Leadership Development Programmes: How to Design One That Works

What is a leadership development programme?

A leadership development programme is a planned set of experiences designed to strengthen people’s ability to lead: to set direction, build and motivate teams, make decisions under uncertainty, manage change and deliver results through others. It differs from a one-off leadership course in three ways. It runs over months rather than days. It blends several methods, with formal learning only one of them. And it is tied to the organisation’s strategy and talent needs, so the capabilities it builds are the ones the business will need.

Most organisations run several programmes for different audiences: one for first-time managers, one for experienced managers of managers, one for senior leaders, and often a separate track for high-potential employees being prepared for bigger roles. Together they form the organisation’s leadership pipeline and support career development and progression into leadership roles.

Why do organisations invest in leadership development?

The quality of leadership affects almost every outcome a business cares about. Managers shape how engaged their teams are, whether good people stay, how well change is implemented and how decisions get made. Poor leadership is expensive in ways that rarely appear on a single line of the budget: in turnover, lost productivity, failed projects and missed opportunities.

There are also structural reasons. Many leaders are promoted because they were excellent individual contributors, then given little help with a job that requires a completely different set of skills. Organisations that grow, restructure or face retirements need a supply of people ready to step into bigger roles, and buying that talent externally is slow, costly and risky. Leadership development is how an organisation builds its own bench, and it is a core part of strategic workforce planning.

What leadership transitions should a programme cover?

A useful lens comes from Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter and James Noel’s book The Leadership Pipeline (2001). Their central insight is that each step up the leadership ladder is a transition requiring new skills, a new use of time and, crucially, new work values: what the leader believes is important. People who fail in a new role often keep doing what made them successful in the old one.

In practice, most organisations design around four transitions:

• Leading others (first-time managers). The hardest and most important transition. New managers must learn to delegate, give feedback, run one-to-ones, handle performance issues and value their team’s success over their own output. Getting this right has an outsized effect, because first-line managers supervise most of the workforce.
• Leading managers. Managers of managers must select, coach and hold other managers accountable, and resist the pull back into detail. They begin to connect their area’s work to wider business goals.
• Leading a function. Functional leaders set strategy for an area, often including specialisms they have never practised, and compete with other functions for resources. Communication and influence across the organisation become central.
• Leading a business. General managers balance trade-offs between functions, own profit and loss, and think in years rather than quarters. Judgement, stakeholder management and long-term thinking dominate.

What are the building blocks of an effective programme?

Strong programmes combine several methods, consistent with the 70-20-10 model: most development comes from experience and other people, with formal learning as the catalyst.

For more on structuring the coaching element, see the guide to coaching and mentoring employees.

How do you design a leadership development programme step by step?

1. Start from the strategy. Ask what the business will need from its leaders in three to five years. A company entering new markets needs leaders who can operate across cultures; one going through automation needs leaders who can manage change and redeploy people.
2. Define the leadership capabilities. Translate those needs into a short list of observable behaviours at each level. Five to seven capabilities per level is plenty; long competency frameworks dilute focus.
3. Diagnose the gaps. Use 360 feedback, performance data, engagement survey results by team and talent reviews to find where current leaders fall short. A training needs analysis provides the structure.
4. Choose the audience. Decide who the programme is for and how participants are selected. Transparent, criteria-based nomination is fairer and more credible than invitation by reputation.
5. Design the journey. Lay out six to twelve months of experiences: a launch with assessment, short formal modules spaced across the period, an action learning project, coaching sessions and peer cohort meetings, ending with a presentation of results.
6. Involve participants’ managers. Brief them before launch, give them a guide for development conversations, and schedule check-ins at key points.
7. Pilot, then scale. Run the first cohort as a pilot, collect feedback and evidence of behaviour change, and adjust before expanding.
8. Evaluate. Agree in advance how success will be measured, then track it, as described in the next section.

How should participants be selected?

Selection is where many programmes lose credibility. When places go to the people senior leaders already know and like, others conclude that the programme is about politics rather than potential, and talented people outside the inner circle disengage. A fair and transparent process protects the programme and widens the talent pool.

Start with clear, published criteria for each programme. For a first-time manager programme, the criterion can be simple: everyone appointed to a first management role in the last six months. For high-potential and senior programmes, combine several inputs: sustained performance, evidence of the capabilities the next level requires, demonstrated learning agility (how quickly someone learns from new experiences), and aspiration, because not everyone wants a bigger role. Many organisations use a structured talent review in which leaders discuss candidates together against agreed criteria, sometimes using a performance-potential grid such as the nine-box model. The discussion matters more than the grid: it forces leaders to explain their judgements with evidence.

Consider allowing self-nomination with manager endorsement alongside leadership nomination. It surfaces people who might otherwise be overlooked, particularly in remote or less visible roles. Track who is nominated and selected across functions, locations and demographic groups, and investigate any patterns that suggest the process is narrowing the pipeline rather than widening it.

Finally, tell people who were not selected what they would need to show to be considered next time. Handled well, a “not yet” becomes a development conversation rather than a reason to leave.

How do you measure leadership development?

Leadership programmes are notoriously hard to evaluate because their effects are spread over time and across teams. The Kirkpatrick and Phillips models still provide the structure, with measures such as:

• Behaviour change: comparison of 360-degree feedback before and 9–12 months after the programme, focused on the target capabilities.
• Team outcomes: engagement scores, voluntary turnover and absence in participants’ teams compared with similar teams.
• Pipeline strength: the proportion of senior vacancies filled internally, the number of “ready now” successors for critical roles, and promotion rates of programme graduates.
• Retention of high potentials: how many participants stay with the organisation two to three years later.
• Project results: the business value of action learning projects that were implemented.

Pick a few measures that leaders already care about and agree them at the design stage. A full ROI study is reasonable for an expensive flagship programme, but for most leadership programmes, clear evidence of behaviour change and pipeline strength is enough to justify continued investment.

Should you build a programme in-house or buy one?

Both have a place. Building in-house gives full control over content and ensures it reflects the organisation’s strategy, culture and real problems, but it requires design capability and senior time. Buying from a business school or provider gives access to faculty expertise, research and an external network, and suits senior leaders who benefit from learning alongside peers from other companies.

Most organisations use a hybrid: an in-house core programme built around their own strategy and leadership capabilities, with selected external elements such as executive education for senior leaders, accredited online courses for specific skills and external coaches. If you are reviewing external options, the comparison of leadership and management courses covers price, length and credentials across the main platforms.

What does good leadership development look like in a small or growing company?

Smaller organisations rarely need, or can afford, a formal multi-cohort programme. The same principles work at smaller scale. Give every new manager a clear onboarding into the role, with a checklist of what is expected in the first 90 days. Pair them with an experienced manager as a mentor. Run a monthly peer session where managers discuss real challenges. Use short, focused external courses for specific skills. And make development a regular topic in conversations between leaders and their managers.

As the company grows, these pieces can be formalised into a programme. Starting early matters, because the habits of the first generation of managers shape the culture everyone else experiences. For the bigger picture of how leadership development fits into a learning strategy, explore the Learning & Development hub.

Frequently Asked Questions