Leadership skills aren’t developed from the womb. According to Gallup, only 1 in 10 people naturally possess the unique mix of skills needed to lead others, and 82% of the time, teams don’t hire the right managerial talent. Ouch.
While many employees have certain essential skills, finding that perfect balance of traits to hire or promote THE ideal team leader (one who leads people and manages processes) can feel like a pipe dream.
What is Leadership Development Training?
Leadership skills take time to nurture, and that’s where a leadership training program can come into play. Leadership development training takes research-based skills and distills them down into exercises and hands-on experience to develop real-life skills and leadership qualities. Programs can include any mix of videos, roleplay scenarios, reflective exercises, live or virtual workshops, and team-building activities. All content is geared to help prepare future leaders for the challenges of leading teams.
How Do Leadership Development Programs Impact Teams?
A great leadership development program provides the skills to help your staff lead with confidence. As a result, your organization benefits from the following:
- Higher engagement
- Increased retention rates
- Improved succession, promotion, and career planning pathways
- Aligned leadership and staff (no flying blind to team issues)
- Higher performance review ratings
- Aligned personal and professional goals for each team member
- Increased critical thinking skills
- Self-sufficiency in problem-solving and conflict resolution for team members
- A team or organizational-wide growth mindset (a huge predictor of success)
- Increased team performance, productivity, and results
Every leadership program will be slightly different in the ground it covers. It all boils down to your needs and business goals as a team. Even the most popular leadership training programs and coaching may only be a fit for you if they align with your training and organizational goals. That’s where you’ll see the best outcomes.
Best Leadership Development Programs: At a Glance
Based on evaluating several effective leadership development solutions, here’s a glance at where programs sit based on content and learning approaches:
Choosing the Right Leadership Development Program
From talking with leaders at various Inc. 5000 and Fortune 500 organizations, we find that no two organizations are the same. Based on leadership styles, team goals, and criteria, certain digital platforms and programs will work better for you than others.
Here’s what to consider early on in your search and when picking the perfect leadership development program for your team:
Skills: Are you looking for a program that provides specific managerial skills or holistically empowers your team? A program focusing on change management or delivering personalized compliance training will be much different than a program focusing on personal leadership skill development.
Outcomes: Are you trying to increase retention and engagement or create a succession plan for your team? Maybe you want to help people in your organization take the next step in their career and connect with mentors or coaches. The outcomes you want to see will dictate what leadership program is best for you and will lead to actionable outcomes.
Timing: While some organizations are open to a 6-12 month training, others want to hit the ground running with training they can deliver in a few hours or a 2-day workshop. Another area to consider is implementation and the amount of time a leader, trainer, or admin on your team would need to spend to lead your team through the program. This is all in addition to determining whether you want in-person instruction, virtual workshops, or a self-paced on-demand option if your team is asynchronous or has busier schedules.
Budget: It’s important to have an idea of what you plan to spend for your organization and whether your budget is focused on executive team members or a specific department in your organization. In some cases, teams prefer to start with a small group of people to run through a program before expanding across different sites and teams.
The Top 13 Leadership Development Programs
With experience in leading teams and vetting team leadership training over several years in executive roles, here’s our review of several top leadership development programs and who they’re best for:
Project OTY
Project OTY is a 16-module leadership development program that supports personal leadership development and emotional intelligence skills, helping every team member build a personalized Roadmap that outlines their visions and goals for the next 5 years. While some programs take a more skill-specific route, Project OTY looks at overall human potential and unique strengths. The program’s goal is to tie an individual’s why to an organization’s why, harnessing leadership concepts used to empower winning sports teams. As a result, team members learn to become critical thinkers who can thrive in uncertainty.
While the online program supports employees and managers alike in achieving their personal and professional goals, managers can use the Roadmaps as a long-term blueprint to support and engage their team members, fostering a future-ready growth mindset for an entire team.
The Project OTY program offers a Lead with Confidence program for mid-level leaders, senior managers, and executives, and a Build YOUR Roadmap™ program option for young leaders and frontline staff. Teams looking for more training options (1:1 executive coaching, workshops, multi-day seminars) can personalize their approach. With all programming, cohort-based learning is encouraged for teams to get the best results from the interactive exercises.
Key Features
- Comprehensive employee profiles via 5-year Roadmap plans
- Team kick-off call & live check-ins
- 3-5 hours of training for busy teams
- Offers virtual workshops, in-person training, and customized seminars
Pros
- With the ability to deliver quick training and bite-sized modules, Project OTY is great for teams who want an easy-to-implement training option that can be delivered over a few days to a month, and fits into a busy team schedule.
- With two different pathways, Project OTY offers training for young professionals and seasoned leaders alike, allowing teams to consistently train team members across their organization.
- Project OTY stands out from other programs in taking a holistic approach to leadership development, engaging a learner to be a leader in all areas of their life beyond their day-to-day work.
Cons
- Since Project OTY does not have typical LMS capabilities, teams are not able to create personalized content or modules on the platform.
Who It’s Best For
- Project OTY is ideal for small businesses to midsize teams that are looking to level up their core leadership skills during key transitional moments as a company, whether it’s following recent funding and team growth, onboarding new hires, leadership turnover, or preparing emerging leaders for future leadership roles and creating a path for succession.
- Project OTY is the best choice for leaders who want holistic insights into how their team members are feeling and performing on a 1:1 basis, and want to create more team alignment and a better employee experience as an organization. Leaders can determine what training and mentorship to provide, what benefits employees want, and how their teammates want and need to be led.
- Due to the nature of the Build YOUR Roadmap™ framework, Project OTY is also ideal for youth groups, college career programs, and high school students to develop leadership skills and create a 5-year plan.
Pricing: $399 per seat or custom pricing for larger teams
Free Trial: No
LeadX
LeadX is a digital learning platform geared toward helping support skill development for busy team managers. The platform features a course library with a large selection of bite-size trainings that cover many of the topics that managers encounter in their day-to-day work, from employee engagement to tackling difficult conversations.
Team leaders gain access to the personality profiles of team members and see how individuals score in certain areas, from Caring and Trust to Autonomy and Meeting Efficiency. The profile also shows EQ and DISC reports based on survey results and offers PDF reports and workbooks to review.
In addition, their LeadX LiveCoach option (aka Coach Amanda) allows team members to reach out to the LeadX team with questions related to their profile, leadership questions, roleplay scenarios, or recommended material from the LeadX library.
Key Features
- 1000+ microlearning courses and webinars
- Access to the Leadership Coaching Team via chat
- Personalized push notifications to send positive reminders to individuals
- Personalized personality profiles for team members
Pros
- The platform offers an extensive skill library that caters to both emerging and senior leaders with a variety of entry-level and advanced topics. The library is also updated each month with new content.
Cons
- While the LeadX LQ-i profile is geared toward helping teams spot their “high potentials” and gauge culture fit, it’s less clear on actionable insights for team members needing additional support or looking to take the next step in their careers.
Who It’s Best For
- Like Project OTY, LeadX was built with busy teams in mind. It’s often hard for team leaders and employees to set aside dedicated learning time, so LeadX offers what they call microlearning opportunities to make learning easier via quick lessons, and teams can also access all their lessons from their phones anywhere, anytime.
- This option is ideal for teams that want specific skill-based lessons that are available on-demand for their teams. For example, team members can gain access to courses on delegation, conducting 1:1 meetings, or conflict management, among many others.
Pricing: Contact their team
Free Trial: No
Wildsparq
Wildsparq is a leadership training platform that delivers lessons in an LMS-style learning experience. Similarly to Project OTY, Wildsparq also looks at connecting an individual’s purpose with an organization’s goals. Their training focuses on communication and building relationships within an organization’s team, largely in the context of workplace-specific skills. Modules include videos that showcase workplace examples and roleplay scenarios.
In their platform experience, they tie in additional resources to support the core training modules and have a dedicated reporting area to showcase completion for an individual, team, or organization. There’s also a Sparqwork section where team members can share their thoughts and takeaways.
