What is Leadership Training & Development?

Companies around the world contribute to spending billions on leadership development. You might be questioning whether or not the investment is getting the desired return. Good and bad leadership will take your company in vastly different directions. So how do you ensure you do it well? How do you make sure your investment in leadership development gets the return you want and need?  

Leadership training is offered around the world by both ‘off-the-shelf’ training companies and boutique consulting firms delivering a more customized experience. Or perhaps you are considering delivering a leader development program internally. In any case, the key is to do your research and align your leaders (and emerging leaders) with the right program, delivered in the right way.

There are plenty of choices out there, but a wrong-fit program will leave you wondering if your investment into leadership training courses will deliver the desired skill development and impact you’re looking for.

The right program, delivered in an engaging format, should be a transformational experience for participants and the results noticeable. The best programs deliver a positive impact not only on leadership effectiveness, but they also cascade through corporate culture and enhance team performance. 

Whether you work in Human Resources and are seeking solutions for a team of high-potential leaders, or you are looking to invest in upgrading your own skills, the first step is to recognize what makes for a great leadership development program. Understanding what to look for ensures you get the experience you expect and deserve.

Before we deep-dive into what effective leadership training is, let’s get clear about what it isn’t. No matter what your leadership style is, training is not reading books and it isn’t simply watching videos (sorry LinkedIn Learning). That’s called passive entertainment. If streaming content was a substitute for training, we’d all be elite-level athletes after watching the Olympics on TV.

You can read all the best books, follow your favorite inspirational leaders on social media, and consume online content all day long, but the reality is these insights and inspirations are fleeting. The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve will take over and you will retain an embarrassingly small percentage of this type of content very quickly, which makes it a poor investment of time and money. 

Reading books, watching videos, and listening to podcasts is fun – just take it for what it is, which is informative entertainment, and don’t confuse it with leadership training.

Leadership and management training programs are specifically engineered to equip individuals with tools and strategies to be successful for themselves, their teams, and the organization. These types of programs will typically be broken down into learning modules, and should be strategically designed so each module layers on top of the previous, like scaffolding. The most successful leader training starts with a foundational framework and adds structure through each new concept or management tool, resulting in lasting impact.

Great leadership programs will balance cutting-edge content and practical tools with individual customization through one-to-one coaching and data assessments that foster deeper individual insight. Success means that leaders discover new ways to think and gain fresh perspectives on their biggest challenges.

The very best programs then embrace an experiential learning method, rich in hands-on exercises, intimate breakout sessions, teach-back activities, and other tactics to keep the learner fully engaged. You should also expect follow-on assignments to bridge the gap between sessions, creating intentional and practical application of what has been taught, which is key for sustaining learning. 

In the end, highly successful leadership training programs are designed to enable leaders to deliver maximum impact by:

• Identifying individual blind spots and addressing them

• Learning the mental models (mindset) of excellent leadership now and in the future

• Re-skilling to bypass subject matter expertise and deliver results through others

• Learning and deploying the right tools to enhance leadership effectiveness

• Using the right skills and strategies to address challenges that are inherent with leading others

• Leveraging tactics to prevent unnecessary friction and risk (here’s an example of one of our favorites)

The vast majority of first-time leaders find themselves promoted based on their technical or subject expertise (or sometimes, just based on tenure with an organization), and then boom, they realize their technical expertise has very little to do with inspiring, developing, and delivering results through other people. In fact, what earned them a promotion is likely the very thing holding them back from being a great leader. 

We see it all the time. “You’ve done a great job doing the work of the department, now we want you to run the department.” Then, the newly minted manager chooses to double-down on doing the work - the thing they just got rewarded for - which gets in the way of properly developing their team. 

Sooner or later, it becomes clear to the leader (and has likely been felt by their team already) that a new approach is needed. The question becomes, does the leader get the benefit of valuable training before there’s an issue, or does the organization wait for a train wreck?

Good leadership training greatly increases the likelihood that individuals avoid unnecessary mistakes that damage their reputation and hinders results. Leaders can apply intentional strategies to increase value and generate successful results as a team. 

Done well, leadership training works, because:

• It equips leaders with the mindset to navigate challenges and prevent mental ‘outages’ that create significant damage and risk

• It elevates individual awareness that can lead to intentional, fast, and lasting changes

• It provides the practical tools to address current and prevent future people challenges

• It challenges perspectives and delivers feedback that lead to greater insight

• It provides models and strategies leaders can use to inspire and influence greater performance across the organization

• It provides structures leaders can leverage outside of training to enhance their effectiveness

• It provides leaders the ability to reduce clutter and gain efficiencies for themselves and their teams

• It fosters a sense of community and develops a collaborative network that extends beyond the program

The truth is, not all leadership training works. We know this based on our experience with coaching and developing leaders from around the world, at different stages of their careers

Below are some of the most common reasons leadership training doesn’t work:

• When content and experience are outdated and no longer applicable to modern leadership challenges.

• When there is a lot of theory, content, and no experimentation or application to real-life challenges.

• When it is an activity of compliance to check the box or pad the resume rather than activate meaningful and measurable results.

• The program facilitator fails to engage their audience and resorts to a ‘dump of information’ approach.

• On know-it-alls. Those participants who think they already know everything about being a great leader.

• When the program focuses on “leadership” in general and doesn’t address the individual leader.

• If one-to-one coaching to personalize the learning experience is missing from the program.

• When there isn’t individual buy-in to the experience (they are ‘voluntold’ to be there).

• When participants aren’t interested in doing the work to get better – they simply want other people to make their professional life easier.

• If participants don’t have the structures and accountability to address their development gaps.

• If the program is not tailored to where the learner is in their career - emerging leader, middle-manager or experienced leader, or an executive-level leader (aka leader of leaders).

Whatever route you chose to up-level leadership effectiveness, remember that the delivery is just as important as the curriculum. For any leadership development program to be effective, the overall experience, framework, learning arc, participant engagement, tools, strategies, and personalization all fit together like pieces of a puzzle. A complete package is the key to long-lasting progression and skill acquisition to create highly successful leaders.

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