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Leadership development is HR and L&D’s number one priority, according to survey results. Poor management is also one of the top predicted factors influencing turnover. Coincidence? No. Many companies understand how underdeveloped and under-equipped leaders can cause a real strain on how their organization operates.
Preparing new managers and supporting current leaders is crucial for companies, no matter the size or industry. So, how do you accomplish that? Through a comprehensive leadership development curriculum.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through:
- Why leadership and management training is so important
- What leadership topics should be included in your course
- Practical steps to build out your curriculum
- How to supplement with third-party materials (and our top recommendations)
- Best practices to create and maintain your leadership and management courses
Let’s get started.
Why is leadership training important?
Having a solid understanding of why leadership development training is so important is the first step. Creating strong leaders has a positive ripple effect throughout your organization, so here are a handful of examples of the benefits:
- Encourage high performers: When you invest in leadership development training, you’re giving high-performing employees a clear path for advancement and ongoing support throughout their career journey with your company.
- Enhance company performance: Strong leadership drives results and helps companies adapt to change. Leadership development courses equip managers with the right skills to lead their team with empathy, make better decisions, improve communication, and many other core skills.
- Improve retention: The old cliche rings true in many cases: employees don’t leave bad companies, they leave bad bosses. Leaders that learn to build up, support, and inspire their team keep their employees engaged and motivated to do their best work.
- Strengthen your leadership pipeline: Leadership succession planning can be complex when you have great employees, but none of them seem to have the right skills to move into management. Management and leadership training helps you develop those skills in future leaders before and during their transition into a more senior position.
Now we have a better understanding of the benefits, what are the skills needed in your leadership and management course?
What topics should be a part of your leadership development curriculum?
Creating a strong, well-rounded leadership skillset means honing in on what makes a leader great. According to the Center for Creative Leadership, there are four core competencies a leader needs to continuously nurture: self-awareness, communication, influence, and learning agility.
Your leadership development curriculum should be filled with lessons that contribute to those core competencies. Here are a few examples of leadership development topics to help you brainstorm:
- Prioritization
- Delegation
- Communication skills
- Project management skills
- Emotional intelligence
- Time management
- Leadership qualities
- Goal-setting
- Conflict resolution and mediation
- Collaboration
- Problem-solving
- Decision-making
- Constructive feedback
- Coaching and mentoring
- Industry-specific regulations and company policies
💡We explore these topics in-depth in this post about skills to include in a new manager training program.
Incorporate compliance into your manager training courses
Moving into a management role is a lot more complex in many ways, including regulatory compliance. Depending on your jurisdiction, there are different employment standards, rules on how to accommodate employees with disabilities, hiring regulations, and more.
Here are a few compliance-related leadership and management courses you should add to your curriculum:
- Industry-specific legal obligations
- Ethical conduct, anti-bribery, and conflicts of interest
- Privacy and data protections for the company and their team
- Workplace safety responsibilities
- Anti-discrimination and unconscious bias training
- Responsibilities under laws that protect employees with disabilities like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
How to build a leadership development course
Before you dive headfirst into creating your first lesson, make sure you’re starting off on the right foot. The planning stages are going to be the most crucial part if you want your management and leadership courses to be successful long term.
1. Define course objectives
First, what are you hoping to achieve with this course? Is it to improve leadership succession planning? Fill specific leadership skill gaps? Or maybe support employee retention factors to reduce turnover? Your objectives could include all of those and more, but you need to consider the specific pain points your company is facing and how leadership is currently hindering or can better help outcomes.
2. Identify your audience
One size doesn’t fit all when it comes to leadership development courses. Actually, studies have shown that large-scale, one-size-fits-all development programs are more likely to fail. So consider the types of people who will be participating. Are your learners entry level hoping to develop leadership skills for the future? Are they high-performers actively looking to move into management? Are they current leaders with experience under their belt that need skill support? Your audience determines the tone of your lessons, the subject matter, and the format they’re delivered in.
3. Build your program with development programs software
Creating management training courses, especially for a larger group of learners, can be a challenge to keep track of and manage outcomes long term. There are many tools out there, like Together’s development programs software, that make it far easier to deliver, measure, and sustain programs.
This software allows you to combine all your communications, tasks, internal and third-party training content, professional mentoring programs, and more all in one place, making it far easier for your learners to participate and for you to manage.
4. Choose your formats and create content
This is where knowing your audience really comes into play and digs a little deeper. Think of your training content like a well-stocked toolbox: each participant selects what they need to suit their approach to the task. A leadership development course should be kind of like that. Some individuals find the most value from live, experiential learning where they can engage and discuss in real-time. Others may prefer the flexibility of on-demand video courses or the autonomy of self-paced modules.
Curating third-party content and/or creating your own content needs to cater to your specific audience (experience level, seniority, goals, etc.) and a diverse set of learning needs.
💡Don’t be afraid to use AI in learning and development to personalize the training experience.