Key Features
- Leadership guides and discussion prompts
- Leaderboard for ranking participation
- Included resources like TED talks
Pros
- The platform takes a team-based cohort learning approach rather than a coach-directed experience to keep learning and leadership development internal to an organization.
Cons
- While the platform offers course reporting in terms of completion for a team and individuals, it doesn’t offer comprehensive insights into team members and specific areas for improvement or further training.
Who It’s Best For
- Based on their content approach, this solution is ideal for teams who want to resolve communication issues or upskill their leaders with lessons to develop effective communication skills and emotional intelligence.
- With an emphasis on team involvement, this option is great for organizations that want to build more friendly competition and gamify the learning experience as an entire team, while gaining the skills to create more insightful working relationships.
Pricing: Starting at $55 per user per month
Free Trial: Yes, contact their team
Paycor
This platform takes a more encompassing approach to team and people management, since it provides HR and payroll features. Talent management is just one of their solutions. Their approach to talent development centers around continuous learning and improvement for teams, while simplifying the process for managers. For example, they include templates for 1:1 conversations and offer insights into the latest check-in date and the last recorded time that an employee was recognized for their work.
They also tap into the issue of employee turnover and have built out a career planning solution that allows teams to upskill employees to take the helm. Their approach leverages profiles that show employees how they stack up to their current and future roles by benchmarking their skills against competencies for the future roles they’re considering. From a high level, leaders then get insights into where people sit in terms of readiness for a promotion and retention risk.
Key Features
- Offers pathway program for building soft skills
- Built-in LMS for teams to offer personalized content
- Access to templates and checklists for career planning
- Industry-specific dashboard insights available
Pros
- The platform is highly reviewed on both G2 and Capterra, where teams report that having many features in one platform is helpful for overall employee management and simplifies their responsibilities.
- The platform integrates with several workforce tools like HireTech, FMLA, Ignite, and other platforms for teams with an established tech stack in place.
Cons
- Since there are several features, customers report that the pricing reflects that, and in some cases, the feature set may be more expensive and bloated for smaller team needs.
Who It’s Best For
- This platform is great for teams that are looking for an all-in-one solution that can grow with their HR needs and provide attendance, payroll processing, employee data, and team performance guidance all in one space.
- Teams who want to specifically address skill gaps and offer a career planning solution for teams will find benefits in using Paycor. The platform reduces the ambiguity of what stands between an employee and their next role with specific skills they can focus on developing.
Pricing: Contact their team
Free Trial: No
Nomadic
This training solution focuses on cohort-learning methodologies to upskill teams and increase the rate of completion for teams going through training. They boast a completion rate of 86% by harnessing collaboration in the learning process. They promote discussions and knowledge sharing among teammates, not only to apply actionable insights but to make the training more memorable since it can be easy for team members to forget (and consequently apply) what they recently learned.
Key Features
- Personalized approach to tackling company goals
- Semi-synchronous group-learning
- Uses quizzes to gauge concept comprehension
- Harnesses discussion and commenting to drive learning home
Pros
- The platform has helped support employee learning and development at leading companies, including PepsiCo and IBM.
Cons
- While learner discussions can be a goldmine for insights and opportunities, it does require teams to comb through comments and discussions, which can be more time-consuming for larger organizations.
Who It’s Best For
- Since it’s so focused on group work and open discussion, Nomadic is great for enterprise teams that are looking to increase collaboration, team engagement, and overall training completion. Plus, they’re looking for a platform that can grow with them.
Pricing: Contact their team
Free trial: No
Campfire
Campfire is a live learning solution for teams. They focus on interactive, experiential learning that connects teams and provides structure and reflection to meetings and virtual gatherings. They help structure meetings and breakout rooms, offer Sparks decks for conversation starters, and deliver training to help managers and teams with current challenges.
When it comes to leadership development, the sessions Campfire helps teams lead are focused on relationships and leadership (self and team) to help drive outcomes in an organization.
