What to Look For in the Best Leadership Development Programs

The best leadership development programs incentivize learning by making it personal, goals-driven, concrete, management-supported, and social.

Leadership and development professionals agree: Leadership/management training is more important now than ever. 49 percent of L&D pros say it’s their number one priority right now.

 

But not all leadership development programs are created equal.

 

Developing leaders effectively is notoriously difficult. Not only is leadership hard to teach, but also not everyone is suited for it — and even fewer are convinced they want it.

 

A truly effective leadership program has to account for each of these obstacles by making leadership skills concrete and transferable, finding leadership candidates accurately and efficiently, and incentivizing those candidates to commit to their development programs.

 

There are leadership development programs that can accomplish each of these goals. When you’re trying to find such a program, look for one that will:

Address specific skill gaps

The best leadership development programs are designed not only to help employees develop the skills they need for leadership positions, specifically, but also to holistically account for skill gaps throughout the organization. 

 

This approach to leadership development creates leaders who not only know how to lead but are prepared to address strategic shortcomings from their leadership positions — a quality of leadership that benefits the leadership themselves, the leader’s team, and the organization all at once.

Why the best leadership development programs do it

  • It’s what the learners want, too: 78% of learners expressed the need for course recommendations based on their skill gaps.

     

  • Skills are changing faster than ever: 25% of LinkedIn members’ skills for the same occupation changed by about 25% from 2015 to 2021. At this pace, members’ skills will change by about 40% by 2025. 

     

  • The inter-organizational skill gap is widening: 46% of L&D professionals say the skills gap is getting wider in their organization
illustration of someone giving a presentation

“L&D should focus on anticipating the skills of the future, recommending learning technology, and sharing the value of learning with leaders.”

Nikhil Shahane

Nikhil Shahane
Vice President of Talent and Engagement at TechnipFMC

How you can implement it in your leadership development program

  • Identify skill gaps: Identify the skill gaps in your organization to understand which skills your new leaders need to develop in addition to leadership skills, in order to maximize their future effectiveness.

     

  • Implement regular check-ins: Monitor leadership skill development, both in terms of leadership skills and the skills necessary to fill gaps. Make regular check-ins and status reports a standard of your development program.

     

  • Have leadership impart their learning to their teams: As your prospective leaders develop new skills, have them pass these skills down to their own teams. This will help the manager internalize the skills and encourage learning among their team simultaneously.
illustration of several people having a discusion areound a table

Explore the data: The LinkedIn Learning Hub utilizes LinkedIn’s Economic Graph to automatically monitor which skills your organization’s employees have, which skills your competition has, and, most crucially, which skills your competition has that your own organization does not. 

 

By cross-referencing these reports, you can understand where your skill gaps lie and, therefore, what you need to teach your leaders.

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Address specific skill gaps

The best way to motivate anyone to learn more is to show them what’s in it for them. Employees are hungry to learn new skills and advance, but they need to see how doing so will benefit their overall career.

 

When looking for leadership development programs, make sure you find one that’s “employee first.” After all, if your program can’t make the case for why employees should want to use it, then none of them will.

Why the best leadership development programs do it

  • Employees need to see the connection: Employees who don’t believe they can achieve their career goals with a current employer are 12x more likely to consider leaving. New employees who don’t believe this are 30x more likely to consider leaving.

     

  • It leads to longer retention and employee buy-in: 78% of employees say they’d remain with their employers longer if they saw stronger career paths forward. 

     

  • It’s the best way to motivate employees to learn: Employee’s top three motivations for learning are:

     

    • If it helps me stay up to date in my field

       

    • If it is personalized specifically for my interests and career goals

       

    • If it helps me get another job internally, be promoted, or get closer to reaching my career goals

illustration of a person studying at home

“Traditional L&D metrics like ease of access to learning content and course completions were meant to remove hurdles for employees. These should be table stakes. Companies should be moving in the direction of enabling employees’ personal transformations — defined by each employee individually. In other words, leaders need to say, ‘We believe that as long as our people are successful, our business will thrive.’”

Linda Cai

Linda Cai
Vice President of Talent Development at LinkedIn

How you can implement it in your leadership development program

  • Understand employee goals: First thing’s first: You have to actually know where your employees want to take their careers. Set up one-on-one meetings between employees and their managers to better understand their individual career goals. Base subsequent leadership development plans around these goals.

 

  • Tie skill development to internal mobility: Show employees the specific leadership skills they’ll need to develop to be promoted to the position they want, and then make their developing those skills a key element of their possible advancement.

 

  • Conduct employee-specific skill audits: Just as you conducted a skill gap analysis for the organization, conduct one for every employee in the development program. Show them the skills they have now and the skills they’ll need to advance in the way they want to.
illustration of one person helping another on a computer

See where skills are headed: LinkedIn’s “Future of Skills” tools allows members to see the most common skills currently listed for any job title along with how those skills have shifted from 2015 to 2021. Managers can use this tool to show employees the skills they’ll need to develop for current and future roles.

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Connect with organizational goals

Cultivating leadership is a worthy goal in and of itself, but it’s easier and more effectively done when you give your prospective leaders something to focus on as they develop their new leadership skills. 

 

Tie each of your learning and development objectives to key, concrete organizational goals. This will help your learners understand the purpose of their development programs and will motivate them to excel.

