Leadership Training vs Leadership Programme: Know The Difference

Knowing the Subtle Nuances: Leadership Training vs Leadership Programme

In today’s volatile business environment, effective leadership is a necessity. As true HR/L&D practitioners, knowing the subtle nuances between leadership training and a leadership programme can significantly increase your organisation’s capability to produce leaders who are proficient at navigating the current storm – but more than that- building leaders who are ready for whatever storm is coming next. In this blog, we’ll examine what these two different approaches look like, when you should use each, and how to measure their ROI.

What’s the Core Difference?

Although leadership training and programmes are synonymous terms, they embody different ways of developing the skills to lead.

Leadership training typically means short, high-intensity courses lasting a few hours to two days. This type of training usually targets one skill or a few skills that are easily adapted immediately within the organisation. At the core of this approach is immediacy; it provides quick tips or strategies that can be used for immediate scenarios. For example, you could host a half-day workshop on emotional intelligence to provide your managers with tools for improving their relationships.

A leadership programme on the other hand is more radical, and long-term. It is frequently composed of various modules wrapped around coaching, cohort learning and personalised follow-up. These programmes run over a number of months, providing time for participants to explore and develop their leadership inquiry over time. It’s this cohort leadership approach, where you learn together-and community happens as a byproduct-that best provides support and keeps the learning going.

When choosing between leadership training and a programme, consider the specific needs your organisation and its leaders have for growth.

Consequences of Underestimating these Differences

If we do not acknowledge the subtle differences between them, then it can result in:

Wasted resources: Long-term skills that can be addressed in one training session create a waste of time and money invested.
Short-term results: Rapid sessions may fail to resolve underlying issues in an organisation and as a result have little long-term impact on the leadership ability.
Leadership fatigue: Increasing managers’ load with brief, unstructured training may do more to disengage than enlighten leaders.

It’s important to appreciate these implications so you can strategically decide on how you would like to develop as a leader.

When to Use Each Approach

Trigger Short-Term Needs with Leadership Training

If you need leadership now, and there are burning hole gaps in your organization that need to be filled immediately, choose leadership training. If your team is struggling with how to manage rapid change, then boot-campaign style training could offer some urgently needed tools and techniques that you would be able to use right away. Check our training catalogue for ideas on what exactly to develop either in your leaders or their teams.

Sustain through growth with Leadership Programme.

On the other hand if your organisation wants to develop a talent pipeline of future leaders or tackle cultural change in leadership approach, the business case for funding a leadership programme is more compelling. This strategy will help to ensure leaders build accelerated capability around core skills and knowledge areas in a consistent manner from emotional intelligence, through to strategic thinking — across each skill area getting practice & support over time.

Measure the ROI of Each Approach

When measuring their effects, ROI for each can be useful:

With a leadership development journey, evaluate the immediate results such as feedback from participants, reports of changes in behavior within teams after an intervention has taken place and metrics that indicate symptom change (for instance, improved performance in relevant KPIs).
For leadership development programs, measure broader indicators in the long term: How long leaders stay in your organisation, retention rates, scores on engagement questions and organisational performance.

Real-Life Impact: Case Example

At one top technology company, a strategically designed leadership program over six months changed how leaders regarded team dynamics. The programme involved cohort learning where participants helped boost each other’s growth, as well as one-on-one coaching sessions. This end-to-end approach resulted in a 30% increase in employee engagement scores and an impressive hike in internal promotion rates.

One senior team member shared: “Our leadership programme game changer – allowing deep engagement, space to reflect on our styles and actively support each other’s development”.

Conclusion

Both leadership training and holistic leadership programmes have their place in the HR professional’s toolkit. It’s important that you know when and how to employ each in your organisation in order to develop a culture of impactful leadership. By taking a mind to look at your organisation’s short and long-term needs, you can build a development journey that is not only plugging gaps but acting as part of a culture of ongoing improvement.

Interested in learning more about how you can use science to supercharge your leadership development approach? Simply click on one of these programmes to learn more or get in touch and we’ll help you create the perfect leadership programme for your organisation.

Next Steps

Let’s make effective leadership a realistic goal together! For further information on how to choose the right training or programme, browse through our comprehensive resources: