Leadership Development For Organisations 

Leadership Development Programmes for Organisations

Leadership Development Isn’t an Event. It’s a Process.

A good leadership workshop can introduce new ideas, challenge thinking and give managers practical tools they can use immediately.

But meaningful leadership development takes time.

Changing the way someone delegates, communicates, gives feedback, handles difficult conversations or leads a team doesn’t happen simply because they attended a workshop.

It happens when leaders learn something, apply it, reflect on what happened, receive feedback and try again.

That’s why the Australasian Leadership Institute designs customised leadership development programmes for organisations that want to develop their leaders over time.

Rather than asking your leaders to fit into an existing programme, we build the programme around your organisation, your people and the leadership capability you want to develop.

What Kind of Leaders Does Your Organisation Need?

That’s where we start.

Not with a catalogue of courses.

Not with a predetermined programme.

And not with a generic definition of what good leadership should look like.

We want to understand your organisation.

Where are you now?

Where are you going?

What challenges are your leaders facing?

What does your organisation expect from its managers?

Where are the leadership capability gaps?

And most importantly:

What would you like your leaders to do differently?

The answers help determine what the programme needs to achieve.

Because leadership development should be connected to the organisation your leaders actually have to lead.

A Programme Designed Around Your Organisation

No two organisations are exactly alike.

A programme designed for experienced senior managers shouldn’t look the same as one designed for people entering management for the first time.

An organisation experiencing rapid growth may require different leadership capabilities from one trying to improve collaboration between established departments.

That’s why our programmes aren’t off-the-shelf.

We work with you to identify the capabilities that matter and then design the programme around them.

Depending on your needs, a leadership development programme might run for several months and combine a series of workshops with individual coaching, practical workplace application and follow-up.

The programme has a clear destination, while still allowing enough flexibility to respond to what participants discover as their development progresses.

From Knowing About Leadership to Becoming a Better Leader

Knowing and doing are different things.

Someone can understand delegation while still finding it incredibly difficult to let go of work.

They can understand emotional intelligence while remaining unaware of how their behaviour affects others.

They can learn a model for difficult conversations and still avoid the conversation they need to have.

Leadership development becomes meaningful when participants begin applying what they’ve learned to real situations.

That’s why our programmes aren’t designed as a sequence of disconnected training days.

Each stage should build upon what came before.

Leaders learn.

They apply.

They reflect.

They receive coaching and feedback.

Then they continue developing.

The objective isn’t to create leaders who know more about leadership. It’s to create leaders who lead better.

What Could a Leadership Development Programme Include?

Every programme is different, but development can include areas such as:

Leading Yourself

Effective leadership begins with self-awareness.

Participants can explore emotional intelligence, mindset, personal responsibility, resilience, decision-making and the impact their behaviour has on others.

They develop a better understanding of their strengths, habits, assumptions and leadership blind spots.

Leading People

As responsibility increases, success becomes less about what the leader personally accomplishes and more about what they enable others to accomplish.

Development can include delegation, motivation, coaching, feedback, accountability, managing performance and difficult conversations.

Leading Teams

Leaders create the conditions in which teams operate.

Programmes can explore psychological safety, trust, accountability, communication, conflict, team dynamics and creating environments in which people can perform at their best.

Leading Without Authority

Modern organisations require leaders to influence far beyond the people who formally report to them.

Participants can develop their ability to influence colleagues, work across departments, manage stakeholders and build productive relationships without relying on positional authority.

Leading Change

Change requires more than a project plan.

Leaders need to provide context, communicate uncertainty, understand resistance and help people navigate the gap between how things work today and how they will need to work tomorrow.

The topics aren’t selected because they’re part of a standard curriculum.

They’re selected because they’re relevant to the leaders you’re developing.

Workshops Are Only One Part of the Programme

Workshops provide an important opportunity to learn, discuss, challenge assumptions and practise new approaches.

But some of the most important development happens between workshops.

That’s when a manager tries to delegate differently.

Has the conversation they’ve been avoiding.

Changes the way they run a meeting.

Attempts to coach rather than provide the answer.

Deals with resistance from an employee.

Or discovers that something that sounded straightforward in the workshop is considerably more difficult in reality.

Those experiences become part of the development process.

When participants return for the next stage, they’re no longer discussing leadership purely in theory.

They’re discussing what happened when they tried to lead differently.

Individual Coaching Makes Development Personal

Everyone can attend the same leadership workshop.

But everyone won’t have the same leadership challenge.

One participant may struggle with confidence.

Another may avoid conflict.

Another finds delegation difficult because they don’t trust other people’s standards.

Someone else may be highly confident but lack awareness of how their communication affects the team.

That’s why individual leadership coaching can form an important part of an ALI leadership development programme.

Coaching gives participants a confidential environment to explore their individual challenges and apply programme learning to real situations.

It also allows development to become personal without requiring every participant to discuss their most difficult leadership issues in front of colleagues.

The programme develops the cohort. Coaching develops the individual.

Development Happens Between the Sessions

One of the biggest risks with leadership training is that participants return to busy jobs and gradually fall back into familiar habits.

