The 5 Chal­lenges of Lead­er­ship Devel­op­ment Programs and How to Solve Them

So many lead­er­ship devel­op­ment programs. So little time. Or resources. Or… decent programs. The busi­ness of training and devel­op­ment is a $366 billion a year industry

Yes, you did read that correctly. The most annoying thing is that a lot of those programs are not working as they should and there is a whole range of reasons why. Lead­er­ship training is so impor­tant to any busi­ness strategy that’s been designed to keep your global orga­ni­za­tion adapt­able and inno­v­a­tive. But if the training is not up to stan­dard, you run the risk of spending a lot of money and time, and not getting the value you hoped for.

Here are five chal­lenges that’ll hit you when imple­menting a lead­er­ship devel­op­ment program and five answers to deal with those problems.

1. Generic Program Content

You read our last article talking about why global lead­er­ship devel­op­ment is so impor­tant. You find your­self getting excited about devel­oping your­self or the leaders in your organ­i­sa­tion. You start shop­ping for ‘off the rack’ lead­er­ship devel­op­ment programs from some of the big players in the space. Univer­sity busi­ness schools, local college programs, online training and devel­op­ment schools. “This one looks inter­esting! You get a certifi­cate at the end!” you think to yourself.

Then you read the course content.

It reminds you of the content you learned 20 years ago at univer­sity. You know in your lead­er­ship heart of hearts that the whole land­scape has changed since then. Lead­er­ship styles and tech­niques have moved on, the impact of tech­nology has perma­nently changed the way we interact with consumers and manage our teams. The qual­i­fi­ca­tion looks nice on paper, but the outdated content will fail to deliver that inno­v­a­tive spirit you need your leaders to have.

Simi­larly, you read the course content. It’s up to date and discusses the current generic issues that leaders face today. But you don’t see much about the chal­lenges specific to your industry. Perhaps it’s a case that the course is geared towards domestic leaders. Yes, people can do it online from wher­ever they are in the world, but it won’t actively prepare them for the nuanced chal­lenges of global lead­er­ship. You also find that you can’t tailor it to specific chal­lenges faced by key depart­ments in your orga­ni­za­tion. So Sally in Talent Acqui­si­tion is going to go through the exact same training as Francis in Research and Devel­op­ment… that’s not going to work. 

Generic training creates generic, mediocre managers. You’ll get by, but it’ll be nothing to write home about. So how do you go about avoiding this?

Build Your Own Program

You could get an expert in and build a training program from scratch. It’s a huge project but you have huge amounts of flex­i­bility and autonomy around what is being learned and how that learning is applied. It’ll be a process and require a lot of time and resources, but by doing this you create an oppor­tu­nity to embark on a training journey that will help the leaders in the orga­ni­za­tion discharge their lead­er­ship duties more effec­tively. That is the end goal after all. You want to be as prepared as possible to manage the unique chal­lenges presented by the industry and the nature of the teams that are being led.

The training will be as good as the team you choose to help you build it, so choose wisely. But if there’s enough exper­tise close by, it makes sense to capture all of that knowl­edge and distill it into a training program that will benefit your up-and-coming lead­er­ship team.

Work With a Lead­er­ship School to Build a Custom Program

Building a program from scratch might not be completely neces­sary. The other lead­er­ship programs you may have seen might actu­ally have an excel­lent frame­work that you’re happy with. They might be accred­ited by an acad­emic estab­lish­ment which is great as it’s an industry-recog­nized qual­i­fi­ca­tion once completed. 

If you don’t want complete autonomy over the program but you also don’t want to forfeit it entirely, you’ve got the option to do the best of both. Working with an external training orga­ni­za­tion to build a custom program for your industry is a great solu­tion to the problem of generic content. Any excel­lent lead­er­ship devel­op­ment training provider should be able to customize the program to suit the indi­vidual needs presented by your organization.

The advan­tage of doing it this way is that lead­er­ship devel­op­ment schools are very well connected, which means they can draw on a wide range of exper­tise to build a program that really stands head and shoul­ders above the rest. 

2. Programs That Aren’t Scalable

As an orga­ni­za­tion, one of the key prob­lems you’ll face is stan­dard­izing the quality of lead­er­ship devel­op­ment training across the busi­ness. Global orga­ni­za­tions feel this more acutely because of the geograph­ical barriers presented by doing busi­ness across borders. You can have a bril­liant training program, but if it’s diffi­cult to access, then some of your leaders will be able to benefit from it but not all. This means that the overall devel­op­ment of your leaders will become lopsided. Some will have the tools and others won’t.

That’s likely to be a bit of a disaster.

Tradi­tional class­room-based learning is a great idea if every­body is phys­i­cally in the same loca­tion, but if every­body is every­where, what’s the answer?

Take Advan­tage of Virtual Learning

Thanks to the internet you can now deliver high-quality courses online and lead­er­ship devel­op­ment is not excluded from this. Creating or making use of an existing virtual learning plat­form will make your lead­er­ship devel­op­ment goals scal­able. You can use training videos, online exer­cises, inter­ac­tive virtual class­rooms and video calls which will deliver that immer­sive training expe­ri­ence without phys­ical presence.

3. Too Much Reflec­tion With no Application

The temp­ta­tion of many lead­er­ship programs is to reflect heavily on ‘lead­er­ship laws’ and the achieve­ments of successful leaders without encour­aging the prac­tical appli­ca­tion of that knowl­edge. Lead­er­ship devel­op­ment curricu­lums should focus more on the action­able rather than the philosophical. 

So how do you go about having a stream­lined lead­er­ship devel­op­ment program?

Cut The Fat

Context should always triumph over content; every module should tie to either the personal devel­op­ment of the leader in training or it should tie to a context specific to your orga­ni­za­tion. Knowl­edge gained should be able to equip leaders to manage in the envi­ron­ments they find them­selves in. 

Finding out about Steve Jobs is amazing, but if his style of manage­ment does not trans­late well into your industry, it’s just empty learning. This is not a problem if you’re learning about lead­er­ship for learning’s sake. But if you want to be a global leader that is clued up about the industry your company is competing in, you’ve got to be prepared to get ultra-focused and cut the fat out of your program.

At this stage, it’s likely that you’ve already gotten a foun­da­tional knowl­edge around lead­er­ship, so it’s a waste of your time and resources to repeat those learn­ings in-depth. The more niche you are, the more effec­tive you are likely to be.

4. Ignoring The Impact of Company Culture

One of the prob­lems you may encounter is sending your leaders on a lead­er­ship devel­op­ment course that discon­nects them from the company culture. In order to be effec­tive, they are going to need to have a clear under­standing of the culture of the orga­ni­za­tion so that they can seam­lessly inte­grate inno­v­a­tive strate­gies without alien­ating and discour­aging their teams. 

The danger, of course, is that during the exciting period of learning new things, that flame of excite­ment meets a resis­tant company culture and is snuffed out. Excite­ment and opti­mism quickly become apathy and discour­age­ment as all that learning is tucked away for another company. 

So how do you avoid this?

Trans­for­ma­tional Lead­er­ship Modules

Trans­for­ma­tional lead­er­ship modules will help global leaders under­stand the dynamics that affect whether the changes they want to imple­ment will be successful or not. An excel­lent lead­er­ship program will make sure that leaders can keep one eye on what is happening in the present within their teams and another eye on the kind of inno­va­tions that change the game completely. 

Trans­for­ma­tional lead­er­ship training is like the bridge that links those two things together. Without it, you end up with inspired leaders that have no idea of the tact required to take that learning and imple­ment it. Make sure this aspect of lead­er­ship devel­op­ment is weaved into the program — you will never get the results you desire without it.

5. Not Tracking The Real-Life Results

Last but not least, the real chal­lenge is actu­ally seeing the return on your invest­ment. Lead­er­ship devel­op­ment is expen­sive, but it is always worth it when you see things improve dramat­i­cally in your orga­ni­za­tion. Some lead­er­ship devel­op­ment programs are actu­ally effec­tive but orga­ni­za­tions fail to track the right metrics that show­case its success. 

Decide What The Lead­er­ship Devel­op­ment Program Should be Improving

Devel­oping soft skills like lead­er­ship tech­niques can be diffi­cult to quan­tify in terms of results but there are things you can track.

Metrics like increased revenue, decreased staff turnover, general staff satis­fac­tion, and team cohe­sion go a long way to showing you that the invest­ment has been worth it. Ensure that at the time of launching you have a clear idea what the lead­er­ship devel­op­ment program should have a posi­tive impact on.

These will vary depending on the prior­i­ties of the busi­ness, so work with your team or program provider to ensure that the content of the course will deliver the knowl­edge your aspiring leaders will need. Then check the data your­self. Has staff turnover been affected? What about revenue or output? How are employee satis­fac­tion levels? 


If this data has not been collected initially, you won’t be able to track the changes. It’s easy then to think the program hasn’t deliv­ered the intended value. Worse still, the program might not actu­ally be deliv­ering value and you don’t have any way to prove that because of a lack of clarity about improve­ment targets.

To conclude, lead­er­ship devel­op­ment programs have the capacity to add huge amounts of value to your orga­ni­za­tion. Many programs will compete for your atten­tion but use these tips to help you pick a program that will genuinely give you what you need to succeed as a leader.

Global Lead­er­ship Devel­op­ment With Eurac

Here at eurac, our focus is to train and develop world-class global leaders who are passionate about leading their teams to do extra­or­di­nary things. To find out more about how we can equip your leaders to inspire and inno­vate, get in touch with us here

Alter­na­tively, if you’re looking for a busi­ness academy that can work with you to create a course that tackles chal­lenges unique to your orga­ni­za­tion, please get in contact to find out more about bespoke programs.

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