How To Implement A Leadership Development Programme

Leadership development is easy to get wrong.

You’re a senior leader or a business owner, and you recognise a need for better leadership. So you find a training provider, put your managers through a programme and hope something changes.

Sometimes it does. Often, managers return to exactly the same environment, expectations and pressures they left. New ideas get swallowed up by business as usual, and six months later it can be difficult to identify what the organisation actually achieved.

A leadership development programme should be more than a series of workshops. Done well, it connects the leadership capability an organisation needs with its culture, expectations, systems and everyday management practices.

So, if you’re thinking about introducing leadership development across your organisation, where should you start?

1. Start with why you need leadership development

Before deciding what your leadership programme should contain, establish why you need one in the first place.

There may be an obvious organisational problem. Perhaps employee turnover is too high. Engagement survey results are disappointing. People are reluctant to step into management roles. Teams are working in silos, or there is too much variation in the quality of leadership across the organisation.

Or your reason may be more proactive. Perhaps the organisation is growing, going through significant change, developing a stronger culture or preparing the next generation of leaders.

Be specific about the problem or opportunity.

“We need better leaders” isn’t enough. What is happening now that you want to change?

Answering that question gives your leadership development programme a purpose, and eventually gives you something against which to measure its success.

2. Understand your starting point and where you want to go

Once you know why you’re investing in leadership development, establish your baseline.

Some of the information may already exist. Depending on your original reason for introducing the programme, you might look at:

employee engagement results
employee turnover and retention
exit interview themes
absenteeism
internal promotion rates
customer or operational measures
existing leadership competency assessments.

You may also need to gather additional information specifically about leadership capability.

For example, 360-degree feedback can show how leaders’ behaviour is experienced by the people around them. Psychometric assessments can provide insight into individual preferences, strengths and potential development areas. Interviews, focus groups or employee surveys that you’ve used as part of your workplace culture and engagement programme can uncover common leadership challenges across the organisation.

3. Define your destination

What should be different in 12 or 18 months because you invested in leadership development?

Perhaps managers should be having better performance conversations. Employees should receive more useful feedback. Leaders should delegate more effectively. Engagement scores for particular leadership questions should improve. Internal leadership capability should increase.

The clearer you are about the change you’re trying to create, the easier the rest of the programme becomes to design.

Maybe at this point, if you’ve been really robust in your data collection and analysis, you might have some hard measures (from step 2) that you want to see an improvement in.

4. Get genuine senior leadership buy-in

Leadership development cannot be an HR initiative that senior leaders simply approve.

Senior leaders need to actively support it.

I’ll say it again, it’s that important. Senior leaders must actively support it. This is more than just a short presentation or appearance at the first workshop.

It means understanding why the organisation is investing in leadership development, agreeing on what good leadership should look like and being prepared to hold your most senior leaders accountable for ensuring that the leadership development activities create meaningful change.

There is also an important question worth asking early:

Are senior leaders prepared to be held to the same leadership expectations as everyone else?

If the organisation is asking frontline and middle managers to change while senior leaders continue behaving exactly as they always have, the programme will quickly lose credibility.

Senior leadership behaviour sends a much stronger message about “how we lead here” than anything written in a leadership framework.

5. Involve people in the design

Don’t build the entire programme behind closed doors.

Talk to managers. Talk to employees. Talk to the people who understand the realities of leading within your organisation.

Ask questions such as:

What makes leading here difficult?
What do our best leaders do particularly well?
What gets in the way?
What do employees need more of from their managers?
What would help managers lead more effectively?

This doesn’t mean designing your leadership programme by committee. It means making sure the programme reflects the reality of your workplace rather than somebody’s theoretical idea of what a good leader should be.

It also creates ownership and buy-in. People are much more likely to engage with something they have helped shape.

The bonus: the act of involving everyone in designing the programme in itself is a demonstration of good leadership.

6. Develop your leadership framework

Now you can define what good leadership actually looks like in your organisation.

Your leadership framework should translate organisational values, strategy and desired culture into observable leadership behaviours.

Avoid creating a long list of impressive-sounding competencies that nobody can remember.

A useful framework answers a much simpler question:

What do we expect our leaders to actually do?

For example, if “developing people” is part of your framework, what would you expect to see a good leader doing?

They might hold regular one-to-ones, give useful feedback, coach rather than immediately provide answers, create development opportunities and address performance issues early.

Behavioural expectations make leadership tangible.

And when the framework is launched, communication shouldn’t come only from HR.

Ideally, the CEO or another senior organisational leader should explain why leadership matters, why the organisation is investing in it and what leaders will now be expected to do differently.

That signals that leadership development is an organisational priority — not an HR programme.

7. Design or select the development activities

Only now should you start deciding what development activities your leaders actually need.