5. Incorporate real-world scenarios
While theory is important, practical application is the true measure of your participants’ skill progression. Incorporating real-world and company-specific scenarios into your management leadership courses helps leaders apply what they’ve learned in a highly relevant way. Practicing applying their new knowledge builds confidence in their skills and prepares them for challenges, conflicts, and new opportunities.
For example, create a scenario where a leader has to make a tough decision with limited information. Weighing the benefits and consequences of each decision, both in the short and long term, help them practice critical thinking and decision-making in a safe environment.
Build and supplement your leadership development curriculum with third-party content
Creating leadership development courses can be a labor and time-intensive endeavor. If a project like this isn’t feasible for your team, consider using third-party management and leadership courses.
Here are a few ways third-party content can complement your leadership development curriculum:
- Access to expert knowledge: Third-party training courses are often developed by industry and subject matter experts. If you don’t have an expert in-house, leaning on these courses can make sure your leaders have access to high-quality, relevant content. This can be especially useful if you’re looking to cover specialized or industry-specific skills.
- Save time and resources: If your team doesn’t have the time, tools, or the skills to create your own course materials, third-party leadership development courses can free up your time to focus on the bigger-picture items. A lot of providers offer customizable options so you can tailor content to your company’s needs.
- Support continuous learning: Leadership development isn’t a one-and-done deal. It’s an ongoing process throughout a leader’s career. By offering a variety of courses, leaders can continue down their own learning path and nurture their skills in the future.
5 Management training course catalogs to complement your program
If you need some help finding management training courses, here are five providers we recommend:
- Social Talent: Their catalog offers 150+ learning pathways including in-depth leadership and DEI courses.
- TalentLMS: Choose from courses on leadership styles, emotional and cultural intelligence, agility and flexibility, and more.
- Ethena: For the more compliance-focused and technical skills, Ethena offers manager training courses on things like hiring and interviewing, managing remote teams, and hierarchical workplace relationships.
- SkillPath: With over 500 leadership and management courses to choose from, there’s something there to suit you and your participants’ needs.
- Edstellar: Live, trainer-led courses that are offered on-site, in a classroom, or virtually.
Best practices for creating and sustaining your leadership development course
Making sure your participants actively engage with your program and reap the benefits requires a few things. Here are some best practices to consider when planning and delivering your leadership and management courses.
Secure leadership buy-in
For your program to succeed, you need buy-in from top leadership. Communicate the benefits of your leadership development training, how it will benefit the company, and how it aligns with company goals.
When leaders are invested in the program, they're more likely to support and promote it within the organization, helping increase participation and engagement rates.
Set clear expectations
Setting clear expectations for participants is crucial for the success of your management development training. Communicate the objectives, timeline, and requirements of the course to ensure everyone is on the same page.
This can help participants understand the value of the program and what they stand to gain from it. When expectations are clear, participants are more likely to be motivated and engaged.
Make it easy to participate
If your leadership management training is a pain to access and navigate, your leaders aren’t going to complete the coursework, making the program ineffective. Ensuring your program is accessible and learning is flexible in one user-friendly platform goes a long way to seeing consistent engagement.
Monitor engagement rates and other metrics from your software’s reporting tools to identify any barriers for your participants and adjust the program as needed.
Provide ongoing support
Leadership development is a continuous process, so your leaders will need continuous support. Offer regular check-ins, feedback sessions, and coaching opportunities to help participants apply what they've learned.
Providing ongoing support can help reinforce learning and ensure the long-term success of your leadership development training. It can also create a sense of accountability and encourage continuous improvement.
Leverage development programs software
As mentioned earlier in the article, development programs software can make leadership management course delivery and ongoing management a breeze. Let’s take a deeper look at how it can help.
Streamline content delivery
With development programs software, you can easily deliver content to your leaders. Whether it’s video modules, mentoring programs, quizzes and games, or live learning events, you can deliver and manage it all from one place.
This saves you and your team a ton of time and ensures a seamless learning experience for your leaders. Plus, some software options—like Together’s development programs software—offer analytics and reporting features, allowing you to track the management leadership training program and performance of your participants.
Personalize learning experiences
Development programs software can help you create personalized learning experiences for your leaders. By offering a variety of content formats and paths, you can cater to different learning styles and preferences.
For example, some leaders may prefer to learn through reading, while others may need more interactive elements or gamification. By giving them options, you ensure everyone gets the most out of your leadership development course.
Measure the impact of your program
In the past, measuring the impact of programs like this was a challenge. But, using development programs software, you can pull valuable insights into participant engagement and progress.
By analyzing this data, you can identify areas for improvement and make data-informed decisions that will improve your course, making sure your leadership development efforts are truly effective.
Build your leadership development curriculum with Together
Providing training for leadership development and continuously supporting your managers is more important than ever, so building your management and leadership courses is a crucial step.
Creating and maintaining a leadership development course can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Together’s development programs software gathers all your course elements—whether it’s in-house training materials, third-party courses, a mentoring program, or others—into one easy-to-use platform to simplify course creation, delivery, and monitoring.
Get started with Together’s development programs software today—book a demo to speak to one of our experts.
