The Advocacy Leadership Quotient: Employee Advocacy Should Be Your Organization's Next Leadership Skill

Forbes

31-07-2025

Andy Elliot is the Vice President of Product Strategy at EvonSys.
When most people hear the term 'employee advocacy,' their minds jump to marketing tactics—social shares, brand mentions and a handful of likes on LinkedIn. But if you continue to treat advocacy as a promotional afterthought, you're missing one of the most untapped leadership opportunities in modern business.
Employee advocacy isn't about asking your team to repost the company blog or slap a hashtag on their personal posts. It's about equipping your people to lead with authenticity, influence and strategic intent. Done correctly, advocacy becomes a multiplier. It builds trust, inspires action and drives tangible business outcomes. That's why I believe it's time for organizations to treat advocacy not as a tactical initiative, but as a core leadership competency.
And we need a better way to measure it. That's where the Advocacy Leadership Quotient (ALQ) comes in.
Advocacy As Leadership In Action
In order to reframe advocacy as leadership, you need to understand the leadership traits it draws upon, such as the ability to communicate clearly, the emotional intelligence to inspire peers and the strategic influence to align others around a shared vision. These leadership skills are already present in your organization.
Advocacy is the activation of those traits, applied consistently and authentically. When leaders use their voice to shape internal culture or positively represent the organization externally, they become ambassadors of trust. And their actions ripple through their teams, industries and networks.
Think of employee advocacy as the network effect of leadership. It's not necessarily what a leader says, but how that message is amplified and trusted by those they've influenced. One voice can start a wave, but many voices (when aligned, empowered and engaged) can shape a movement. For example, the sports clothing brand, Patagonia, successfully leverages digital advocacy to support various environmental causes.
A Smarter Way To Recognize Advocacy
To treat advocacy as a leadership skill, we need a way to measure it without compromising its authenticity. That's the purpose of the Advocacy Leadership Quotient, a framework we are developing to evaluate employee advocacy as a strategic asset within an organization.
ALQ will evaluate three core dimensions:
How effectively does someone shape morale, culture and team alignment within the organization? Tools like peer recognition, internal surveys or cross-functional feedback can offer meaningful insights here.
This is not about follower counts; it's about trust. How do employees show up in the marketplace? Are they representing the brand's values in a way that builds confidence and draws interest? External posts, thought leadership contributions and speaking invitations are all indicators.
What tangible outcomes are tied to someone's advocacy? Are they helping drive recruiting, increase customer engagement or shorten the sales cycle? These impact metrics tie advocacy directly to business performance.
The goal of ALQ isn't to police or manufacture advocacy. Quite the opposite, it's to recognize what's already there, amplify it and reward it. It's a framework for nurturing something inherently human: Belief in what you do and the willingness to speak up for it.
Making ALQ Practical And Scalable
Here's the good news: You don't need to start from scratch to operationalize ALQ. Most organizations already invest heavily in leadership development. This is simply a matter of realigning those investments to include advocacy as part of the leadership journey.
Some practical tools include:
Embed storytelling, personal branding and authentic communication into your standard leadership curriculum. Help people find their voice and understand how to use it responsibly.
Leaderboards are a surprisingly effective tool. We've seen firsthand how a little bit of friendly competition can spark engagement. Whether tracking employee participation, performance of their social media posts or cross-functional amplification, visibility drives momentum.
If someone consistently advocates for the company in a way that builds credibility, that should unlock new opportunities. Tie advocacy performance to high-profile projects, mentorship tracks or company-wide visibility.
Establish advocacy circles with internal forums where high-ALQ employees can mentor others, share best practices and build collective capacity.
It's about reframing existing efforts and recognizing that advocacy isn't just a marketing KPI. It's a marker of cultural health and leadership potential.
What about resistance?
It's fair to ask: What if employees don't want to use their personal platforms to promote the company?
We've seen that hesitation. People are protective of their networks and understandably so. But when advocacy is authentic and voluntary, and when people understand its personal and professional upside, there's often a shift.
Transparency, education and subtle peer influence tend to go a long way. When your employees see their peers celebrated for meaningful contributions (whether that's a standout LinkedIn post or a speaking engagement), it creates a culture of participation.
You're not aiming for 100% adoption. But with the right environment, you can make advocacy contagious.
Why This Works For Every Company
One common misconception is that frameworks like ALQ only apply to global enterprises with massive HR departments. The reality is quite the opposite.
In smaller organizations, the intimacy of relationships and the agility of communication make authentic advocacy even more impactful. Whether you're a team of 10 or 10,000, your people are already influencing how others see your brand.
The difference is whether or not you're strategically supporting and scaling that influence.
Advocacy Is The KPI You're Not Measuring Yet
As leaders, we track what we value. We measure sales, retention and engagement, but how often do we measure belief? Or credibility? Or trust?
Employee advocacy sits at the intersection of all three. When done right, it increases customer engagement, improves recruiting outcomes and accelerates deal velocity. And builds cultures that people want to be part of.
The organizations that embrace ALQ will be the ones that win, not just in the market, but in reputation, retention and relevance.
It's time to stop thinking of advocacy as a marketing checkbox and start seeing it as the leadership superpower that it truly is.
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