17 Leadership Training Topics

In this article, you’ll find 17 leadership training topics that can help new, existing, and aspiring leaders in your business develop competencies and improve their leadership skills, qualities, and potential.

This way, they can become the kind of great leaders that their team truly respects and genuinely wants to follow.

Read on to learn more about leadership development examples and effective leadership topics that can help your organization’s management flourish in their leadership roles.

What are leadership training topics and why are they important?

Leadership training topics teach your learners the different skills and tactics that'll help them become effective and successful leaders. These training topics can also help them understand their job as a leader and look at problems as challenges and opportunities to grow.

Participating in leadership training trains them on what their team expects from them, as well as the critical aspects that drive your company's productivity and efficiency. Finally, excellent management training helps them gain confidence to do their best work and find areas of leadership that need improvement and growth.

SC Training (formerly EdApp) offers the best leadership training courses available today. Everything from leadership strategy, emerging leadership styles, and future-ready leadership are all covered.

Examples of leadership training topics

To help you foster great leaders in the workplace today, we've rounded up a list of the best leadership training topics below:

1. Communication skills

The ability to communicate effectively is a key skill and one of the competencies that marks a good leader, which is why this leadership training topic should be a priority for your leadership training or workshop.

Playing the role of someone who is followed by others, leaders must know how to present their ideas with clarity, share new knowledge with a broad set of audience, and give direction to their team. To be a good communicator, it is also integral for them to master the art of listening.

Whether it’s about problem-solving for team members’ concerns, feedback, or new ideas, effectively listening to them can help leaders open their minds and fully understand their perspectives. Leaders who can communicate and listen well to their followers show effective sports leadership and breed relationships of trust and loyalty, which is a critical component of any business’s success.

SC Training has a range of free microlearning courses that can help leaders in your organization strengthen their communication skills. Their course on Effective Communication taps into different strategies to improve communication skills when speaking with someone directly, whether in public or virtually.

They also offer this course about Speaking with Confidence, which highlights the communication skills needed by leaders to speak as fluently and confidently as possible. As a key hallmark of all SC Training courses, all lessons are delivered in bite sizes, allowing for easier comprehension. Plus, it will only take leaders a few minutes to complete them, which is perfect for their busy schedules.

Start using the best leadership training tool! Join SC Training today.

2. Leading under pressure

Leaders have a lot of responsibilities resting on their shoulders. From problem-solving, making decisions, and motivating their team, they face a great amount of stress and pressure. Before they break down and fall into a panic mess, it would be highly beneficial that you teach them the ropes on how to lead effectively under pressure.

Help them develop the mental and emotional strength they’ll need to overcome crises and any other high-pressure situations that may come their way. You can make use of SC Training's Leading Under Pressure as a resource for your leadership training. This course was developed in collaboration with award-winning rescue diver John Volanthen.

Here, he shares his experience in lifetime planning and executing some of the world’s most complex rescue dives to show the leaders and aspiring ones on how to effectively lead in high-pressure environments and make it a practiced skill. Each lesson in this course only takes a few minutes to complete, so it’s perfect for leaders who are often jam-packed with busy schedules.

3. Time management

Another essential leadership training topic that training managers should focus on is time management. Leaders, whether we like it or not, usually have too many things to deal with or worry about. By initiating this training topic, you can encourage them to work smarter, and not harder.

The idea is to help them work on their management skills to produce more sustainable and high-quality work in less time for maximum effectiveness. After all, overworking is not and should never be a standard of good work. Bear in mind that great leaders who know how to effectively manage their time, both personally and professionally, are more likely to make better decisions, perform consistently, and positively impact their team members. 

SC Training's The Ultimate Guide to Personal Productivity can be used by leaders to learn how to manage their overcrowded schedules and get more things done on time. This training course contains a combination of bite-sized lessons and gamified quizzes, which makes it more fun and motivating to take than leaving them with a thick pile of modules to read. 

Online learning platform Coursera also offers a great time management course on Work Smarter, Not Harder: Time Management for Personal & Professional Productivity. This online course aims to help professionals, such as team leaders, overcome hindrances to effective time management and influence them to maintain a balance between their work and life schedules. This course will take learners about 10 hours to finish, which is not exactly ideal for those with short attention spans. 

4. Conflict resolution

Workplace conflict is something that even great leaders can never escape from. When handling a team with varying perspectives, beliefs, and priorities, there will always be days of disagreement and opposition of interests or ideas, and some might even lead to some heated arguments.

But rather than fearing them, learning how to resolve conflicts can transform such catastrophic situations into growth opportunities and even foster stronger relationships among team members. These interpersonal skills don’t come easily to others, but they can be learned and mastered through consistent training and learning.

Feel free to roll out SC Training's course on Managing Difficult Conversations to show leaders in your organization the benefits of embracing difficult conversations and arguments with their team members. This course will walk them through some tips on problem-solving, yielding negative feedback, and delivering an authentic apology.