Key Features
- Guided sessions with breakout rooms
- Structured questions and prompts
- Group coaching to tackle real-time problems
Pros
- Harnessing sessions, card decks, and group coaching, Campfire offers a reflective approach to leadership that can be custom-fitted to a team based on their needs.
Cons
- With a lot of live learning and team-building components, there’s a natural emphasis on synchronous learning and collaboration for teams, which may be trickier for distributed teams or busier, conflicting schedules.
- A lot of the product focus is around crafting virtual classrooms and meeting experiences, and teams who are looking for a more comprehensive leadership development solution, may opt for another option.
Who’s It Best For
- Campfire is ideal for teams that are looking to develop leadership and real-time collaboration on their team to create a stronger and more vibrant company culture.
- Teams who want to build safe spaces to discuss hard topics, share experiences, and practice the “hard parts of being a manager” will find the sessions and resources of Campfire helpful.
Pricing: Contact their team
Free trial: No
BetterUp
Betterup is an enterprise coaching platform that helps businesses support their team in reaching peak performance and well-being. They focus on resilience and agility, helping entire organizations reach measurable outcomes through individual and manager-based upskilling.
The company’s suite of solutions has recently grown to assist in the growth of team leaders and managers on their leadership journeys with BetterUp Manage™. This is in addition to specific resilience coaching and live workshops for employees with their BetterUp Care™ solution.
Key Features
- Network of 4,000+ ICF-certified coaches
- Business Impact reports
- Enterprise-level integrations
- AI-enabled coach matching, messaging, and trend forecasting
Pros
- Rather than reporting to you about coaching session completion rates, BetterUp uses data points from coached members to predict behavioral performance in areas like performance and retention in their impact reports.
Cons
- While external coaches can offer new insights and perspectives to a team, internal team leadership development can lack some of the structure and consistency of a course or cohort-based approach.
Who It’s Best For
- BetterUp is ideal for enterprise teams that are looking to bring in expertise to drive measurable performance, productivity, growth, and resilience outcomes through personalized one-on-one coaching.
Pricing: Contact their team
Free Trial: No
Hone
From emerging managers to individual contributors and senior leaders, Hone helps teams upskill through a wide range of live learning opportunities, including classes and expert masterclasses. With programming developed by learning strategists and coaching experts, they offer memberships and multi-year training programs to support upskilling using assessments, notifications, and additional resources.
Hone’s administrative dashboard includes insights on course completion, feedback from team members, and Assessment Reports that give insight into team analytics in areas like communication, inclusion, and 1:1 meetings.
Key Features
- 100+ intimate, live classes for practicing skills in real-time
- Cohort-based programs for specific teams
- Elective a-la-carte classes for specific skills
- Pre and post-assessments
Pros
- To move people toward lasting change, the team uses companion content and assessments to reinforce session concepts and follow up after learning experiences.
Cons
- With the live learning solution, there are ways to make up the missed sessions. However, this may be tricky for busy team members who are looking for more bite-sized learning opportunities to fit into their daily schedules.
Who’s It Best For
- Hone is a great option for impact-focused teams that are looking for a live learning solution that’s customizable based on specific role pathways, teams, or topics involved and supports actionable learning beyond the live training.
Torch
Similar to BetterUp, Torch uses ICF-accredited coaching to drive organizational outcomes, plus they feature coaches with leadership experience and advanced degrees. According to their stats, 96% of people are happy with their first coaching match. The unique spin on Torch is that they also focus on mentorship to help employees manage challenges, increase their level of ambition, and improve their work performance. Their programming allows a team to initiate and engage mentors and mentees without a lot of manual administrative work.
Also, they take the approach of using impact surveying and peer feedback to add a layer of measurement outside of coaching satisfaction ratings. Data is then reported on a user level, but also on a 360-degree team level.
Key Features
- Employes coaches with ~10 years of experience
- Offers assessments and configurable Learning Paths for employees
- Personalized mentor matching
- Assessments tie coaching to company values & strategy
Pros
- According to reviews, Torch is easy to use and set up, and offers great support for teams.
- Coaching takes into account existing organizational scenarios to help apply learnings to the real world.
