My Thoughts
Why Most Leadership Training is Complete Rubbish (And What Actually Works)
Related Articles:
You know what drives me absolutely mental? Sitting through another bloody leadership seminar where some overpaid consultant from Sydney tells 200 middle managers they need to "think outside the box" and "synergise their human capital."
I've been training workplace leaders across Australia for seventeen years now, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that 87% of corporate leadership development is pure theatre. Expensive, time-wasting theatre.
The problem isn't that companies don't want good leaders. They desperately do. The problem is they keep buying snake oil instead of medicine.
The Leadership Training Industrial Complex
Let me paint you a picture. Last month I sat in on a leadership workshop in Melbourne where participants spent three hours building towers out of spaghetti and marshmallows. The facilitator kept banging on about "collaborative innovation" and "adaptive thinking frameworks."
Know what would have been more useful? Teaching those same managers how to have a difficult conversation without breaking into a cold sweat.
But that's not sexy enough for the consultancy circuit, is it? There's no PowerPoint template for "How to Tell Dave His Reports Think He's Useless." No acronym for "Stop Being a Dickhead to Your Team When You're Stressed."
The leadership development industry has convinced us that management is rocket science. It's not. Most of it is just common sense wrapped in fancy packaging and sold at premium prices.
What Actually Makes Leaders Effective
Here's what I've learned from working with everyone from small business owners in Bendigo to department heads at major banks: the best leaders master three simple things.
First, they listen more than they talk. Revolutionary concept, right? But I'd estimate that 73% of managers spend meetings waiting for their turn to speak rather than actually processing what their team is saying. The good ones shut up and pay attention.
Second, they're consistent. Not perfect – consistent. Their team knows what to expect from them on a Tuesday morning versus a Friday afternoon. They don't flip-flop on decisions every time the wind changes direction.
Third, they take responsibility for their team's mistakes and give credit for their successes. This one trips up so many otherwise decent managers. The moment something goes wrong, they start pointing fingers. When something goes right, suddenly it was all their brilliant strategy.
These aren't complex skills requiring months of training. They're habits you can start practising tomorrow morning.
The Real Problem with Modern Leadership Training
Most leadership courses focus on the wrong bloody things entirely.
They spend hours on theoretical frameworks and personality tests. Myers-Briggs this, DiSC assessment that. Meanwhile, Sarah from Accounts hasn't had meaningful feedback on her performance in eight months, and nobody knows how to address it without causing World War Three.
I once watched a room full of supervisors role-play "difficult conversations" using scripts about imaginary employees with made-up problems. Why not just teach them how to handle the real issues they're facing right now? Like how to manage someone who's chronically late, or what to do when your star performer starts phoning it in.
The obsession with leadership "styles" particularly annoys me. Situational leadership, transformational leadership, servant leadership – it's all academic masturbation. Good leaders adapt to what their people need in the moment. Sometimes that's being directive, sometimes it's being supportive. You don't need a PhD to figure that out.
What Companies Should Do Instead
Here's my controversial opinion: most organisations would get better results spending their leadership development budget on one-on-one coaching rather than group seminars.
Get each manager thirty minutes a month with someone who can help them work through their actual challenges. Not theoretical case studies – their real problems with real people in real situations.
I've seen middle managers transform their effectiveness in three months with regular coaching conversations. Compare that to the six-figure leadership programmes that produce certificates but no measurable change in behaviour.
Another unpopular truth: promote fewer people into management roles. Half the leadership problems in Australian workplaces exist because we keep making our best technical people into managers without any regard for whether they actually want to lead others.
Being brilliant at your job doesn't automatically make you management material. Different skill set entirely.
The Skills That Actually Matter
Want to know what separates effective leaders from the rest? It's not charisma or vision or any of that inspirational poster nonsense.
It's mundane stuff like remembering to check in with team members regularly. Following through on commitments. Being clear about expectations and deadlines. Recognising good work when it happens instead of only speaking up when things go wrong.
The best manager I ever worked under was a guy named Pete who ran operations for a logistics company in Brisbane. He wasn't particularly inspiring or innovative. But he was reliable, fair, and genuinely cared about his people's development. His team would have run through walls for him.
Pete never attended a leadership retreat or completed a 360-degree feedback assessment. He just treated people with respect and held everyone (including himself) accountable to reasonable standards.
That's leadership. Everything else is just decoration.
The Training That Works
When companies do invest in leadership development, here's what actually moves the needle:
Practical skills training. How to conduct performance reviews. How to delegate effectively. How to manage up as well as down. These are learnable, practiceable skills that improve immediately with focused attention.
Real-world problem solving. Bring actual workplace scenarios into the training room. Work through genuine conflicts and challenges using the people and situations managers deal with daily.
Ongoing support rather than one-off events. A two-hour monthly session over twelve months will always beat a two-day intensive that everyone forgets within a fortnight.
And for the love of all that's holy, measure results properly. Don't just hand out satisfaction surveys asking if participants "enjoyed the experience." Track actual behaviour change. Monitor team engagement scores. Look at retention rates and productivity metrics.
Leadership development should improve business outcomes, not just make people feel good about themselves.
The Uncomfortable Truth
Here's what the leadership training industry doesn't want you to know: most management problems can't be solved with training anyway.
Sometimes you just have the wrong person in the role. No amount of coaching will turn someone who fundamentally doesn't care about others into an effective people leader. Some individuals are better suited to individual contributor roles, and that's perfectly fine.
Other times the problem is structural. Poor systems, unrealistic expectations, toxic organisational culture – these issues require leadership from the top, not more training for middle management.
I learned this the hard way about five years ago when I spent months working with a team leader who seemed committed to improving but kept falling back into old patterns. Turns out his boss was undermining everything we discussed by continuing to micromanage and criticise in front of the team. No amount of leadership skills training could overcome that dysfunction.
Moving Forward
The leadership development field needs to grow up and get serious about results rather than revenue.
That means shorter programmes focused on specific, measurable skills. More individual coaching and less group theatre. Regular follow-up and accountability rather than certificates and graduation ceremonies.
Most importantly, it means admitting that good leadership is mostly about character and consistency, not techniques and frameworks. You can't train someone to care about their people or take responsibility for outcomes. Those are choices individuals make every day.
Companies that focus on selecting the right people for leadership roles and then supporting them with practical, ongoing development will always outperform those chasing the latest training fad.
The rest can keep building towers out of spaghetti and wondering why their engagement scores never improve.
Other Resources: