Why Most Leadership Development Programs Don't Develop Leaders

Monday morning after the offsite

You probably know this picture. Two days in a nice hotel outside the city, good coffee, a facilitator with lots of energy, and a personality test that tells you your colour.

Everyone leaves motivated. People take photos of the flipcharts, and someone says it was the best training in years.

Then Monday comes. 200 unread emails, the same meetings, the same manager, the same targets. By Wednesday the training notebook is in a drawer, and by next quarter nobody remembers what the four quadrants were.

Companies spend a lot of money on this every year. I have to admit, I have sat in many of these rooms myself, and I have sent my own managers to them too.

Why I'm writing this

I have spent almost 20 years in corporate, 10 of them in senior leadership. I built and led a department of 250 people across Denmark and Lithuania, took my teams through five reorganizations, and ran townhalls for up to 1,000 people.

Today I work in a leadership role in corporate, and I also coach leaders and run trainings for teams. So I see leadership development from three sides: the person sitting in the training, the manager who sends people there and waits for change, and the person who designs programs.

What I keep noticing is this. Most programs are well meant and well made, and still very little changes in how people lead on Monday.

Five reasons they don't work

1. They come at the wrong time

In most companies people get promoted first and trained later, sometimes a year later. By then the new manager has already built habits, good and bad, just to get through the days.

The first 90 days in a new role is when people need help most. That's when they learn how to give feedback to a former colleague, how to say no to their own boss, and how to run a meeting where people actually speak up. A program that comes after that is only catching up.

I see this especially with women who are promoted from inside their own team. Overnight, the people they had coffee with yesterday become their direct reports, and nobody prepares them for how strange that feels.

2. The content is too general

Many programs are built on models and frameworks: situational leadership, personality types, the feedback sandwich. Some of these are useful. What a leader in a real job usually needs, though, is help with the situation on her desk this week.

That might be a reorganization she has to explain to her team, a strong performer who wants to leave, or a team that goes quiet every time something uncomfortable comes up. If the training doesn't touch these, people nod politely and go back to doing things the same way.

3. Nothing around the leader changes

A leader comes back from training with new ideas and walks into the same system. Her own manager doesn't ask what she learned, the KPIs still reward hitting the numbers however she gets there, and the meetings run the same way.

People adapt to their environment much faster than to a slide deck. If the environment stays the same, the old behaviour is back within a few weeks.

Sometimes it's even worse. A leader tries the new approach, asks her team for open feedback, and her own manager sees it as weakness. After that, she won't try again.

4. There is no real practice

You can learn a lot about hard conversations in a training room. Then you walk into the real one, with a real person who is upset, and none of it comes to mind.

Leadership is built by doing, a bit like driving. Most programs give people the theory test and skip the driving lessons. Role plays happen, but they are often short and awkward, and everyone is relieved when they're over.

The leaders I see grow fastest are the ones who get to practise on their real cases: the exact words they want to use with the exact person, said out loud a few times before Monday.

5. Success is measured by how people felt

At the end of day two everyone fills in a feedback form: the trainer, the venue, the content, out of five. The scores are usually good.

That form shows whether people enjoyed it. Nobody checks whether anyone leads differently three months later, so the same program runs again next year.

A better question is a simple one: what does your team notice that is different? It's harder to measure, but it's the answer that really matters.

What actually developed me as a leader

When I think about what made me a better leader, almost none of it happened in a training room.

It happened during the reorganizations, all five of them. Standing in front of my team and explaining changes I wasn't fully comfortable with myself taught me more about honesty and trust than any course. I learned that people handle bad news much better than silence.

It happened at townhalls, when an unexpected question came from the audience and I had to answer it in front of 1,000 people. And it happened in the short talks afterwards, with someone who asked me how it went and what I would do differently next time.

So for me, leadership grows from three things: a real situation, some support around it, and someone to reflect with afterwards. Most programs offer only a little of each.

This is also why I think leadership is learned slowly, through practice, support and reflection, over much longer than two days.

What works instead

I don't have a perfect formula, but I see the same things work again and again.

• Spread it over time. Short sessions every few weeks over several months, instead of two full days. People try something, come back, talk about what happened, and try again.
• Build it around real situations. Before the program starts, ask leaders what they are dealing with right now, and use those cases in the room.
• Involve their managers. One conversation between the leader and her manager before the program, and one after, changes a lot. The manager knows what to look for and can support it.
• Practise the hard conversations. Real cases, real words, in a safe setting, with feedback. Several times, until it feels less strange.
• Follow up at 30, 60 and 90 days. Check what people actually do differently, and ask their teams too.
• Work with the whole team. A leader changes faster when the team around her is part of it. Team coaching helps the group build new habits together, so one person doesn't carry the change alone.

None of this is complicated. It just asks for more patience than a two-day event.

When companies ask me where to start, I usually suggest one small step: pick one real challenge your leaders face right now, and build the next program around it. People feel the difference straight away, because the training finally talks about their own work.

Before your next program

Think about the last leadership program in your company. What is different today in how your managers lead?

If the honest answer is "not much", it's worth looking at how the program is built before you run it again.

I work with companies on leadership trainings and team coaching built around the real situations their leaders face. If you'd like to talk about what this could look like for your team, book a short call with me.