Leadership training that works, and the kind that wastes money

Key takeaways

• Most leadership training budgets are spent on how good the proposal looked, not on whether anything changed afterwards. Those aren't the same thing.
• Good training is easy to spot once you know what to ask for: a small number of behaviours, real practice, follow-up built in, and a clear answer to "what will people do differently".
• The red flags are just as reliable: a charismatic speaker as the whole product, a generic off-the-shelf program, a one-off event with no follow-up, and no way to tell whether it worked.
• Commissioning well is your job, not the provider's. The brief you write and the questions you ask shape the result more than the trainer does.
• If a proposal can't tell you what a participant will do differently next week, you're buying an event, not a change.

I once sat with a People director who'd just spent a serious sum on a leadership program everyone had loved. Great venue, charismatic facilitator, glowing feedback forms. Six months later she couldn't point to a single thing anyone was doing differently, and she asked me, a bit deflated, how she was supposed to have known.

That's a fair question, and it's the one this piece answers. Because you usually can tell good leadership training from expensive leadership training, before you spend the money, if you know what to look for.

Why so much of it wastes money

The money gets wasted for a reason that has nothing to do with dishonest providers. It's that the thing being sold is often optimised to feel good in the room, and buyers reward exactly that. I've written separately about the underlying mechanism, why most leadership development fails to stick, so I'll keep this to the buyer's side.

From where you sit, the trap is simple. The proposal is polished, the references are warm, the sample day looks engaging. All of that measures how enjoyable the experience will be, not whether behaviour changes afterwards. You end up buying the day, not the outcome, and the two come apart quietly three months later.

The fix isn't cynicism. It's asking a different set of questions first.

What good leadership training actually looks like

Good programs share a few features, and you can check for every one of them in a proposal or a first conversation.

It focuses on a few behaviours, not a whole framework. Be wary of anything promising to cover twelve competencies in two days. Depth beats coverage. Ask what the two or three behaviours are that participants will actually get better at.

It's built around practice, not content. The best learning happens by doing the real thing, badly at first, with feedback. If most of the time is someone presenting slides, people will leave informed and unchanged. Ask what proportion of the time is practice on real situations.

It uses participants' actual work. A live problem, a real difficult conversation, an actual decision they're avoiding, beats any case study. Ask how the program connects to what these leaders are genuinely dealing with right now.

Follow-up is part of the design, not an upsell. A single event, however good, fades. Spaced sessions, coaching, peer groups, something that brings people back to reflect and report, is what makes it stick. Ask what happens in the weeks after the room empties.

Success is defined up front. A serious provider will help you name what changed behaviour looks like and how you'll know. If nobody mentions outcomes until you do, that tells you something.

The foundations under all of this are the everyday capabilities I've covered in the essential skills of the modern leader. Good training deepens a few of those on purpose, rather than skimming all of them.

The red flags in a polished proposal

Just as reliable as the good signs are the warning ones. If you see these, slow down.

• The speaker is the whole product. Charisma on a stage is entertainment. It can be worth having, but if the inspiring talk is the entire offer, the effect wears off by the following week.
• It's completely off the shelf. A program that arrives identical for a hospital, a law firm, and a manufacturer hasn't been shaped to your leaders or your context. Some structure is fine. Zero tailoring is a flag.
• It's a one-off with no follow-up. A two-day intensive and then nothing is built to feel like value and deliver very little of it.
• There's no measurement offered. If the only feedback is a happy-sheet at the end, the provider is measuring enjoyment because they're not confident about change.
• The promises are enormous. "Transform your leaders in two days" is a claim about the brochure, not about behaviour. Real change is slower and less dramatic than that.

None of these mean the provider is acting in bad faith. Plenty believe in what they sell. It's still your budget, and your job to tell the difference.

How to commission it well

Here's the part buyers underrate: the result depends heavily on you, not just the provider. A vague brief gets a generic program. A sharp one gets something that fits.

Start from the behaviour, not the topic. Instead of "we need leadership training," define what you want leaders doing differently. Having direct conversations. Delegating properly. Making decisions without escalating everything. That framing filters providers instantly.

Write a real brief. Say who the leaders are, what's actually going wrong, what good would look like, and how you'll judge it. A good provider will engage with all of that. A weak one will send you the standard deck.

Ask the outcome question directly. "At the end of this, what will a participant be doing differently next week, and how will we see it?" Listen for a specific answer versus a smooth deflection.

Insist on follow-up in the scope. If it isn't in the proposal, ask for it. If they resist building in anything past the event, that's your answer.

Involve the managers of the people being trained. Behaviour sticks when the boss notices and reinforces it. Training that ignores the line manager is fighting gravity.

That reflective, practise-and-follow-up approach is the same one we build into everyday work through our consulting and coaching for organisations, precisely because the event on its own so rarely carries.

A short example

A client came to me after two failed rounds of leadership training. Both had been well reviewed and neither had changed anything, and the executive was close to concluding that leadership development just didn't work.

We didn't hunt for a better speaker. We wrote a proper brief first. The real problem was that their managers avoided hard conversations, so the whole commission narrowed to that one behaviour. The design was mostly practice on their actual awkward conversations, spread over a few months, with short follow-ups where people reported back on what they'd tried.

It wasn't the most impressive-looking program they'd bought. It was the first one that showed up in how people led a quarter later, because it aimed at a real behaviour and didn't stop at the door.

Frequently asked questions

How do I know if a leadership training provider is any good before I hire them?

Ask what specific behaviours participants will improve, how much of the time is practice versus presentation, what the follow-up is, and how you'll both know whether it worked. A strong provider answers these clearly and may push back on a vague brief. A weak one steers you back to the polished sample day and the testimonials.

Is leadership training worth it, or is it all a waste of money?

It's worth it when it's designed and commissioned well, and a waste when it's bought as a one-off event with no follow-up and no measurement. The variable isn't whether training can work. It's whether this particular program is built around real practice and reinforcement, or around a good day in a nice room.

How much should we spend on leadership training?

There's no single right figure, and price is a poor proxy for quality. A cheap, well-designed program with follow-up will beat an expensive one-off talk. Spend where the design is sound, put budget into the follow-up rather than the venue, and be more suspicious of a big number than reassured by it.

Should we run group training or coach individuals?

They do different jobs and work well together. Group training builds shared language and covers common ground efficiently. Individual coaching supplies the tailored practice and accountability that make it stick. If your budget only stretches to one, protect the follow-up, whatever form it takes, because that's the part that changes behaviour.

Before you approve the next leadership program that lands on your desk, ask yourself one thing: if you checked back in three months, could this proposal actually tell you what your leaders would be doing differently, or just how much they enjoyed the day?