Training vs Developing Leaders: What’s the Best Approach for Your Organisation?

Leadership training plays an important role in helping organisations build stronger leaders and stronger teams.

Workshops, courses, development sessions and leadership programs can all create valuable learning opportunities for leaders at every stage.

But there is a difference between training leaders and developing leaders and understanding which approach is best suited to your organisation.

What Training Your Leaders Often Looks Like

Leadership training is typically focused on building knowledge, awareness and practical leadership skills.

This may include workshops, courses, development days, online learning or leadership sessions designed to introduce concepts, strengthen communication, improve accountability, or build leadership capability in specific areas.

Leadership Training provides skill growth in particular focus areas.

Compared to What Developing Your Leaders Often Looks Like

Leadership development takes it one step further by focusing on how those skills are consistently applied and embedded over time within the workplace.  Developing leaders requires knowledge about self and our ways of working now, to know how a new skill or tool will be adapted by that leader.  Training can be delivered to large groups, development requires building knowledge of the individual leader.

Developing leaders is strengthened through:

• repetition

• reflection

• reinforcement

• practical application

• and ongoing development

Instead of approaching leadership as a once-off or one key area learning experience, development pathways are designed more like building blocks, where one skillset strengthens the next.

When you develop the leader.
The team strengthens.
The culture shifts.
The organisation performs better.

That’s the difference between training leaders… and intentionally developing them from within over time.

So What Does Leadership Development Actually Look Like?

If your organisation is currently focused mostly on training leaders, you may be wondering what it actually looks like to develop them instead.

Leadership development is typically far more structured and intentional and focuses on creating a clear pathway for leaders to grow.

This often includes:

• identifying leadership capability gaps

• understanding the organisation’s goals and challenges

• mapping development stages for emerging and existing leaders

• progressively building leadership capability over time

This creates stronger long-term leadership capability because leaders are not just learning concepts, they are applying and developing them progressively within their role.

The organisations seeing the strongest long-term impact are often the ones taking an intentional approach to leadership capability across the entire organisation.

It’s proactive, thoughtfully planned and tailored to both the leader and the organisation.

If you want to discuss what this looks like for your organisation, click here to enquire.