How to create effective leadership training

When you create leadership training, you’re doing two very cool things: You’re defining what leadership looks like in your organization and helping to grow those traits in your employees. Playing that role in someone’s professional development is a big deal!  

In this article, we’ve provided a general process you can follow to create an online leadership training program. There’s no one-size-fits-all plan since every company is unique. So, take these steps as food for thought rather than a rigid blueprint.

Step 1: Get specific

Leadership training can take many forms. What it looks like at your company comes down to three things: who your future leaders are, what you need them to do, and how you need them to do it. Let’s look at each of these:

• Who are your future leaders?
• When you understand who you’re targeting with your leadership training, you’ll make better decisions about how to develop their abilities.

• What do you need them to do?
• Think about what specific role you want new leaders to play in your organization, and what tasks or processes they’ll need to master to make it happen.

• How do you need them to act?
• Your company culture values certain traits more than others. You’ll want to emphasize these leadership qualities in your program.

Step 2: Get organized

You have some ideas about who your leadership training is for and what your goals are. Now it’s time to organize those thoughts. Think about how you want to structure your training. Ask around for any existing documents, presentations, videos, or other content that you could use. Then, put together a brief training plan that outlines your course and how you want to deliver it.

Tip: Now is also a great time to loop in your stakeholders. Getting everyone on board with your plan will make the process of launching your training much smoother.

Step 3: Get creative

Doing your homework in Steps 1 and 2 will make creating leadership training much easier. Understanding your audience will help you make judgment calls about how to structure that training and what information to include. And knowing what you want future leaders to do and how they should act will help make sure you highlight those desired behaviors in your program. Plus, when you use a training system like Rise, it’s super quick to create online courses from your outline right in your browser. Rise also lets you weave in existing documents or multimedia you’ve collected.

Step 4: Get better

After getting signoff from anyone else you’ve involved in the process, it’s time to share your leadership training! Ping your talent pool to let them know about the new opportunity to learn. Then, keep a close eye on them as they go through your courses. Rise lets you see how they’re doing as they move through your training courses, but you’ll also want to ask for feedback. As you do, you’ll discover ways to make your training even better. Your new leaders learn from you—and you learn from them!

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