E-learning platform Compliance Training Group also offers Conflict Resolution Training, which is designed to help supervisors and employees resolve conflict in a timely and effective manner. It also discusses how to control anger in the workplace and initiate open, honest dialogue during conflict resolutions. Unfortunately, this course is not free and each single user enrollment costs 9.99 USD.

5. Employee engagement

Needless to say, discussing employee engagement must also be prioritized in your leadership training programs. Leaders are responsible for making sure that their teams remain passionate and committed to their jobs so that they can give their very best all the time.

Other than that, keeping their team members engaged can also lead to work satisfaction and increased interpersonal skills. As we all know, employees who are genuinely happy and well pleased in their team tend to stay longer and actively participate in advancing organizational goals.

However, ensuring consistent employee engagement is easier said than done. Lend your team leaders a helping hand by introducing them to different strategies they can adapt to stimulate engagement with their employees.

Apart from discussing this training topic with them, it is also a good idea to recommend employee engagement tools that they can use to engage their teams. Like SC Training's game-based tools, which can transform their team assessments in the form of smartphone games, like jeopardy game, elevator game, letter jumble, memory game, and more.

6. Motivating and influencing your teams

Hiring the best talent in the industry is only the tip of the iceberg. To get the best results for your organization, teams need guidance and support from good leaders who can motivate and influence them to give their best performance on a daily basis.

With this in mind, you might want to consider sharing manager soft skills with your company’s team leaders and managers on how they can better play the role of motivating and influencing their team. 

Introduce your leaders to different types of motivations and walk them through some tips and strategies on how they can influence their people to have a positive and “can-do” attitude at work. You can also deploy SC Training's microlearning course on Rewarding Achievements, which can be used as a guide on selecting the right kinds of rewards to drive employee performance.

They also recommend a 6-part course on True Influence – Developing Enduring Impact, expounding the true concept and practice of true influence as a facet of effective leadership. It can help your leaders improve their interpersonal skills, which they can use to collaborate effectively with their team and motivate them to go above and beyond their limits. Everything comes editable, so feel free to tweak and enhance the content. 

7. Effective feedback

Effective feedback is an essential part of competent leadership. While it’s not an easy thing to do, giving feedback shines a light on the company’s significant performance issues and directs employees in the right direction. Without it, everyone will be left guessing about their performance, which can stall the success of the entire organization.

Feedback is also a cornerstone of a healthy team relationship. If done correctly, it can motivate employees to follow their leaders and improve their performance without a hint of doubt. 

Although it is impossible to control how others respond to feedback, leaders can raise the likelihood that their critiques will be heard and followed rather than ignored and rejected. This skill can be learned and perfected over time through training.

SC Training has put together a microlearning course on Giving Effective Feedback, designed to help leaders grow and improve their feedback abilities and grow trusting relationships with their team members.

In this module, your learners will discover the what, why, and how of giving effective and impactful feedback, backed by some examples that they can use as a guide when talking with their underperforming employees.

8. Delegation

Delegation is another core function of leadership and a management skill to have, which is why it is also integral to include this leadership training topic in your training or workshop. Leaders, in particular, should know how to properly assign tasks to the right people and then trust them to deliver quality results.

The effectiveness of this skill is significantly linked to proper time management, as it will allow them to accomplish more things in less time. It also fosters engagement, effectively influencing the rest of their team members to put more effort and commitment into their work.

As per John C. Maxwell in his book Developing the Leaders Around You, “If you want to do a few small things right, do them yourself. If you want to do great things and make a big impact, learn to delegate.” 

Skillsoft’s course on Delegation can be used to teach your leaders how to delegate like a pro. It taps into topics like effectively directing and delegating tasks as a manager, providing the right level of supervision, feedback, and encouragement to achieve better results, and taking the team to the next level with delegation.

You can also enroll your leaders in Universal Class’ Delegation Skills online class to help them further understand the advantage of delegation and find out appropriate and effective methods for carrying it out. This course costs 0.00 USD per learner.

9. Different leadership styles 

This leadership training topic is more suitable if you are organizing a leadership training or workshop for new and aspiring leaders of your organization. While often overlooked, having a clear grasp of different leadership styles can help leaders determine different ways they can lead their team, develop their own approach, and identify key steps to further improve it.

It will also create an opportunity for them to discover the qualities and effectiveness of other leadership styles that they’re not yet aware of and combine them for more effective and impactful leadership. 

SC Training's Leadership and Coaching/Management Styles outlines the 6 most common leadership styles that will help learners identify in which category they fall in as a leader. It also contains a helpful guide on how a good leader can use each leadership style and develop their skills as a coach or manager. Lessons are presented via modules and gamified quizzes to ensure a more effective learning experience for your learners.

10. Diversity and inclusion

It’s no secret that most organizations today are now embracing a more diverse workforce to strengthen their positioning in the global market. With this in mind, a good leader should know how to lead and collaborate with a diverse team, and bring all their good qualities together to work in harmony regardless of their cultures, races, genders, and sexual orientations.

