What Is Corporate Leadership Training?

Businesses need to invest time in their workforce and provide opportunities for professional development to ensure long-term success and growth. Implementing these strategies helps companies retain and upskill employees so they gain the knowledge necessary to advance in their roles. One such strategy is corporate leadership training, which develops general workplace skills and more targeted, role-specific skills.

Read more about corporate leadership training programs, what it entails, and how to implement a successful training program for your company.

What is corporate leadership training?

Corporate leadership training is a professional development strategy that allows employees to develop their skills and professional knowledge to advance into more senior roles. These skills might be more general workplace skills, such as communication or conflict resolution, or more targeted skill sets needed within a specific industry to handle more responsibility.

Corporate leadership training is most effective when implemented for every level of employee within a company and not just for management or C-suite roles. This is because everyone can benefit from professional development, which makes them more effective team members. Leadership training also often helps business owners identify employees with strong potential to advance into more senior roles.

Read more: Upskilling Strategy: Why You Need One for Your Workforce

Types of corporate leadership training

Corporate leadership programs may be self-led, classroom-based, or hybrid style. Typically, leadership training tends to fall under three different categories:

• Online or e-learning: Courses that employees work through at their own pace

• Instructor-led learning: Traditional, classroom-setting training put on by corporate leadership training companies

• Blended learning: Offers both online and in-person training opportunities

Each method has its benefits, but many businesses succeed with a blended approach since it allows employees to choose the type of course that aligns with their own learning style.

Businesses can also seek out corporate leadership training opportunities that are less formalized but no less effective, including:

• Sending employees to conferences for skills development

• Shadowing other professionals

• Experiential training, such as project management or presentations

• Volunteer opportunities

What is corporate leadership training used for?

Corporate leadership training is used to invest in a company’s current workforce to incentivize them to stay and grow within the company. This training also identifies employees who would be positive additions to a management team, allowing them to develop the necessary skills to become eligible for promotion or advancement.

By supporting employees through professional leadership development, businesses can ensure that their team is efficient, competent, and empowering, thereby growing the business and helping it meet its goals. Any business, no matter the industry, that wants to retain and grow its workforce would benefit from corporate leadership training.

Corporate leadership training topics

Choose topics that benefit your team to create an effective corporate leadership training program. Some of these topics might be specific to your industry, while more general ones might include:

• Resilience to change

• Problem-solving

• Strategic thinking

• Reliability

• Communication

• Project management

• Initiative

• Meeting management

• Relationship building

Benefits and drawbacks of corporate leadership training

Corporate leadership training offers a wide range of benefits to both employers and employees. Employers often experience higher retention rates, which saves money on hiring and training new staff due to turnover. Corporate leadership training also helps to foster a workplace culture of learning. It can encourage a growth mindset, potentially inspiring team members to reach beyond their current roles and desire more responsibility and tasks. This results in overall growth within a company and capitalizes on the team’s expertise and experience.

Corporate leadership training allows employees to take a vested interest in their professional growth. This helps to boost morale, increase productivity, and create space for employees to take on new tasks that challenge and engage them. Employees engaged and invested in the company they work for are significantly more likely to stay and foster loyalty to a company.

In general, businesses see positive results when they offer professional development and other investments in their team. Corporate leadership training is an effective way to foster creativity and increase engagement, increasing the quality of the work done by management and the employees they oversee. Companies spend less on addressing high turnover, providing more money to invest back into the business and other employee benefits. Finally, a learning culture increases a company’s reputation since employees share their experiences. This often translates to more people wanting to work for your company.

Because corporate leadership training requires forethought and deliberate planning, drawbacks arise when businesses don’t carefully construct their program with their specific team in mind. Training courses that don’t meet employees’ needs, are offered at inconvenient times, or have too much information can result in less learning and higher costs since more training is necessary to address issues like poor attendance.

How to get started with corporate leadership training

To get started with corporate leadership training, you can start by deciding what your business’s needs and goals are regarding professional development. Achieve this through skills gap analysis, strategic planning, and communication.

Then, once you’ve made a list of what you want your employees to learn, it’s time to create a training program by implementing online courses, in-person training opportunities, and experiential learning. Consider your budget and team’s time constraints. Finally, implement a way to continually monitor and adapt your training course to fit your employees’ needs better.

Getting started with Coursera

Create an effective corporate leadership training program with courses on Coursera. With Coursera for Business, you’ll find courses covering foundational knowledge, leadership and management skills, and industry-specific skills from the top universities and organizations across the globe.