Articles / Why Leadership Training Is Important: The Case for Development Investment
Development, Training & CoachingLearn why leadership training is important for organisations and individuals. Discover the evidence for training investment and the returns it produces.
Written by Laura Bouttell • Wed 31st December 2025
Leadership training is important because organisations cannot develop leadership capability at scale without it. Research demonstrates that organisations investing in leadership training achieve 25% better business outcomes and see $7 return for every $1 invested. Yet almost 60% of first-time managers receive no training when transitioning to leadership roles—creating an enormous capability gap that affects engagement, performance, and retention throughout organisations.
The importance of leadership training extends beyond individual skill building. Training creates common language and frameworks across leadership populations. It builds networks among leaders who support each other. It signals organisational commitment to development. Understanding why leadership training matters reveals not just what training provides, but what organisations miss without it.
Organisations should invest in leadership training because it produces measurable returns:
Financial impact:
Engagement improvement:
Retention benefits:
Capability building:
Organisations that don't invest in leadership training experience:
| Area | Consequence |
|---|---|
| Engagement | Lower due to underskilled managers |
| Retention | Higher turnover from poor leadership |
| Performance | Reduced due to capability gaps |
| Succession | Weaker pipelines, crisis vulnerability |
| Culture | Inconsistent, unintentional patterns |
| Execution | Strategy implementation struggles |
The untrained manager problem: Almost 60% of first-time managers receive no training. These "accidental managers" struggle, damaging engagement and performance while learning through trial and error—at their teams' expense.
Leadership training benefits individual leaders through:
Skill development: Training builds specific capabilities—communication, delegation, coaching, decision-making—that enable effective leadership. These skills don't develop automatically through experience alone.
Confidence building: Training builds confidence through knowledge, frameworks, and practice. Confident leaders lead more effectively than uncertain ones struggling with imposter syndrome.
Perspective expansion: Training exposes leaders to approaches, challenges, and solutions beyond their limited experience. This expanded perspective improves judgment and decision quality.
Career acceleration: Leaders with training advance faster than those without. Demonstrated capability plus documented development signals readiness for advancement.
Network creation: Training programmes create networks among participants. These networks provide ongoing support, learning, and perspective throughout careers.
Framework provision: Training provides frameworks for thinking about leadership challenges. Frameworks enable analysis and systematic improvement rather than reactive response.
Effective leadership training develops:
Core skills:
Self-awareness:
Strategic capability:
Relationship skills:
When leaders receive effective training, their teams benefit:
Improved engagement: Trained leaders create better team experiences. The 70% engagement variance attributable to managers improves when those managers develop capability.
Better direction: Trained leaders communicate more clearly. Teams understand expectations, priorities, and success criteria.
Development opportunity: Trained leaders develop their people better. Coaching skills enable team member growth that untrained leaders cannot provide.
Healthier culture: Trained leaders create healthier team cultures. They understand culture's importance and have tools to shape it deliberately.
Reduced frustration: Trained leaders handle challenges more effectively. Teams experience fewer preventable problems from leadership skill deficits.
Research documents team-level training impact:
Performance:
Retention:
Wellbeing:
Development:
Leadership training builds capability at the organisational level:
Consistency creation: Training creates consistent leadership approaches across the organisation. Common language and frameworks enable coordination.
Culture alignment: Training reinforces desired culture. Programmes embed values and expectations into leadership behaviour.
Strategy execution: Training builds execution capability. Leaders throughout the organisation can translate strategy into action.
Change readiness: Training builds change capability. Organisations with change-capable leaders navigate disruption more effectively.
Succession strength: Training builds succession pipelines. Developed leaders are ready for advancement when opportunities arise.
Training provides strategic value through:
Competitive advantage: Leadership capability represents sustainable competitive advantage. Competitors cannot easily replicate developed leadership.
Adaptation capacity: Trained leaders enable organisational adaptation. They navigate change that would overwhelm untrained leaders.
Talent attraction: Development reputation attracts talent. The best people want to work where they'll be developed.
Risk reduction: Trained leaders make fewer damaging mistakes. Better decisions reduce costly errors.
Innovation enablement: Trained leaders create conditions for innovation. Psychological safety and coaching enable creative contribution.
Experience alone is insufficient because:
Experience is unstructured: Experience provides situations but not frameworks for interpreting them. Training provides interpretive frameworks.
Learning is uncertain: People can draw wrong lessons from experience. Training ensures correct interpretation.
Exposure is limited: Individual experience exposes leaders to limited situations. Training provides broader exposure.