Training will probably be part of the solution, but it shouldn’t automatically be the whole solution.

A leadership development programme might combine several approaches.

Leadership and management training can build specific capabilities such as giving feedback, coaching, delegation, managing performance, building trust or having difficult conversations.

Individual development might include 360-degree feedback, psychometric assessments, coaching or individual development plans so leaders can understand their own strengths and development priorities.

Workplace development might include action-learning projects, mentoring, peer learning groups, manager-led development conversations, stretch assignments or opportunities to lead new initiatives.

The important principle is that development should connect directly to your leadership framework.

If you’ve said a particular behaviour matters, there should be a way for leaders to learn it, practise it and receive feedback on it.

8. Create an accountability framework

This is the step that is often missing.

Sending somebody on leadership training does not make their development the responsibility of the training provider — or HR.

Managers need to be accountable for implementing what they learn, and their own managers need to be accountable for supporting and challenging them to do it.

Before development activities begin, decide how this will happen.

For example, a senior leader might ask a manager before a workshop:

“What are you hoping to improve?”

Afterwards:

“What are you going to do differently?”

And several weeks later:

“How have you applied it? What happened?”

Leadership expectations can also be incorporated into regular one-to-ones, performance discussions, development plans and promotion decisions.

This is how leadership development moves from something people attend to something people are expected to apply.

9. Implement the programme

Now you can roll it out.

Depending on the size of your organisation, this might happen across the whole leadership group or begin with a particular level, function or pilot group.

Don’t underestimate communication during implementation.

People should understand why the programme exists, what will happen, what is expected of them and how the different elements connect.

And resist the temptation to cram everything into a short period.

Behaviour change takes time.

Giving leaders opportunities to learn something, apply it in the workplace, reflect on what happened and then build the next capability is usually far more valuable than trying to “complete” leadership development as quickly as possible.

10. Remeasure — and keep developing

Eventually, go back to the measures you identified at the beginning.

What has changed?

If engagement was the issue, what happened to the relevant engagement measures?

If retention was the problem, has turnover changed?

If you used 360-degree feedback to establish a baseline, repeating it can show whether leadership behaviour is being experienced differently.

You can also look at participation, application of learning, employee feedback, promotion data and changes in specific leadership behaviours.

Not every organisational metric will move because of leadership development alone, so avoid claiming causation where it doesn’t exist. Instead, look at the combination of quantitative data, behavioural evidence and employee experience.

And don’t treat measurement as the end of the programme.

Use what you’ve learned to decide what needs to happen next.

Leadership development is a system, not an event

The strongest leadership development programmes connect several things:

Organisational priorities → leadership expectations → development → workplace application → accountability → measurement.

Training is an important part of that system, but training on its own isn’t a leadership development strategy.

If you want managers to lead differently, you need to define what “differently” means, help them develop the capability to do it, create an environment where they can apply it — and make leadership behaviour something the organisation genuinely pays attention to.

That’s when leadership development starts changing more than individual managers. It starts changing the organisation.

Ready to get started?

Frequently asked questions about leadership development programmes

What should a leadership development programme include?

A leadership development programme should include clear leadership expectations, opportunities to build relevant skills, individual feedback and development, workplace application, and accountability. Activities might include leadership training, coaching, mentoring, 360-degree feedback, psychometric assessments, peer learning and workplace projects. The right mix depends on the organisation’s goals and the leadership capability it needs to develop.

How do you implement a leadership development programme?

Start by identifying why leadership development is needed and gathering data to understand your current position. Define what you want to change, gain senior leadership commitment, involve others in the design and develop a clear leadership framework. From there, design development activities, establish accountability, implement the programme and remeasure to see what has changed.

How long should a leadership development programme run?

There is no ideal length for every organisation. Leadership development should allow enough time for people to learn new skills, apply them at work, receive feedback and practise new behaviours. A programme spread over several months will usually provide more opportunity for workplace application than intensive training delivered over a short period.

How do you measure the success of a leadership development programme?

Start with the measures that prompted the programme in the first place. These might include employee engagement, turnover, retention, employee relations data or particular leadership behaviours. You can also use employee feedback, 360-degree feedback and other leadership assessments to compare your starting point with results after the programme.

What role should senior leaders play in leadership development?

Senior leaders should actively champion the programme, model the leadership behaviours expected of others and hold the managers who report to them accountable for their development. Ideally, the CEO or another senior leader should communicate the leadership framework and explain why it matters. Leadership development is much less likely to succeed if it is seen simply as an HR initiative.

Is leadership training enough to improve leadership capability?

Usually not. Training can give managers new knowledge, skills and tools, but sustainable behaviour change also requires opportunities to apply what they learn, feedback, clear leadership expectations and accountability. Leadership training works best when it is part of a broader leadership development approach rather than a standalone event.