by Venchito Tampon | Last Updated on December 11, 2024
Leadership training is a cornerstone of talent development in many organizations. The more equipped leaders are, the better the organization’s future and ability to sustain success.
Many organizations’ leadership training programs are attractive to younger workforce generations, especially Gen Z, who prioritize career growth and skill development (based on Deloitte Global 2024 Gen Z and Millennial Survey).
Truthfully, leadership training is essential for talent recruitment and retention, so every L&D and HR practitioner must know how to implement the programs effectively.
In this guide, I’ll walk you through how to conduct leadership training and even share some of my experiences as a corporate trainer facilitating results-oriented leadership training programs.
How to Conduct Leadership Training?
1. Secure Top Management and Stakeholder Support
Any success of leadership training programs begins with buy-in from top management and key stakeholders.
While this shouldn’t be at the top of the conservative list when conducting leadership training, I find it a bottleneck for many HR practitioners as they move to the next phase of training—delivery. They could design the training program well enough, but they would find it difficult to ask participants to attend the training if it is not fully supported by key stakeholders right at the start.
Before anything else, create a business case or proposal and present it to top management and key stakeholders. Share your plans and clearly communicate the benefits of the leadership program, including its potential impact on employee work, performance, retention rates, and organizational growth.
You may include case studies and data reports to build the credibility of your proposal. It is best if you can find available data that’s locally contextualized here in the Philippines.
If you are a learning and development manager, you can establish a steering committee to oversee the training initiative, from requests for training budgets to the evaluation of the leadership training program.
2. Conduct a Training Needs Analysis
By identifying gaps in leadership competencies, you’ll have a solid benchmark of where to start your leadership training. This will also be the basis of your training evaluation if you can close any leadership competency gaps.
Competency gaps could be either problem-focused or growth-focused. Problem-focused competency gaps refer to any problems in the knowledge, skills, and attitude of your leaders that need to be addressed; otherwise, they would be detrimental and, worse, could affect the culture of the team and organization.
Conversely, growth-based gaps refer to potential improvement in the competencies—including specific KSA (knowledge, skills, and attitude of your leaders)—that you want your participants to level up with.
You can check out this guide on how to do training needs analysis.
Here are a few TNA gathering methods:
- Focus group discussions (FGD)
- Interviews with key beneficiaries
- Job materials and work documents
- Surveys and questionnaires
- Feedback systems
- Incident reports and problem logs
These are just a few, but they can help you start gathering more information about your leadership training needs.
3. Prepare a Proposal and Budget
Prepare a TNA plan and proposal after conducting a training needs analysis. The document should outline the program’s objectives, expected outcomes, and financial requirements.
Not only will it help you secure funding, but it will also provide a guide for management and stakeholders to understand the process of your leadership training.
Here’s what to include in the proposal:
- Training objectives and alignment with business goals.
- Target audience and selection criteria.
- Detailed cost estimates (e.g., trainer fees, materials, venue, food, etc..).
- A timeline for development and delivery.
Budgeting is critical—factor in all possible expenses and present a cost-benefit analysis to demonstrate ROI. This is where you need to research the available options for conducting a leadership training program: doing it in-house with your trainer or hiring a corporate training provider to facilitate and deliver the program.
You may want to check out this guide on how much leadership training costs in the Philippines.
Now, this goes to our next step:
4. Decide Between In-house or Outsourced Training
There are many upsides and drawbacks to conducting leadership training programs or outsourcing to a corporate training provider.
Doing it in-house is less costly and can foster and develop an internal learning culture, as participants are challenged to learn from each session conducted by internal trainers.
I find this effective for multinational companies with more than 100 employees. In this particular case, they simply hire in-house trainers who specialize in competencies such as leadership and are accredited in many local and global certifications to be credible enough to do facilitation in-house. It is a different story if you’re working in a startup or SME, as it doesn’t have this type of leverage.
Outsourced training is ideal for accessing expert trainers who can deliver leadership training at the highest level. Given that these trainers have conducted the same program multiple times and can customize it based on the context of the organization and its participants, you’ll see a much better outcome from their training.
Another overlooked advantage of outsourcing leadership training is getting fresh perspectives outside your organization. Typically, when learning revolves around each company employee, there is a tendency for limited learning. If you hire an external leadership trainer, you can acquire new insights and best practices on specific leadership competencies that could elevate the skills of your target participants.
These insights may include patterns that the corporate trainer assesses in his career of training different sets of clients—thus allowing him to see which strategy, tool, or tip actually works for a certain industry.
Another thing: the best upside for getting outside trainers is the training content itself—you wouldn’t simply access it if you conducted leadership training in-house. Either you attend public seminars offered by the preferred corporate training provider or hire them exclusively—both options can give you access to the trainer’s premium content.
Assuming you’re doing it in-house as you want the leadership training program to be cost-effective, here are some actionable tips for effective leadership training program design:
- Incorporate interactive elements like real-time surveys (e.g., Mentimeter), simulations, role-playing, and case studies contextualized to your industry or organization.
- Add modules on relevant topics such as leadership communication, diversity and inclusion, culture building, and digital transformation.
- Tailor content to different leadership levels, from emerging leaders to senior managers. It could be a series of leadership courses or coupled with individual coaching sessions for each participant.
5. Implement the Leadership Training Program
If you outsource leadership training, the corporate trainer will 70 to 90% implement the leadership training program.
But of course, there are a few things you should do to assist them in ensuring they’ll perfectly implement the training program. Not considering these can likely cause leadership training to fail.
Things you should assist corporate trainers with include:
- Preparing the training venue beforehand (ensure you book it if it’s outside your office vicinities, e.g., hotel function room).
- Ask the corporate trainer if any materials are needed (e.g., Manila paper, flipcharts, whiteboard, etc.).
- Be hospitable to your corporate training company. Make them feel you want to partner for a successful leadership training event.
For internal (no outsourced) leadership training, you can use various teaching methods to cater to the different learning styles of your target participants. Effective methods are:
- Workshops: Encourage active participation and group discussions.
- Role-Playing: Help participants practice real-world scenarios in a safe environment.
- Case Studies: Analyze real-life challenges to develop problem-solving skills.
- Blended Learning: Combine in-person sessions with online modules for flexibility.
Your implementation phase of the training program highly depends on the availability and level of your participants. So be sure to identify them even during the TNA process.
6. Evaluate the Effectiveness of Leadership Training
The only way to measure whether the leadership training impacts your target beneficiaries and the organization is to have it evaluated. Training evaluation is crucial for identifying areas for improvement.
Here’s a structured approach based on Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Evaluation to help assess your leadership training program. It covers:
- Reaction: Collect participant feedback on the training experience. You can use post-training feedback or evaluation forms.
- Learning: Test knowledge acquisition through quizzes or assessments.
- Behavior: Observe changes in workplace performance (e.g. performance reviews).
- Results: Measure the training’s impact on business metrics like employee engagement and productivity (i.e. ROI analysis to assess financial benefits versus costs).
Based on evaluation results, refine the program for future iterations to ensure continuous improvement. This can also help you strategize whether to retain the outsourced corporate training provider or hire a different one to customize your team’s programs better.
Invest In Your Future Leaders
Leadership training is a strategic investment in your workforce and organization. By following these structured steps—securing management support, analyzing needs, preparing a solid proposal, choosing the right program, implementing effectively, and evaluating outcomes—you can create a training initiative that fosters strong leaders, drives engagement, and aligns with business objectives.
This approach meets the demands of today’s workforce and positions your organization for long-term success.
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