If you’ve decided to send some of your organisation’s leaders on a development course, the next step is figuring out how much time you need to devote to it. After all, it’s difficult to balance the necessary investment in your employees with the loss of manpower. And this brings us to the important question: how long should a leadership development programme be? The short answer is it depends. Myriad factors determine the type of course you choose and how long it’ll take.
That said, the information in this article will help you at least narrow down a time range before you start arranging the course. So, read through the influencing factors to help you make a decision.
Start with Your Needs
The obvious place to start when deciding on the appropriate leadership development programme is to figure out your needs. While the specifics will depend on your organisation, your leaders, and other factors, we can generalise some points:
Appropriate leadership development programmeSkills development. This is a very broad topic but might include communication, problem-solving, strategizing, and more. The overall goal of a development course is arguably skills development, but it can go well beyond this.
- Practical development. This can involve team building exercises, role-playing, and more. The purpose is to allow leaders to test their skills and practice in a safe environment where their actions won’t have consequences.
- Levelling up. By this, we mean moving existing leaders into more senior positions. A lot of the stuff they’ll need to know will be organisation-specific, but a development course can help your employees learn the intricacies of senior leadership positions.
- Changing behaviour. It can sound a bit negative to want to change your leaders’ behaviour, but this is a necessary area of development. Importantly, though, we mean improving their “soft” skills, such as communication, empathy, etc. These are vital for leaders to work effectively with their teams.
To a certain extent, you might not know your exact needs when it comes to leadership development courses. You may just have a vague plan to send leaders on a course because you know they need to level up their skill sets.
However, it’s worth spending some time thinking about it in greater depth, as clear, defined goals will help you select the correct training. In turn, this helps you save both time and money because you’re not paying for unnecessary modules or extra-long programmes.
If you need help defining your goals in more detail, it might be worth speaking directly to a training provider. Be clear that you’re only looking for a consultation and are just shopping around, and they should be happy to provide you with some general information.
Decide on Your Learning Style
Learning style can refer to the way you process and understand information – visually, orally, etc. However, it can also refer to the specific method through which the information is delivered. When it comes to leadership development, some examples include:
- Distance or e-learning
- Leadership retreats
- On-premises courses
- Workshops
- Conventions and guest speaker events
Generally, a mix of some of the above learning methods is best for leadership training. After all, e-learning can only be so relevant for a people-focused skillset like leadership. You can easily teach theory online, but it should be combined with some kind of role-playing so trainees can put the theory into practice.
The learning style you choose will depend on two main factors: your budget and the distribution of your organisation. Expect retreats and conventions to be on the pricier end, while e-learning or on-premises workshops will generally be quicker and less expensive.
The distribution of your trainees is perhaps a bigger thing to consider. For example, if you’re a global organisation, sending a group of trainees on a retreat could prove very expensive if you’re flying them all to the same location. In this instance, some kind of online learning workshop would make the most sense.
Blended Learning Approaches
Blended learning is often the best option to cater to most people. You may already know what blended learning means, but in short, it’s a combination of different teaching options, such as role-playing, lectures, quizzes, self-directed learning, and so on.
It’s also worth considering something like spaced learning. Put simply, this is the process of teaching something over several months in short lessons rather than cramming it into, say, a week. Studies have shown it can be far more effective for information-dense curricula.
Of course, you should factor these into how long the training programme will take. A blended approach will take a bit longer than a single teaching method – for example, a few days of lectures might be quick, but you’ll find better information retention with blended learning.
Similarly, a spaced approach will easily take a few months, broken down into a day a week, for example. While this might not initially sound like a better option from a business perspective, it may prove easier to deal with the loss of manpower. Equally, you might find that you can send different leaders for the same module on different days, making it far easier to balance everything.
Customising Your Course
Any leadership development programme worth its money will offer some kind of customisation. This could be tailoring its objectives or information to your industry, or it could be as simple as adding or cutting modules based on your leaders’ existing skills.
Unsurprisingly, new leaders will need more time to develop their skills, and will likely need greater focus on the soft skills requirement.
On the other hand, experienced leaders may only need to target something like technology in the workplace or a specific soft skill.
Customising Your Course
Either way, look for as much customisation on the course as you can find. After all, you’re investing time and money into the development of your employees, so you’ll want the course to deliver results and be worth the money.
But what does this mean for the length of the course? Well, it could mean that your employees only need to spend a day or two running through a couple of modules. But it could also mean that they’ll be training for a few weeks if there’s a lot to go through.
Your training provider might also suggest some kind of follow-up or further development options. These can be super helpful, as they allow you to target any potential weaknesses and keep your leaders fresh. While they won’t influence the length of the initial course, you should factor a few extra days into your time budget further down the line.
Read more: Are Leaders Born Or Trained? Understanding The Path To Exceptional Leadership
Putting All This Together
Working through these factors will give you some good ideas for the type of development course you’ll want to choose to get the most from your leaders. Using this information, as well as things like intensity of learning and budget, we can come up with some options for the length of course you’ll choose.
It’s worth repeating that the most suitable course length will depend on all kinds of factors. But the simple answer is that a short course that targets perhaps a single need will be 1-5 days. A deeper course could be a month or more, and a comprehensive course could be up to a year.
Examples of Leadership Development Programme Length
This is a wide range of options, of course. To help you understand why it’s so broad, here are some examples of what you can expect for each of the different course lengths.
Examples of Leadership Development Programme Length
Short Programmes
These will be 1-5 days at most and will typically be online courses or on-premises workshops. However, we should also include leadership retreats and conventions in this bracket, as neither of these will go on longer than a week.
Expect short courses to focus on learning specific skills, or even just a single skill. This might be a compliance training module, for example, or advanced communication. However, a retreat will often be a crash course that covers a lot.
Medium Programmes
These can last anywhere from 1 to 3 months. Typically, they’ll focus on developing an area of skills, such as general communication or workplace motivation. While they’ll often be in-person, expect them to be one or two sessions a week.
Long Programmes
These can take anywhere up to a year. As with the medium programmes, they’ll be split over multiple sessions – usually one a week. Long courses are comprehensive and are designed to offer “full” leadership development. For example, this might be taking someone from team manager to full department leader. In short, they’re designed to teach all the skills needed to turn someone into a leader.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, there’s a lot to consider when it comes to choosing a leadership development programme. Although time budgets are essential when running an organisation, time should be one of the least important factors when it comes to choosing a leadership development course.
This is because the course length will depend on your needs and availability. As such, it’s sensible to choose something that meets your requirements and budget your leaders’ time accordingly.
