Global companies will spend something like $366 billion on leadership and management training this year, and that number is projected to keep climbing another $31 billion by 2029. And yet three out of four organizations rate their own leadership programs as not very effective.
The obvious response is to spend more, switch vendors, book a better speaker. But spending has climbed for years while the actual gap hasn’t closed. If money were the fix, it would have worked by now. Something more specific is broken, and it isn’t the budget.
MIT Sloan Management Review published research on how companies actually pick leadership programs, and the findings aren’t flattering. Most HR executives choose based on the program’s website, or even the charisma of whoever’s presenting. One executive described it to researchers plainly: the process resembles “the online dating industry, where swiping left or right is based more on appearance than substance.” The seriousness goes toward the pitch. Almost none of it goes toward the outcome.
A workshop isn't a habit
Thrown in, then forgotten
It’s worse at the moment it matters most. Research from the Center for Creative Leadership has found that 60% of first-time managers receive no training when stepping into their first leadership role. The promotion happens, and the skill-building is assumed to follow.
Even where training exists, it tends to be front-loaded once, at the transition, then left alone. A skill that needs practice weekly is being taught once, years apart. Like any skill, practice is necessary. There are dozens of adages about exactly this for a reason. Use it or lose it. Practice makes perfect. It doesn’t happen overnight. Cliché, yes. But it’s true. And leadership development is no exception.
What actually closes the gap
None of this means training doesn’t work. It means training that looks like a single event will keep producing single-event results. The skills in question — the hard conversation, the conflict nobody wants to touch, the feedback that actually lands — get built the way any other skill does: attempted often, in real situations, with enough regularity that it stops being a special occasion and starts being a habit.
Picture a cohort of young managers who all started from roughly the same place — similar schools, similar early opportunities, similar potential. Years later, the ones who actually became strong leaders weren’t the most naturally gifted of the group. They were the ones who’d had a real mentor or good managers. People who taught by example consistently enough that learning from them stopped being an event and became a habit.
Nature matters less here than people assume. A string of bad managers teaches someone bad habits just as easily as a good one teaches good ones. Either way, it boils down to repetition.
Repetition doesn’t have to mean more full training days. It can mean coaching after the meeting. Feedback on the conversation that just happened. Another attempt at the same skill the following week. The point is to recognize that “training” is a continuous verb. It demands persistence.
Where to start
- Stop measuring training by attendance and start measuring it by repetition — how often someone is actually practicing the skill after the session ends, not just whether they sat through it.
- Give new managers something before the promotion takes effect, not after the first crisis makes the gap obvious.
- Treat one workshop as the beginning of a habit, not the finish line. Revisit the same skill on a cadence, not once a year.
Interested in building leadership skills through practice instead of a single workshop?
Reach out at info@snpnet.com to learn about our flagship leadership development program: Leader’s Edge.
