Articles / Leadership Training Activities for Employees: Practical Guide
Development, Training & CoachingDiscover powerful leadership training activities for employees that boost performance by 20%. Expert guide with actionable exercises, implementation strategies, and measurable results.
Written by Laura Bouttell • Mon 24th November 2025
Leadership training activities for employees are structured exercises designed to develop critical leadership competencies through experiential learning, improving organisational performance by up to 25% whilst reducing turnover by an impressive 77%.
If you've ever wondered why some organisations consistently outperform their competitors, the answer often lies not in their strategy documents, but in their leadership development programmes. Like the parable of the stonecutter who chips away persistently at the rock—not splitting it with a single blow, but through repeated, purposeful strikes—effective leadership emerges through consistent, well-designed training activities rather than one-off interventions.
The statistics tell a compelling story. Companies investing in leadership training see a remarkable 415% annual return on investment, translating to £4.15 returned for every pound spent. Yet paradoxically, less than 5% of companies have implemented leadership training across all employment levels, and a staggering 59% of managers report receiving no training whatsoever.
This guide explores practical, evidence-based leadership training activities that transform ordinary employees into exceptional leaders, examining not just what works, but why it works and how to implement it within your organisation.
The business landscape has evolved beyond recognition from the command-and-control hierarchies of yesteryear. Today's organisations require leaders at every level—individuals who can navigate ambiguity, inspire diverse teams, and drive innovation in increasingly complex environments.
Consider this: 82% of employees report that poor leadership leads to disengagement, making them actively consider leaving their positions. The cost extends far beyond recruitment expenses. When talented individuals depart, they take with them institutional knowledge, client relationships, and the potential for future innovation.
Leadership training activities address this challenge through experiential learning—the pedagogical philosophy championed by educational theorist David Kolb, which suggests that experience forms the foundation of learning and development. Rather than passive absorption of leadership theory, employees actively practice leadership behaviours in controlled environments where failure becomes a teacher rather than a catastrophe.
Recent advances in neuroscience illuminate why hands-on leadership activities prove more effective than traditional lecture-based training. When employees engage in simulations, role-plays, and problem-solving exercises, their brains form stronger neural pathways through a process called myelination—essentially creating superhighways for leadership behaviours to travel along.
The amygdala, often called the brain's alarm system, also plays a fascinating role. Leadership activities conducted in psychologically safe environments allow participants to experience stress and challenge whilst their prefrontal cortex—the brain's executive function centre—remains engaged, enabling genuine learning rather than defensive reactions.
Before diving into specific activities, it's essential to understand the foundational competencies that effective leadership training develops. These form the scaffolding upon which individual exercises build specific skills.
Leaders must navigate complex, often ambiguous situations where the "right" answer isn't obvious. Training activities develop this capacity by presenting scenarios that require:
Research demonstrates that leadership training improves decision-making quality by 20%, with participants showing enhanced capacity for both analytical and intuitive thinking processes.
The ability to articulate vision, provide feedback, and navigate interpersonal dynamics separates competent managers from transformational leaders. 69% of employees report they would work harder if their leaders recognised their efforts—a statistic that underscores communication's pivotal role.
Effective leadership activities develop:
The romantic notion of the solitary genius leading from the mountaintop has given way to collaborative leadership models. Modern leaders must orchestrate diverse talents, perspectives, and working styles towards common objectives.
Activities targeting this competency help participants:
The following activities have been validated through both academic research and practical application across thousands of organisations. Each targets specific leadership competencies whilst remaining adaptable to various industries, team sizes, and organisational cultures.
Objective: Develop concise communication and storytelling abilities
How it works: Ask each participant to reflect on the best moments of their life, then progressively refine their story—first to five minutes, then two minutes, ultimately distilling it to precisely 30 seconds. Participants then share their 30-second story with the group.
Leadership competencies developed:
Implementation tip: This works brilliantly as an opening exercise for longer training programmes, immediately building connection amongst participants whilst demonstrating that effective communication requires ruthless editing.
The activity mirrors the challenge leaders face daily: How do you communicate your vision in a lift conversation? A brief email? A stand-up meeting? The discipline of refinement develops what communication experts call "signal-to-noise ratio"—maximising meaningful content whilst minimising verbal padding.
Objective: Highlight the gap between what we think we've communicated and what others actually understand
How it works: Pair participants and seat them back-to-back. One person receives an image or geometric design, which they must describe to their partner without naming the object or using gestures. The partner attempts to draw the image based solely on verbal instructions.
Leadership competencies developed:
Implementation strategy: After the drawing exercise, facilitate a debrief exploring what made communication effective or challenging. Ask participants to identify parallels with workplace communication challenges—project briefs, delegation, cross-functional collaboration.
This seemingly simple exercise consistently produces moments of genuine insight. Leaders discover how their assumptions about "obvious" information create communication gaps, and how asking clarifying questions—often perceived as weakness—actually demonstrates leadership maturity.
Objective: Develop strategic thinking, consensus-building, and decision-making under constraints
How it works: Present teams with a survival scenario—they've crash-landed in a remote location with limited supplies. From a list of 15-20 items, they must collectively choose the five most critical for survival, justifying their selections with logical reasoning.
Popular scenarios include:
Leadership competencies developed:
Debriefing framework: The real learning occurs in the reflection phase. Guide participants to explore:
Research from organisational psychology suggests that groups using structured decision-making processes in these exercises subsequently apply similar frameworks to workplace challenges, improving project outcomes by an average of 18%.
Objective: Understand how leadership style must adapt to context and individual needs
How it works: One participant plays a team member facing a performance challenge. Three others simultaneously act as leaders, each embodying a distinct leadership style:
The "team member" experiences all three approaches to the same scenario, then reflects on which felt most effective and why.
Leadership competencies developed:
Advanced variation: Run multiple iterations with different scenarios:
This activity brilliantly illuminates what Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard codified as Situational Leadership Theory—the recognition that effective leaders flex their style based on follower readiness and task requirements.
Objective: Build teamwork, communication, and creative problem-solving under physical constraints
How it works: Groups of 8-12 people stand in a circle, reaching across to grasp the hands of two different people (not adjacent to them). Without releasing hands, the group must untangle themselves into a circle.
Leadership competencies developed:
Implementation considerations: This physical activity requires psychological safety. Some participants may feel uncomfortable with close physical proximity or have mobility limitations. Always offer alternative roles (observer, coach, timekeeper) and never mandate participation.
The metaphor extends beautifully to organisational challenges: complex problems with no obvious solution, requiring coordination amongst interdependent parties, where individual actions affect the entire system.
Objective: Recognise that leadership comprises multiple competencies, each requiring development
How it works: Draw a large circle (the "pizza") and divide it into 8-10 slices, each representing a leadership competency:
Participants assess their current capability in each area (perhaps rating 1-10), shading inward from the crust towards the centre. The resulting shape visualises their leadership profile—strengths bulging outward, development areas staying near the edge.
Leadership competencies developed:
Application strategy: Use this as both a diagnostic tool at programme commencement and a progress-tracking mechanism throughout leadership development. Participants create action plans targeting 2-3 specific "slices" for development.
The pizza metaphor resonates because it acknowledges what Gallup's research has long demonstrated: exceptional leaders aren't universally excellent at everything. Rather, they understand their distinctive strengths, surround themselves with complementary capabilities, and continually develop targeted competencies aligned with their leadership context.
Objective: Develop ethical reasoning and decision-making when right answers aren't obvious
How it works: Present realistic scenarios involving ethical ambiguity:
Participants must decide their course of action, articulate their reasoning, and defend their position against questioning.
Leadership competencies developed:
Facilitation guidance: The facilitator's role is Socratic rather than didactic—asking probing questions rather than providing "correct" answers. Effective questions include:
Research from Harvard Business School indicates that leaders who regularly practice ethical reasoning through scenario-based training demonstrate 28% better decision-making when facing actual ethical dilemmas in their roles.
Objective: Develop observational acuity and attention to subtle environmental cues
How it works: Display a complex image, photograph, or arranged collection of objects for 60 seconds. Participants observe carefully, then answer detailed questions about what they saw. Alternatively, make subtle changes to the room environment and ask participants to identify what's different.
Leadership competencies developed:
Connection to leadership: Great leaders notice what others miss—the team member who's gone quiet in meetings, the subtle shift in client tone that signals concern, the emerging market trend hiding in plain sight. This activity builds what military strategists call "situational awareness"—understanding not just what's happening, but what it means.
Advanced application: Combine observation with action by presenting scenarios where participants must identify the critical factor requiring leadership attention amongst multiple competing inputs.
Selecting excellent activities represents just the beginning. Implementation quality determines whether these exercises generate genuine leadership development or merely consume time and resources.
Leadership development disconnected from business priorities feels like academic exercise rather than strategic imperative. Begin by asking:
Practical application: If your organisation is undergoing significant change, prioritise activities developing change leadership—helping people navigate uncertainty, communicate through transition, and maintain performance during disruption. If innovation is strategic priority, focus on creative problem-solving, psychological safety, and experimentation.
Harvard professor Amy Edmondson's research conclusively demonstrates that psychological safety—the belief that one won't be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes—is foundational to both learning and performance.
Leadership training activities often require vulnerability: making mistakes, receiving feedback, trying unfamiliar behaviours. Without psychological safety, participants default to self-protection rather than genuine experimentation.
Building psychological safety:
David Kolb's experiential learning cycle comprises four stages: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation, and active experimentation. Many training programmes excel at the first stage (the activity itself) but neglect the others, particularly reflection.
Effective debriefing questions:
Descriptive level (what happened):
Interpretive level (what it means):
Application level (what you'll do with it):
Time allocation: For every hour of activity, plan at least 30 minutes for structured reflection and discussion.
Leadership competencies build upon one another. Sequencing matters.
Suggested progression:
Foundation phase: Self-awareness and communication basics
Development phase: Interpersonal skills and team dynamics
Advanced phase: Strategic and situational leadership
This progression mirrors Maslow's hierarchy—you can't effectively lead others until you understand yourself; you can't build high-performing teams without strong interpersonal foundations; you can't excel at strategic leadership without competency in tactical execution.
Leadership development requires consistency rather than intensity. Monthly half-day sessions prove more effective than annual week-long programmes, as regular practice enables incremental skill-building and application of learning to current work challenges.
Recommended frequency:
Between formal sessions, encourage peer coaching pairs or leadership development circles where participants discuss real-world application of concepts explored in training activities.
What gets measured gets improved. Establish clear metrics linking leadership development to business outcomes.
Leading indicators (immediate):
Lagging indicators (longer-term):
Organisations employing these measurement approaches report 25% improvement in organisational outcomes from leadership training programmes, compared to organisations that conduct training without systematic evaluation.
Even well-designed leadership activities can fail to deliver results when implementation undermines their effectiveness. Recognising these pitfalls enables proactive prevention.
Team-building activities can be engaging and enjoyable—this is desirable. However, when fun becomes the primary objective rather than a beneficial side effect of meaningful learning, developmental impact diminishes.
Solution: Always articulate the specific leadership competencies each activity develops. Maintain focus on learning objectives throughout, and ensure debriefing connects activities explicitly to workplace leadership challenges.
A single leadership workshop rarely generates lasting behaviour change. Think of leadership development as physical fitness—occasional intense sessions cannot compensate for consistent practice.
Solution: Design leadership development as an ongoing programme with regular touchpoints, reinforcement mechanisms, and opportunities to practice emerging skills in progressively challenging contexts.
Effective activities for extravert individuals may overwhelm introverts. Physical activities may exclude team members with mobility limitations. Cultural backgrounds influence comfort with direct feedback and conflict.
Solution: Offer diverse activity types targeting the same competencies through different modalities. Always provide alternative participation options. Create space for individual processing before group discussion.
When senior leaders treat leadership development as "something for others" rather than participating themselves, it signals that leadership development isn't truly organisational priority.
Solution: Ensure visible senior leadership participation in training activities. Even better, have senior leaders facilitate portions of programmes, sharing their own leadership journeys, challenges, and ongoing development areas.
Leadership training cannot overcome organisational systems that actively undermine the behaviours being taught. If your activities develop collaborative leadership but your reward systems recognise only individual achievement, training is undermined.
Solution: Conduct honest assessment of whether organisational structures, processes, and culture support or hinder leadership behaviours you're developing. Address systemic barriers alongside individual development.
As leaders develop foundational competencies, they require more sophisticated activities that challenge their growing capabilities and address higher-order leadership complexities.
How it works: Senior leaders read leadership literature together—classics like Good to Great, The Innovator's Dilemma, or Team of Teams—then discuss not just the concepts, but their specific application to organisational challenges.
Enhanced approach: After discussing concepts, participants identify one principle from the reading and create a 30-day experiment applying it to their current leadership context. The group reconvenes to discuss results, challenges, and insights.
This combines intellectual stimulation with experiential learning, bridging the theory-practice gap that often limits leadership development impact.
How it works: Create business simulations mirroring strategic challenges your organisation faces—market disruption, competitive threats, innovation imperatives, or organisational transformation. Teams make strategic decisions over multiple rounds, experiencing consequences of their choices.
Leadership competencies developed:
Several organisations offer sophisticated leadership simulations, or you can develop custom scenarios reflecting your specific industry and strategic context.
How it works: Rather than hypothetical exercises, participants tackle actual organisational challenges as part of leadership development. Teams receive a genuine business problem, conduct research and analysis, develop recommendations, and present findings to senior leadership.
Why it's powerful: This approach simultaneously develops leaders and addresses real business needs, making the business case for leadership development dramatically more compelling. The stakes feel genuine because they are.
Example challenges:
Organisations employing action learning report 32% higher application of leadership concepts to workplace challenges compared to traditional training approaches.
The shift towards hybrid and remote work necessitates adapting traditional leadership activities for virtual environments whilst leveraging technology to create development experiences impossible in physical settings.
Online Survival Scenarios: Tools like Miro or Mural enable collaborative virtual sticky-noting and voting, creating engaging digital versions of scenario-based activities.
Virtual Escape Rooms: Teams solve puzzles together under time pressure, developing communication, collaboration, and problem-solving skills in an engaging format that works brilliantly online.
Breakout Room Rotations: Use video conferencing breakout rooms to rotate participants through different leadership scenarios, each facilitated by a different leader or coach.
Virtual Reality Leadership Training: Organisations are increasingly using VR to create immersive leadership scenarios—difficult conversations, crisis management, presentation skills—where leaders practice in realistic but consequence-free environments.
Major retailers have implemented VR to identify leadership potential amongst frontline employees, assessing how individuals respond to challenging customer scenarios, team conflicts, and operational problems.
AI-Powered Leadership Coaching: Artificial intelligence platforms now provide real-time feedback on communication patterns, decision-making processes, and leadership behaviours, offering scalable personalised development insights.
Gamification Platforms: Leadership development games create engaging, competitive environments where participants develop skills through challenges, levels, and peer competition, particularly effective for younger employees who grew up with gaming.
The most effective programmes combine in-person and virtual elements strategically:
This blended model addresses the reality that leadership development requires both intense experiential learning (often best in-person) and consistent ongoing practice (where virtual tools provide flexibility and scale).
Individual activities create moments of insight. Comprehensive programmes create lasting behaviour change. Here's how to design integrated leadership development systems.
Phase One: Awareness (Months 1-3) Objective: Build self-awareness and foundational understanding
Activities focus on:
Phase Two: Skill Development (Months 4-9) Objective: Build specific leadership competencies through practice
Activities focus on:
Phase Three: Integration (Months 10-12) Objective: Apply learning to actual leadership challenges
Activities focus on:
Peer Learning Circles: Small groups (4-6 participants) meet regularly to discuss leadership challenges, share insights from development activities, and provide mutual support and accountability.
Leadership Mentoring: Pair developing leaders with experienced mentors who provide guidance, share wisdom, and offer perspective on applying training to real-world situations.
Management Support: Train direct managers to support their team members' leadership development through coaching conversations, stretch assignments, and feedback on emerging leadership behaviours.
Resource Libraries: Curate books, articles, podcasts, and videos that extend learning between formal training sessions, enabling self-directed development.
These supporting structures transform episodic training into continuous development culture.
