GLISI as a “deep tissue massage–not always comfortable, but absolutely needed.” 

 

TEAM DEVELOPMENT

Leadership doesn’t happen in isolation. Because lasting change is more networked and integrated into the way teams, schools, and organizations operate, we often provide support designed to grow the capacity and effectiveness of intact teams. How do we know if teams are growing in their capacity to achieve collective goals? Some indicators include: 

  • Increased psychological safety and team trust (e.g. growth in team’s ability to bring up problems and tough issues)
  • Progress towards collective efficacy (e.g. increase in team confidence they will achieve collective goals)
  • Structures and processes for consistent and data-driven teamwork (e.g. regular impact checks to monitor implementation of solutions)

 

We collect evidence related to these indicators through surveys, team listening sessions (similar to focus groups), and program artifacts. One particular point of pride is the growth we’ve observed in psychological safety on the teams we coach and serve. 330 out of 340 BCLS program participants - 97% - agreed that members of their team are “able to bring up problems and tough issues,” a vital component of psychological safety. When leaders are vulnerable enough to acknowledge their mistakes, they can turn them into learning opportunities for themselves and their team.  And when teams are able to have healthy hard conversations, they are more likely to make better decisions and course correct to achieve their collective goals.

 

SYSTEMS LEVEL IMPROVEMENT

The hardest part of our impact assessment is tracking how shifts in leader capacity and team effectiveness impact system outcomes. There are any variety of variables that can positively or negatively affect teacher retention, youth engagement, community trust in schools, and academic outcomes that are focus priorities for the organizations we serve. While strong causation is tough to ascertain outside of a science lab, we are able to draw correlations and associations and do so by looking at trend data over time for the organizations or regions we serve.   

 

Some key impact indicators we assess at the systems level include:

  • Teacher/leader retention and promotions (e.g. increase in program participant promotion rates 1, 3, 5 years after completion)
  • Intention to remain in the profession (e.g. participants’ intent to stay in education compared to state/national average)
  • High school graduation rates  (e.g. long-term partner district graduation rates compared to state average)

 

For example, our Restoring Teacher Aspiration and Innovation (RETAIN) program is designed to have a positive impact on educator retention in the metro Atlanta region by working to develop and refine leaders’ social-emotional competencies.  When Cohort 1 completed the program in spring 2025, RETAIN leaders’ schools averaged a 94% teacher retention rate and had a 6% higher rate of increase in teacher retention than the participating districts’ average. And, notably, 100% of RETAIN participants intend to stay in the profession for at least 3 more years and all reported that RETAIN influenced that decision. In contrast, approximately 1 out of 5 Georgia educators report their intent to leave the profession in the next five years– only 80% intend to stay.

 

RIPPLES AT EVERY LEVEL MAKE AN IMPACT

Impact can sometimes feel elusive. But for us, impact is most visible when:

  • A leader takes bold action with newfound confidence
  • A team engages in healthy conflict and hard conversations
  • A district sustains improvements that retains educators and gives them opportunities to continue to grow

 

Assessing and monitoring our impact at all levels of change, including changing course when we fall short of our goals, helps to ensure that GLISI, together with our partners, are making steady progress toward our collective vision: a future where leaders work together and communities flourish. 

 

For more information about how we can partner together on data-driven impact work, reach out to Jennie Welch ([email protected]) or learn more about our services here. For more information related to GLISI’s impact data, please contact Erica Gilbertson ([email protected]).