Why the best leadership development programs do it

  • Employees want to feel that their skills are helping the organization: Employees who feel their skills are not being put to good use in their current job are 10x more likely to be looking for a new job.

     

  • Effectively utilizing employee skills for developmental goals raises performance: Employees whose skills are effectively applied to concrete company goals perform 25% more effectively.
illustration of two people shaking hands

“An effective upskill and reskill plan needs to be employee-centered, context-specific, and personalized. It needs to be based on the balance between the learners’ professional goals and the employers’ needs.”

Stella Lee

Stella Lee, Ph.D
Director at Paradox Learning

How you can implement it in your leadership development program

  • Tie skill development directly to company goals: For each skill you have your leadership team develop, clearly explain how developing that skill will directly benefit the employee’s team and the entire organization. 

     

  • Invest employees in reaching organizational goals: Offer bonuses, advancement, or other personal incentives to employees when they reach their own personal skill development goals and the organization meets the goal associated with that skill development.
illustratio of two people in a meeting

Define and measure your goals: The LinkedIn Learning hub allows members to display organizational goals alongside personal and team-based goals. This allows employees to see both at once and understand their connection in an intuitive way.

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Involve management

Your managers know their direct reports far better than your L&D team can or should. They know their people’s strengths, weaknesses, goals, and needs. Why wouldn’t they take charge of their teams’s learning and development?

 

The most effective leadership development programs are those that leverage the existing knowledge the management team has in order to design customized programs that suit each employee’s unique needs and interests.

Why the best leadership development programs do it

  • Employees look to their managers for learning guidance: 91% of employees say it’s important for managers to inspire learning and experimentation 

     

  • It represents an opportunity to improve manager/report relationships: Only 14% of employees strongly agree their performance reviews inspire them to improve. Adding L&D to these reviews could improve that.

     

  • It encourages both parties to become more aware of opportunities: The number one way managers learn about leadership learning resources at mid- to large-size enterprises globally is when these resources are integrated into performance reviews.
illustration of a person presenting a graph

“What’s in it for those being coached? The obvious answer is the growth in their skills, but it’s so much more than that. When employees are coached, they feel like their talent is being recognized and their potential is being respected. It’s a huge motivator.”

Sara Canady

Sara Canady
Keynote Speaker, Consultant, and Author at Sara Canaday & Associates

How you can involve managers in your leadership development program

  • Have managers design personalized leadership development plans for their reports: Managers should be in charge of creating the leadership development programs for their direct reports after meeting with those reports to understand how the employee wants to develop and why.

     

  • Make it a part of performance reviews: Make discussions of learning and development a core part of the regular performance review. Have managers and reports discuss progress, roadblocks, and needs during the review to normalize learning and development within the regular work process.

     

  • Give managers the ability to create and manage development programs themselves: Give each manager the ability to create their report’s learning and development programs directly within the Learning CMS.
illustration of several people in a discussion

Design your learning path: LinkedIn Learning allows managers to customize a learning path to their direct report’s needs, and even automatically populates course suggestions based on what the direct report needs to learn.

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Create a culture of leadership and learning

By far the best way to encourage leadership development is to make it a regular part of your organization’s culture. By creating a culture of learning in your workplace, you will see employees work together and push each other to constantly learn more.

Why the best leadership development programs do it

  • Employees spend longer learning when they learn together: Employees who use LinkedIn Learning’s social features spend 30x more hours learning than those who don’t.

     

  • It creates great work culture: Employees say that opportunities to learn and grow are the top drivers of a great work culture.
Illustration of a couple of people studying

“Encourage continuous development and prompt people to regularly share what they’re learning. Set up ‘learning circles,’ where people can gain new perspectives and drive unexpected innovation.”

Jodi Atkinson

Jodi Atkinson
Senior Director of Global Learning at Deltek

How you can implement it in your leadership development program

  • Make learning social: When two or more employees take the same development course, set up time for them to study and discuss it together. Have them watch/attend the courses at the same time.

     

  • Make it a friendly contest: Create a “learning leaderboard” that shows what and how much each employee is learning. Award top-ranking employees to incentivize greater commitment.

     

  • Give them a place to learn together: Make sure your Learning CMS has the infrastructure to support socialized learning by providing members with the ability to see what others are learning, comment on each other’s progress, and chat about their lessons in real-time.
illustration of a group study session

Bring community to your L&D program: LinkedIn Learning’s hub is community-based, allowing learners to connect with their colleagues, peers, and even their expert teachers in order to ask questions, leave comments, receive feedback, and discuss their lesson plans.

Create the best leadership development programs for your organization

There’s one thing each of the qualities of the best leadership development programs have in common: They’re highly tuned to the particular organization. Leadership development is not “one size fits all,” and it works much better when you mold it to suit your organization and employees.

 

That’s exactly what LinkedIn Learning was designed to do. LinkedIn Learning provides leadership, management, and learners alike with all the tools and resources they need to create their own personalized learning paths, acquire the skills they need, and reach out to experts with questions and concerns.

 

The best leadership development programs are created for the leaders they’re trying to develop. That’s what makes LinkedIn Learning so effective. Try it out for yourself and you’ll see.

Learn more about how to create great leadership development programs in your organization:

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