How to choose a leadership development provider for your team

Most leadership development providers will tell you they transform teams. What actually separates the competent ones from the rest is whether they've worked inside your kind of organisation before, and whether they measure outcomes you care about, not outputs they can easily count.

Does their track record match your industry?

A provider brilliant at building leaders in financial services might not understand the constraints of manufacturing, healthcare or non-profit work. Ask them directly: have they run programmes in your sector? Not just "we've trained people in banking"—ask which companies, what the brief was, and whether they can connect you to someone who went through it. Someone who's coached retail managers knows the floor-level chaos; someone who's only worked in corporate head offices won't. If they've built programmes for businesses your size (turnover, headcount, number of sites), they'll already grasp your scalability challenges. If they haven't, they're starting from theory, not pattern recognition.

This doesn't mean they must have done your exact job. It means their experience gives them a real mental model of how your world works. A provider who's run five programmes in hospitality understands rosters, high turnover, and emotional labour. One who's never left the boardroom won't.

What results do they actually track?

Many providers measure what's easy: attendance, post-course satisfaction scores, whether participants thought the trainer was likeable. None of that tells you whether your managers are actually leading differently six months later. Ask what metrics they use to show change has stuck. Do they follow up with participants' teams? Do they track retention of high-potential staff after the programme? Can they show you reduced manager turnover, or faster time-to-productivity for newly promoted leaders, or improved employee engagement scores in departments where graduates work?

They won't have a magic number for every client—context matters. But they should be able to tell you what they measure, why it matters, and what their past clients have seen. If they can't articulate this, they're not equipped to hold themselves accountable.

How hands-on will they be with your specific people?

Standard off-the-shelf programmes deliver the same content to everyone. That works for compliance training; it doesn't work for leadership, where the problems are structural and personal. Ask whether the provider will do a diagnostic first. Will they interview your leaders and their teams? Will they review your organisation chart, your strategy, your recent hires and exits? Will the programme adjust based on what they find, or is it a fixed package regardless?

The best providers build some bespoke elements into even their standard offerings. They might use the same core framework but adapt examples, case studies, and group projects to your context. They may assign coaches to work one-on-one with your senior leaders alongside group sessions. This costs more, but it's the difference between surface learning and actual behaviour change. If a provider offers a flat rate, no discovery phase, and no flexibility, you're buying a seminar, not a development programme.

Who delivers it, and can you trust their capability?

Programmes live or die by the quality of the person running them. Ask who will deliver your programme. Are they an external consultant, or will the provider bring in someone from their roster? What are their credentials—relevant experience, professional qualifications, track record with groups like yours? Have they worked in your sector? Can you speak to them directly before you commit, or at least watch a sample session?

Credentials alone don't guarantee good delivery. A brilliant facilitator who's never touched your industry may struggle with context; a subject matter expert who can't engage a room won't land their message. The ideal is both. If you can't meet the facilitator until after you've signed up, that's a red flag.

Your team's leaders will spend days with this person. They need to trust them, and the provider needs to be able to prove they're worth that time. Strove lets you vet local providers and read verified feedback from teams who've already hired them—a practical way to separate the genuine capabilities from the marketing copy.