Why Leadership Training Doesn't Stick in Small Businesses
You come back from a leadership course full of energy with a notebook packed with ideas you can't wait to try. Then Monday comes around: a customer is chasing an order, someone has called in sick and your inbox is overflowing. By Friday, the notebook is in a drawer.
If that sounds familiar, you are in good company. The government's Help to Grow: Management course has trained thousands of small business leaders, and its own figures show the same thing. After leaving the course, many struggle to turn what they learned into real change. Here we look at how to make leadership training stick, drawing on the research and on fifteen years of working with SME leaders.
What does the Government’s Data tell us about leadership training?
Help to Grow shows that small business leaders will engage with leadership training, however, using what they learned back at work is much harder.
The course is 50 hours long and run by business schools across the UK. It includes one-to-one mentoring, time with other business leaders and a Growth Action Plan. This plan sets out how each person will use what they have learned. More than 11,000 leaders had signed up by the summer of 2025.
The government's latest report, covering surveys up to August 2025, shows only about seven in ten people wrote their Growth Action Plan, even though the target was nine in ten. Four to six weeks after the course, just over half (53%) had made changes to their business. Many also left their mentoring time unused, with 30% spending fewer than five hours with their mentor.
But the same gap appears on leadership courses of every kind.
Why don't SME leaders use what they learn on leadership courses?
Most SME leaders go back to a business that needs them every hour of the day. They have no boss to give them time to try new things, and nobody checks whether they did.
This happens on leadership courses everywhere, in big companies as well as small ones. Researchers call it the transfer of training, which simply means whether what you learn on a course gets used at work. In 2024, Jaason Geerts reviewed the research on leadership courses. He found that very few people apply what they learn, and most end up slipping back into old habits.
The review found that support from senior leaders makes the biggest difference. Learning sticks best when a person's manager takes some work off their plate for a while. That gives them time to put new ideas into practice.
In a small business, the person on the course is usually the boss. Nobody lightens their load or asks a month later what they’ve implemented. They may have no deputy to cover for them and the team still brings every problem to their door. Applying leadership training in the workplace is hard enough in a big company and in a small one, the day job can easily push it aside.
Many courses also use examples from big companies - that leaves the owner of a 30-person firm to work out alone how an idea fits their business. Lots of good ideas get lost along the way.
How can you make leadership training stick?
Leadership training sticks when it is spread over several months and used on real problems in your business. It also needs people around you who will help you follow through.
Geerts' review backs this up. He found that longer courses tend to get better results, and that people remember more when sessions are spaced out with time to think in between and apply their learning. Coaching helps too, especially on longer courses, and in one study he cites, people who were coached did much better than those who were not. And people stick to their goals better when they share them with others.
Our LEAD™ programme for SME owner-managers and senior leaders runs for ten months, with around two days a month. Alongside the masterclasses, it includes other elements that help leaders take what they learn back into their business: one-to-one coaching, small peer groups and shadowing.
How does coaching help business leaders use what they learn?
Leadership coaching for business leaders gives you time with someone whose only job is to help you. Together you work out what a new idea means for your business and what you will do about it.
On LEAD™, coaching sessions focus on practical steps delegates can take straight away. A good coach asks questions instead of handing out answers, so the plan you leave with is your own. Nicola Bird, COO of K W Bell Group, shared, “Since graduating from LEAD™ I am more focused, determined and confident than ever before and this is solely down to the excellent coaching, the sincere peer support and the practical tools delivered by every expert I met on the way.”
Why do peer groups help leaders put learning into practice?
Peer groups help because other businesspeople understand your pressures and can tell you what worked for them. They will also ask next time whether you did what you said you would.
Peer learning for SME leaders on LEAD™ happens in small groups called action learning sets. Delegates bring real topics of discussion from their organisation, share what they have tried and work through the issues together. The same group meets throughout the programme, so a promise made at one meeting gets picked up at the next.
Ruth Cook, Managing Director of GWP Group, said LEAD™ helped her "work through and resolve difficult people issues with like-minded peers".
In a small business, this group can do the job a line manager would do in a larger company. Say you tell five other business leaders you will change how you run your weekly meeting. You are much more likely to do it than if you had only made a note to yourself.
What is leadership shadowing?
Leadership shadowing means spending time in another leader's organisation, watching how they lead and then giving them trusted feedback. Leaders rarely hear that kind of feedback from their own staff.
On LEAD™, each delegate is paired with a partner from another business in the group. You spend time in your partner's business, see how they lead day to day and then tell them what you observed. Later in the programme, exchanges take delegates back into their partner’s organisation to carry out senior-level consultancy-style projects, the results of which they feed back to their partner, and vice versa.
Watching someone else lead often shows you your own habits. You might have heard about delegation in a masterclass, but seeing a peer try to make every decision themselves brings it home. Chris Creed, Chairman of Creed Foodservice, commented, “The mutual trust that developed in the Shadowing & Exchanges was brilliant. Rarely, if ever, in business do you get the chance of unfettered access to someone else’s business and vice versa, plus receive unbiased feedback."
What can you do to make your learning from your next course stick?
Plan what will happen after each session before the course even starts and pick one or two real problems to work on.
Book an hour in your diary within two days of each session to decide what you will try first. Take a real problem to every coaching session and peer meeting. Tell your senior team what you are working on. They will notice when things change and they can challenge you if you slip back into old habits. Then, six to nine months on, judge the course by what has changed in your business.
What results do leaders see when the training sticks?
When leaders keep using what they learn, the results become clear in the numbers.
In our 2026 Impact Survey of 45 SME leaders who have completed our LEAD™ programme, 84% had a clear, written business plan after the programme, compared with only 16% before. Across 142 businesses we have tracked since 2011, those whose leaders completed LEAD™ saw sales grow on average in the first year after the programme, by 56%, productivity by 63%, staff numbers by 34% and profit before tax by 192%.
Ben Walker, co-founder of CEMAR, said, "Several key decisions and strategies come to mind that affected our year-on-year annual growth, all of them positively influenced and in many cases instigated, by LEAD™.” He went on to add, “I can’t speak highly enough of the quality, pace and structure to QuoLux’s programmes. They comprise a unique blend of peer support, expert led masterclasses and coaching, all with a practical emphasis. This delivered a transformational experience for our leadership and in turn our company.”
Frequently asked questions
How long does leadership training take to work?
Some changes show up quickly, and eight out of ten LEAD™ delegates see benefits in their business within two months of starting. Larger changes in how you lead take longer, so check your progress again six to nine months after a course ends.
What is the difference between coaching and mentoring?
A coach helps you find your own answers by asking good questions. A mentor shares advice from their own experience of running a business. Both can help you put what you learn into practice.
How is LEAD™ different from a short leadership course?
LEAD™ runs for ten months instead of a few days, so you have time to try ideas in your business and come back to talk about what happened. Each cohort is a small group of SME owner-managers and senior leaders. Alongside the masterclasses, you have one-to-one coaching, action learning sets, shadowing and exchanges. Delegates leave each session with actions to work on, and the same group checks in next time on how they went.
The next LEAD™ group starts on 5th and 6th November 2026 and runs for ten months, with a time commitment of around two days a month.
Find out more about LEAD™ Cohort 28. We’d be glad to talk through your development needs. Get in touch with our team here.