Hmm…Has the title puzzled you? To tell you the truth, it puzzles most people. And that’s because leadership skills training is what typically comes to mind when one thinks of leadership development!

So, what is the difference between the two? Let me explain it to you using an example.

Leadership Development and Corporate Training

We have all visited large supermarkets, right? The ones which have separate sections for everything. So, they have a separate section for food, toiletries, cookware, etc. Now each of these sections have further subdivisions. For example, the food section may be divided into vegetables, fruits, cereals, pulses, etc. And of course, each of these contain the actual items like apples or rice.

The same goes with leadership development. Leadership development is a section in the supermarket of corporate training. This then has further subdivisions. And one of these subdivisions is leadership skills training. This is further divided into items like Skilful Conversations, Delegation, Motivation, etc. In other words, leadership skills training is a subset of leadership development and one of its constituents.

Apart from training, leadership development is also made up of other constituents like Executive Coaching, Consulting, etc.  It therefore provides a holistic way for developing leaders. While leadership skills training looks at developing the knowledge and skills of a leader, executive coaching develops the attitude and ability of the leader. It’s a facilitation tool that helps leaders find their own solutions to existing problems.

Consulting comes in when the leadership team requires an expert to come in and tell them what they need to do to solve a problem. And in the process, leaders get the opportunity to learn in a live scenario, dealing with a live problem. It therefore adds a lot of value to them and makes them more capable of handling such issues in the future. All of these constituents therefore provide leaders with overall development and the opportunity to enhance themselves on various fronts.

Being a corporate training company for 12+ years now, we therefore recommend leadership development over leadership skills training. It may take more time and effort, but it’s definitely worth it!