Cons
- Unlike other solutions, Torch is slightly less focused on live learning solutions like masterclasses or group meetings, which might be a deal-breaker for some teams and their preferred medium of learning.
Who It’s Best For
- Torch is ideal for mid-size companies that are looking for an alternative to BetterUp and/or are looking for a platform that can help them run their mentoring programs with little oversight.
Pricing: Contact their team
Free Trial: No
Franklin Covey
Developed based on decades of research and writings by Benjamin Franklin and Steven Covey, this leadership development program combines content, people, and technology to increase engagement and impact for teams. The approach leans toward individual effectiveness through developing a person’s character, competence, agility, and purpose. All of this is then tied back to the collective action and goals of the business.
Key Features
- Support 24 languages
- Developed with expert consultants & leaders
- Impact Journeys combine experts and exclusive leadership content
Pros
- Their platform offers a range of content types to support learning for all team members and learning styles, from on-demand exercises and modules to microlearning opportunities and live online options.
Cons
- While their solution is generally highly rated in places like G2, teams express feedback about wanting more online interactive programs to choose from and programming available through an app.
- Unlike other options on this list, skill development is generally focused on leadership effectiveness through the lens of the workplace, rather than a more holistic (life + work) approach like Torch, BetterUp, or Project OTY.
Who It’s Best For
- This is ideal for teams that are looking to build more trusting cultures and support self-management in their teams, using training that has been backed by research and built around principles of ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’.
Pricing: Contact their team
Free Trial: No
Dale Carnegie
Dale Carnegie offers professional leadership development courses to help individuals develop as exceptional leaders by sharpening essential skills in the workforce. Their approach follows the Performance Change Pathway™ which translates business and learner needs into a learning experience with an omnichannel approach to learning, supporting instruction with nudges, manager meetings, practical assessments, and social connection, among other mediums.
Multiple topics are covered, whether someone is looking to pick up additional skills in sales training, people management, or customer service. Aside from an online course library, they offer both in-person and online options, setting them apart from many virtual-only options on our list.
While also developing collaboration and people skills for individuals and teams, they also have designated programming for high school students to develop their soft skills and time management capabilities before entering the workforce.
Features
- Offer in-person, virtual training, coaching, and on-demand courses
- Multiple accreditations
- Provides certificates and badges for resumes
Pros
- The combination of instruction methods is known to push people outside of their comfort zone, especially with classroom activities and presentations that are part of the training, however, most report that the experience helped them grow as leaders and helped the topics hit home.
Cons
- Similar to Franklin Covey, Dale Carnegie takes a more work-focused approach to skill development, rather than looking at holistic well-being across an organization, which some teams may prefer to consider in their leadership approach.
- According to some learner feedback, training could be updated a little more with current best practices.
Who It’s Best For
- This solution is ideal for mid-size or larger teams that are also looking to incorporate in-person training (on top of virtual options) to connect people and challenge people in their leadership training.
- This solution is also beneficial for teams that want multiple touchpoints on the learning journey in different formats that support sustained behavior change.
Pricing: Contact their team
Free Trial: No
Center for Creative Leadership
Known as CCL, this platform is a nonprofit that’s led the charge in global leadership development, in areas like 360-degree feedback. What differentiates their approach is that they take a human-centric approach to focus on specific leadership challenges, such as honing in on equity, diversity, and inclusion, or retention for women in leadership positions, to name a few.
While they offer individual, team, and organizational development approaches, they also allow teams to license content for their delivery. Beyond segmenting via the size of a team, they offer solutions aimed at management levels, whether it’s emerging managerial talent or executive team members.
Key Features
- Online programs with coaching, self-paced, and live options available
- Benchmarks through 360-degree assessments
- Offers industry and challenge-specific leadership solutions
Pros
- CCL takes a human-focused approach to leadership to look at potential, which sets the stage for addressing real-life leadership challenges.
Cons
- Follow-up training and resources could be a little lacking compared to some other solutions on this list, so that’s a consideration for longer-term support and training.
- Customization is more challenging in going with CCL as a solution.
Who It’s Best For
- This solution is ideal for teams that need less customization in delivery and are looking to tackle challenges head-on in their organization, harnessing 360-degree assessments in the process.
Pricing: Contact their team
Free trial: No
LinkedIn Learning
While LinkedIn Learning doesn’t offer the same level of leadership training as other options on this list, it’s worth mentioning. After completing a course, you can access a certificate for your LinkedIn profile.
A person can go in and select the skills they are looking to advance in to get matched with courses, or they have the option to access the top courses, courses that are less than 30 minutes, or recent releases. There’s a lot to choose from, the following being just one example of a popular leadership course:
https://www.linkedin.com/learning/developing-credibility-as-a-leader
Features
- 16,000+ course library
- Offers personalized top picks
- Option to add a LinkedIn certificate to your profile
Pros
- There are numerous courses across multiple areas, allowing individuals to access areas beyond leadership development to also dig into some technical skills.
- The price point is much cheaper than other alternatives.
Cons
- LinkedIn Learning courses heavily focus on video content as opposed to interactive exercises in other programs on this list. Rather than getting matched to a coach or a specific learning pathway, LinkedIn courses require doing a little digging and research to determine which are the best use of time and most aligned with your goals.
Who It’s Best For
- This can be an option for startup teams operating on a budget, or an individual contributor or manager looking to upskill in a specific area for a fraction of the cost of a typical program.
Pricing: $19.99 per month (billed annually)
Free Trial: Yes (one month)
Are Leadership Development Programs Worth It?
While investing in leadership programs isn’t a magic wand for organizational success, these programs offer a positive ROI when programs are chosen based on specific outcomes and have been implemented correctly within an organization. The success of a leadership program hinges on the teamwork of an organization, executives, and direct reports that help set the tone for the organization’s participation in the program.
With Project OTY, we see the most success with teams that have internal champions who are spearheading efforts to implement and are crystal clear in the vision they have for their teams.
After program completion, there are clear action items, and the programming becomes part of the language a company uses and is embedded into a team’s day-to-day or weekly schedule. This way, teams are sustaining action and momentum, which can be tricky.
For example:
- State Farm team leader, Misty Allen, uses the Project OTY principles to initiate weekly meetings to connect with team members. You can read more here about how she used our approach to build her team and offboard a team member here.
- Fortune 500 leadership coach, Mark Aylward, used the Project OTY Roadmaps as “living documents” for one insurance team, leading to better collaboration in initiating three-person meetings and supporting specific team members (including assessing who wanted to stay or leave the team and who wanted to buy a milk cow – true story).
How Do You Measure ROI for Leadership Development Programs?
Since leadership development involves developing soft skills, measuring ROI often requires sifting through self-reported qualitative data from leaders and employees. Pre and post-assessments can be created to assess areas like engagement, alignment with company values and culture, productivity, or performance. Other data points to look at within groups of learners are retention rates, promotions, and even ratings for customer service experiences. Essentially, you’ll want to think critically about how leadership training ties into different nooks and crannies of your business and track the relevant KPIs.
In the Project OTY programs, we make it a point to ask each learner to assess their level of confidence before and after completing the program, which has led us to an astounding 96% of people reporting they are more confident in their future.
How can teams support leadership development throughout their organizations?
Growing a team of leaders who have all the skills needed to be effective leaders is a tall order. The best way to support continued development is to instill a culture of continuous learning and feedback in an organization. From a mindset standpoint, this looks like team members understanding that they are always in a spot to “learn what you need to learn”, and everyone is welcome to contribute feedback to better their team and company as a whole.
This facilitates the development of leaders who are not only conscientious of how they need to grow as human beings but also allows them to support and mentor other people in their continued journey to growth.
Teams also need to look at rewarding learning and recognizing the steps that team members take to better themselves. This can look like dedicated channels to share resources and recommendations, supporting learning with stipends and taking time to publicly recognize the actions that a team member took in taking the initiative to learn, lead, and self-manage. This is what creates cultures of accountability where people and companies grow, hand in hand.