Raising awareness about diversity and inclusion will help leaders combat stereotypes, discrimination, and unconscious bias. This ensures that all their team members are equally heard, seen, and recognized for their work performance and other measurable factors. 

SC Training can help you educate your leaders to embrace this leadership role with their 5-part course on Diversity and Inclusion. This bite-sized module puts focus on the key concepts surrounding diversity and inclusion, the harmful types and examples of unconscious bias, and inclusive language to communicate effectively with their diverse team members without the likelihood of offending.

There are also paid courses that you can deploy, like Finding Common Ground – How to Overcome Unconscious Bias by AMA, Optimizing Diversity on Teams by the University of Pennsylvania, and Diversity training 101 by Universalclass. 

11. Change management

Whether big or small, change is something that every organization goes through. Both seasoned leaders and new ones alike can have a tough time navigating these situations. As leaders, it’s important to know how to cope with change and effectively communicate it with your team.

This also includes dealing with new challenges, workflow disruptions, and feedback from your employees. With this leadership training topic, you’ll be able to guide your team to overcome common obstacles brought about by changes and still work efficiently and productively.

12. Goal setting

Setting goals helps leaders stay focused on what really matters and gives them direction to fulfill their purpose. However, just the mere act of setting your goals isn’t enough. To fully maximize its potential and bring it to fruition, goals must be well-defined and attainable within a certain span of time.

When setting goals, a good model to follow is George Doran, Arthur Miller, and James Cunningham’s SMART goals which stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, and Time-bound. Learn how to set SMART goals for yourself and your team that are realistic and watch them turn into a collective effort on your path to success.

13. Leading vs. managing

Leading and managing are two similar terms that are used interchangeably but have distinct differences. Leading pertains to one’s ability to drive, influence, and motivate others to achieve a certain objective. On the other hand, managing is more about ensuring that work is done and organizational goals are achieved.

An individual can be a good manager but not a good leader and vice versa. So which one is better? To truly lead people, one must be both a good manager and leader. Being a leader shouldn’t be looked at as just a position in the organization. At the end of the day, a true leader is one who can not only deliver outcomes but also inspire people to work hard towards a shared vision of success.

14. Project planning

Managing projects can be tough. If they’re poorly planned, the organization can run into delays, miss deadlines, go over budget, or face disappointed clients. To mitigate these risks, it’s important for businesses to equip their managers with good project planning skills.

This way, they’ll be able to align goals, set reasonable deadlines, streamline processes, identify possible problem areas, and clarify the roles and responsibilities of each team member. This leadership training topic is also vital for eliminating wasteful activities that might deplete important resources like time and money. 

SC Training's Introduction to Project Management course is a great resource material for leaders who want to learn how to execute a project effectively. The course also provides a quick overview of each of the five stages of project management, including initiation, planning, execution, evaluation, and finalization.

15. Managing effective meetings

Meetings are an integral part of company communications, allowing employees to exchange feedback and discuss goals, ideas, challenges, and other topics related to the business. Without proper structure, they can be unproductive and inefficient but with a clear objective, they can be a highly efficient way to foster teamwork, accomplish goals, and increase overall productivity in the workplace.

Through this leadership training topic, managers will learn how to determine if a meeting is necessary, set a proper agenda and schedule, consider each team member’s strengths, and end with a set of action items. They’ll also learn a few tips and tricks to keep their employees motivated and engaged without losing focus on the meeting objectives.

How to Attend and Host Meetings is an SC Training course that team leaders can check out if they want to learn more about the importance of effective meetings, as well as the steps to take before sending out a meeting invitation. The bite-sized lessons also provide learners with real-life examples of different meeting challenges and ways to solve them.

16. Accountability

Another important leadership training topic to consider is accountability, a skill that’s usually tied to good leadership. Highly accountable leaders are known to accept responsibility for their actions and own the outcomes of these actions, whether good or bad.

Employees often look up to these kinds of leaders. They trust their choices and decisions, which leads to a more productive work environment. By adding this topic to your leadership training, you can help your leaders learn key behaviors that will allow them to build and hone their accountability skills and establish a workplace community where everyone’s honest and accountable for their actions.

17. Collaboration and teamwork

Good leaders should be able to encourage their team members to collaborate and work together harmoniously so they can achieve greater goals. But as ideal as it sounds, building a culture of collaboration and teamwork is easier said than done.

Leading a group of people with different interests and points of view, it’s often difficult for leaders to stand in the middle and make sure everyone’s ideas are heard.  When organizing your training, it’s crucial that you touch on this leadership training topic. Give your leaders the skills and tools they need to communicate properly with their team and increase the success of their teamwork.

Guide them through the process of making decisions and delegating tasks that will be useful in helping their people work and collaborate better. And most importantly, equip them with some tips and tricks to build trust and rapport with everyone to promote greater team unity.  

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