Feedback is scarce: Real situations rarely provide development feedback. Training creates feedback-rich environments.
Time is costly: Learning through experience alone takes decades. Training accelerates development significantly.
Training and experience complement each other:
Training provides:
Experience provides:
The integration: Training prepares; experience applies. Training provides maps; experience teaches terrain. Neither alone suffices; together they produce developed leaders.
Organisations can maximise training value through:
1. Strategic alignment
Connect training to organisational strategy. Train for capabilities your strategy requires.
2. Needs-based design
Base training on assessed needs rather than assumptions. Target actual development gaps.
3. Transfer focus
Design for transfer to work. Include application support ensuring learning transfers.
4. Manager engagement
Engage participants' managers. Manager support affects transfer more than any other factor.
5. Quality commitment
Invest in quality programmes. Cheap training produces cheap results.
6. Measurement rigour
Measure behaviour change and business impact. Use measurement to improve continuously.
Training investment succeeds when:
Content is relevant: Training addresses actual needs in participants' actual contexts.
Application is supported: Learning transfers to work through deliberate support mechanisms.
Managers are engaged: Participants' managers reinforce and support development.
Duration is adequate: Training spans months rather than days, allowing application and reflection.
Measurement enables improvement: Behaviour change and business impact are measured and inform programme improvement.
Commitment is sustained: Organisations commit to ongoing development rather than one-time events.
Leadership training is important because it builds capability that experience alone cannot develop efficiently. Research shows training produces 25% better outcomes, $7 return per $1 invested, and 12% retention improvement. With almost 60% of first-time managers receiving no training, most leaders lack the development that would make them effective. Training accelerates development that experience alone would take decades.
Research indicates leadership training returns approximately $7 for every $1 invested when done well. Additional returns include 25% better business outcomes, 21% higher productivity from engaged teams, 12% retention improvement, and stronger succession pipelines. Executive coaching specifically delivers 580% average ROI within first year.
Training helps individual leaders by building specific skills (communication, delegation, coaching), expanding confidence through knowledge and practice, providing frameworks for analysis and improvement, creating peer networks for ongoing support, accelerating career progression through demonstrated capability, and exposing leaders to approaches beyond their limited experience.
Leader training affects teams by improving engagement (trained managers produce higher engagement), providing clearer direction, enabling better development of team members, creating healthier team cultures, and reducing frustration from leadership skill deficits. Research shows engaged teams demonstrate 21% higher productivity and better retention.
Experience alone is insufficient because it's unstructured (provides situations without interpretation frameworks), learning is uncertain (wrong lessons are possible), exposure is limited (individual experience is narrow), feedback is scarce (real situations rarely provide development feedback), and time is costly (experience-only learning takes decades). Training provides what experience cannot.
Leadership training is effective when content is relevant to participants' actual context, application is supported through coaching and accountability, managers are engaged before, during, and after training, duration spans months allowing practice and reflection, methods combine instruction, practice, and feedback, and measurement enables continuous improvement.
Organisations should invest sufficiently in training to produce quality programmes rather than seeking minimum cost. Research shows $7 return per $1 invested, suggesting substantial investment is justified. The almost 60% of first-time managers receiving no training represents critical missed opportunity. Investment level should match capability needs and development priorities.
Leadership training is important because it represents perhaps the highest-leverage investment organisations can make. The mathematics are compelling: 70% of engagement variance comes from managers, engaged teams produce 21% higher productivity, training produces $7 return per $1 invested. These aren't marginal improvements—they're transformational potential.
Yet most organisations underinvest. Almost 60% of first-time managers receive no training. Only 12% of employees believe their organisations develop leaders well. This underinvestment represents enormous missed opportunity—for the leaders who struggle without development, for the teams who experience underskilled leadership, and for the organisations that accept lower performance than development could enable.
For organisations, the implication is clear: leadership training deserves strategic priority. Not as discretionary expense when budgets allow, but as essential investment in organisational capability. The organisations that develop leadership capability systematically build competitive advantage; those that don't accept capability gaps they could have closed.
For individual leaders, the implication is equally clear: seek development actively. Don't wait for organisations to provide training—pursue it yourself. The capabilities training develops accelerate careers and improve effectiveness. Investment in your own development produces returns throughout your career.
Leadership training is important because leadership matters—and training builds leadership capability that neither experience alone nor natural talent can provide. The question isn't whether training produces value; the evidence is clear that it does. The question is whether you'll make the investment that captures that value.
The organisations and leaders that invest in training build capability. Those that don't accept limitation they could have overcome.
Choose development. Build capability. Lead effectively.