Chief Financial Officers and business leaders rightfully demand evidence that leadership development generates business value commensurate with investment. Rigorous measurement demonstrates impact and enables continuous improvement.
Level One: Reaction What participants thought of the training
Measurement: Post-session surveys, engagement observations Question: Did they find it valuable and relevant?
Level Two: Learning What participants learned
Measurement: Pre/post assessments, skill demonstrations, knowledge tests Question: Did they acquire new knowledge or skills?
Level Three: Behaviour Whether participants apply learning to their work
Measurement: 360-degree feedback, manager observations, peer reviews, behavioural indicators Question: Are they demonstrating new leadership behaviours?
Level Four: Results Whether behaviour change drives business outcomes
Measurement: Performance metrics, retention rates, engagement scores, financial results Question: Has leadership development improved organisational performance?
Most organisations measure levels one and two competently but struggle with levels three and four—precisely where genuine business impact becomes evident.
Leading indicators (predictive of future success):
Lagging indicators (outcomes of effective leadership):
Organisations tracking both leading and lagging indicators can identify early whether leadership development is generating expected impact and adjust programmes accordingly.
The formula appears straightforward: divide financial benefits by programme costs. The challenge lies in quantifying benefits that may be indirect or diffuse.
Direct costs:
Quantifiable benefits:
Research indicates leadership development programmes deliver £4.15 return for every £1 invested—a compelling financial case even before considering difficult-to-quantify benefits like enhanced culture, improved decision-making, or strengthened succession pipeline.
The most effective activities combine experiential learning with structured reflection, focusing on real-world leadership challenges. Scenario-based exercises, collaborative problem-solving tasks, and communication activities consistently demonstrate strong results. Research shows activities that require participants to practice actual leadership behaviours—rather than merely discuss leadership concepts—deliver 25% better skill retention. The ideal approach mixes various activity types: some building self-awareness (like Leadership Pizza), others developing interpersonal skills (like Back-to-Back Drawing), and advanced exercises focusing on strategic decision-making (like Survival Scenarios). Crucially, the debriefing discussion following activities often matters more than the activity itself, as this is where participants connect experiences to workplace application.
Leadership development requires consistency rather than intensity. Monthly sessions of 2-3 hours prove more effective than annual week-long programmes, as regular practice enables incremental skill-building and immediate application to current work challenges. Frontline leaders benefit from monthly touchpoints, middle managers from bi-monthly half-day sessions, and senior leaders from quarterly full-day programmes. Between formal sessions, peer coaching pairs or leadership circles maintain momentum through ongoing discussion and support. The neuroscience behind skill acquisition reveals that spaced repetition—practising skills multiple times over extended periods—creates stronger neural pathways than cramming learning into intensive bursts. Organisations implementing regular, sustained leadership development report 77% reductions in turnover compared to those using sporadic training approaches.
Absolutely, though adaptation and thoughtful facilitation prove essential. Many traditional activities translate successfully to virtual formats using collaboration tools like Miro, breakout rooms, and shared documents. Virtual environments actually offer unique advantages: they eliminate geographical constraints, reduce travel costs and time, and create natural documentation through digital artefacts. However, virtual delivery requires more structured facilitation, shorter activity durations (attention spans differ online), and deliberate relationship-building that occurs organically in physical spaces. Highly successful virtual activities include online escape rooms, virtual scenario discussions, breakout room rotations, and collaborative visual mapping exercises. Emerging technologies like VR create immersive leadership scenarios impossible in traditional settings. The most effective approach combines virtual and in-person elements strategically—virtual for ongoing practice and follow-up, in-person for intensive immersive experiences and relationship-building.
Effective measurement spans four levels: participant reaction (did they find it valuable?), learning (did they acquire new skills?), behaviour change (are they applying skills at work?), and business results (has organisational performance improved?). Leading indicators include participation rates, skill demonstration improvements, 360-degree feedback scores, and frequency of applying learned behaviours. Lagging indicators encompass employee engagement scores, retention rates (particularly of high performers), promotion-from-within rates, team performance metrics, and customer satisfaction. The most compelling metric links leadership development to financial performance: organisations with strong leadership development programmes achieve 415% return on investment, meaning £4.15 returned for every pound invested. Track both qualitative data (what participants report about their development) and quantitative metrics (measurable business outcomes) to build a comprehensive picture of programme impact and identify areas requiring adjustment.
Leadership development isn't one-size-fits-all; activities must match participants' current capabilities and stretch them appropriately. For emerging leaders and frontline supervisors, focus on foundational competencies: self-awareness exercises, basic communication skills, and straightforward scenario discussions. The 30 Seconds Exercise, Back-to-Back Drawing, and simple collaborative challenges work brilliantly at this level. Middle managers benefit from activities emphasising strategic thinking, influencing without authority, and navigating organisational complexity—consider Survival Scenarios, One Member Three Leaders, and cross-functional problem-solving. Senior leaders require sophisticated challenges: strategic simulations reflecting actual business complexity, action learning projects addressing real organisational issues, and ethical dilemmas with genuine stakeholder tensions. The activities themselves often remain similar, but complexity increases through additional constraints, more ambiguous scenarios, and higher stakes. Crucially, mixed-level groups create valuable cross-pollination, with experienced leaders mentoring emerging ones whilst being challenged themselves by fresh perspectives.
Whilst overlap exists, the primary distinction lies in intentionality and focus. Leadership training activities specifically target development of leadership competencies—decision-making, strategic thinking, influencing others, managing ambiguity—with structured debriefing connecting experiences to leadership application. Team-building exercises primarily aim to strengthen relationships, build trust, and improve collaboration, with leadership development being a potential secondary benefit. A ropes course might serve both purposes: as team-building, it creates shared experience and mutual support; as leadership training, it becomes a laboratory for observing how leadership emerges under pressure, how communication breaks down, and how teams navigate ambiguity. The critical difference is the facilitation and reflection process. Leadership activities require expert facilitation drawing explicit connections between the experience and workplace leadership challenges, while team-building exercises may emphasise relationship and enjoyment more heavily. Effective programmes often combine both: team-building creates the psychological safety and trust necessary for the vulnerability required in genuine leadership development.
Leadership development needn't require extensive budgets or external consultants. Many highly effective activities cost nothing beyond time investment. The 30 Seconds Exercise, Back-to-Back Drawing, Human Knot, and various scenario-based discussions require no materials or special venues. Internal subject matter experts can facilitate activities with modest preparation, and peer-to-peer learning circles create ongoing development at virtually zero cost. Free resources abound: leadership articles, podcasts, TED talks, and YouTube channels provide excellent content for discussion-based learning. Action learning projects cost nothing whilst simultaneously developing leaders and addressing genuine business challenges. Small organisations possess inherent advantages: easier to align leadership development with strategy, faster to implement and adjust programmes, and greater opportunity for senior leader involvement. The constraint actually forces beneficial focus—rather than purchasing off-the-shelf programmes that may not fit your context, you create targeted development addressing your specific leadership needs. Start with monthly lunch-and-learn sessions where leaders discuss specific challenges, share insights, and practice skills through simple but powerful activities.
Leadership training activities represent far more than pleasant diversions from daily work pressures. When thoughtfully selected, skilfully facilitated, and systematically integrated into comprehensive development programmes, these activities transform employees into leaders who drive organisational performance, inspire teams, and navigate complexity with confidence.
The evidence is incontrovertible: organisations investing in leadership development outperform competitors by 2.3 times, achieve 20% higher revenue, and reduce costly turnover by 77%. Yet the opportunity remains largely untapped, with less than 5% of companies implementing leadership training across all levels.
Like the patient stonecutter whose persistent strikes eventually split the massive rock, leadership development succeeds through consistent, purposeful effort rather than sporadic intensity. The activities outlined in this guide provide the tools. Your challenge—and opportunity—is implementation: creating the culture, systems, and commitment that transform these exercises from interesting experiences into genuine leadership capability.
Begin modestly but begin immediately. Select two or three activities aligned with your most pressing leadership needs. Schedule monthly sessions. Create space for genuine reflection and discussion. Measure what matters. Adjust based on learning.
The leaders your organisation needs tomorrow are sitting in your offices today, waiting for opportunities to develop capabilities they don't yet possess. What will you do to help them grow?