That’s why our programmes can include practical application between sessions.

Participants may identify a leadership behaviour they want to change, a conversation they need to have, something they need to delegate or a different approach they want to try with their team.

They then have an opportunity to reflect on what happened.

What worked?

What didn’t?

What surprised them?

What did they learn about themselves?

And what will they do differently next time?

Leadership isn’t developed simply by discussing leadership.

It develops through leading.

Developing New and Emerging Leaders

For organisations developing new managers, a programme can help participants make one of the most significant transitions of their careers:

from being responsible primarily for their own performance to being responsible for the performance of others.

They need to learn that being the best technical performer doesn’t automatically make someone an effective leader.

They need to delegate rather than do everything themselves.

Give feedback.

Set expectations.

Develop other people.

Address performance.

Manage former peers.

And begin measuring their success differently.

A structured programme gives new managers time to develop these capabilities while they gain practical leadership experience.

Developing Experienced Leaders

Leadership development shouldn’t stop once someone has been managing people for several years.

Experienced leaders face different challenges.

Responsibilities become broader.

Decisions become more complex.

They need to influence across the organisation.

They may need to develop other managers rather than individual employees.

And behaviours that helped them succeed earlier in their careers may become less effective as their responsibilities increase.

A leadership development programme can give experienced leaders an opportunity to examine how they lead now and what needs to change for the next stage of their leadership.

What Should Be Different at the End?

Before designing a programme, we want to understand what success looks like.

Not simply:

“Participants completed six workshops.”

But:

What are they doing differently?

Perhaps managers address difficult conversations earlier.

Delegation improves.

Leaders coach rather than automatically providing solutions.

Expectations become clearer.

Departments collaborate more effectively.

Managers demonstrate greater emotional intelligence.

Teams become more willing to challenge ideas and raise concerns.

Leaders spend more time developing their people.

Managers become more confident making difficult decisions.

The behaviours will depend on your organisation and the purpose of the programme.

But there should be behaviours.

Because attendance isn’t the objective.

Development is.

How Long Should a Leadership Development Programme Last?

There isn’t one correct answer.

A programme might run for three months.

It might run for six months.

For broader development, it may continue longer.

The appropriate length depends on the number of participants, their experience, the capabilities being developed and what the organisation wants to achieve.

We don’t believe in making programmes longer simply to make them larger.

We believe in giving development enough time to have a realistic chance of changing behaviour.

A Programme Might Look Like This

While every programme is customised, an example six-month programme could include:

Month 1 — Leading Yourself
Emotional intelligence, self-awareness and understanding your impact as a leader.

Month 2 — Leading People
Motivation, delegation, coaching and developing others.

Month 3 — Difficult Conversations & Accountability
Feedback, performance, expectations and conversations managers tend to avoid.

Month 4 — Leading High-Performing Teams
Trust, psychological safety, team dynamics and accountability.

Month 5 — Leading Without Authority
Influence, cross-functional relationships and achieving outcomes through people you don’t manage.

Month 6 — Leading Forward
Bringing the learning together, reviewing behavioural change and establishing individual development priorities for what comes next.

Individual coaching and practical workplace application can take place throughout the programme.

This is only an example.

Your programme should be designed around your organisation rather than copied from someone else’s.

Who Are Leadership Development Programmes For?

Programmes can be designed for:

Emerging leaders preparing for management

New managers

Established people leaders

Senior managers

Leadership teams

Or a particular leadership cohort within your organisation.

Where there are significantly different levels of leadership experience, we can discuss whether participants should develop together or whether different cohorts would produce better results.

Why Work With the Australasian Leadership Institute?

The Australasian Leadership Institute is led by Chief Leadership Coach Mark Wager, who brings more than three decades of leadership experience to his work with leaders and organisations.

Mark has worked with leaders from organisations including the New Zealand Defence Force, Ministry of Justice, Department of Internal Affairs, ACC, Fisher & Paykel, St John, Red Cross, Barnardos, Weta Workshop, UNICEF and Amnesty International.

Our approach is:

Practical. Evidence-based. Personal. Tailored.

We use established research from leadership, psychology and organisational behaviour, but the focus is always on translating that research into leadership behaviour that makes a difference in the workplace.

Leadership Development Programmes Across New Zealand and the Pacific

The Australasian Leadership Institute designs and delivers leadership development programmes for organisations throughout New Zealand and the Pacific.

Programmes can combine face-to-face workshops with online coaching and follow-up, making development possible for organisations with leaders in different locations.

We can work with you to determine the right structure, duration and content for your organisation.

Start With the Leaders You Want to Develop

You don’t need to come to us with a completed programme specification.

Start by telling us about your people.

Who are you developing?

Where are they in their leadership careers?

What are they already doing well?

Where are they struggling?

What will your organisation need from them in the future?

And six months from now:

What would you like them to be doing differently?

From there, we can design a leadership development programme around the answer.

Discuss a Leadership Development Programme for Your Organisation

The Australasian Leadership Institute

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