2025 Leadership Training Trends: What 800+ Leaders Told Us
Every year, organizations spend billions on leadership training. Most of it doesn't stick.
We wanted to know why. So we collected data from more than 800 senior leaders across North America, CEOs, COOs, VPs, and HR executives, and found out what is working and what’s not.
What we found challenges some of the most common assumptions about how organizations develop their people.
Here are five trends from the data. The full analysis, including benchmarks by industry and organization size, can be accessed in the full report.
800+
Leaders Surveyed in 2025
12
Cities Across North America
19+
Organizations
The 5 Trends We Saw in 2025
Trend one
Your teams don't always speak the same language.
Trend Three
Fewer than half of your people are clear on what you need
This number has been declining since 2020. The full report breaks down why and what the middle management layer has to do with it.
Trend FIVE
Cramming doesn't work.
The training format most organizations default to is also the one with the weakest ROI. The full report shows what works instead, and how it drastically changes the outcome.
Trend two
Change resistance is predominantly a communication issue.
Most organizations are diagnosing the wrong problem. Our S.P.A.R.K. Assessment data shows exactly where the breakdown happens and it Wasn’t where most leaders expected!
Trend FOUR
Your flexibility may be undermining your delegation.
One pattern showed up in more than 80% of leaders across every level. Companies often praise it as a strength, our data suggests otherwise.
The Strategic Gap Most Organizations Are Missing
The leaders we surveyed were not struggling with motivation or intent. They were struggling with the translation gap between what leadership knows and what the rest of the organization understands, believes, and acts on.
This gap shows up most acutely in the middle management layer. Middle managers are the connective tissue between strategy and execution. When they are undertrained, under-supported, or unclear on expectations, the entire organization slows down.
The organizations seeing the strongest leadership development ROI in 2025 share three things:
- They invest in middle managers before they promote them, not after.
- They use spaced learning, not single-session training, to build lasting behaviour change.
- They diagnose before they design. They know where the gap actually is before they build a program around it.
The full report breaks down each of these in detail, with benchmarks and examples.
80%+
of leaders showed one pattern that looks like a strength,
but the data says otherwise.
↑ ROI
Organizations using spaced learning report significantly higher retention and behaviour change than those using single-session training.
< 50%
Fewer than 50% of employees report clarity on what leadership actually expects from them.
#1
The #1 source of team friction in 2025 was not performance, it was something most leaders are not measuring
Get the Full Report
The five trends above are the surface, the full 2025 Leadership Training Trends Report includes:
- Complete data breakdowns by industry and organization size
- The S.P.A.R.K. Assessment findings across 800+ leaders
- The specific communication patterns driving team friction
- What the highest-performing organizations are doing differently
- A framework for diagnosing your own leadership gaps
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was surveyed for this report?
We collected data from 800+ senior & mid-level leaders across North America, including
CEOs, COOs, CFOs, SVPs, VPs & Directors, representing
organizations of varying sizes and industries.
Is the full report free?
Yes. The full 2025 Leadership Training Trends Report is available at no cost. Enter your name and email to receive immediate access.
What is the S.P.A.R.K. Assessment™?
The S.P.A.R.K. Assessment™ is The Venned Group's proprietary diagnostic tool for identifying leadership and communication gaps within teams and organizations. It informs how we design custom training programs and is referenced throughout the Trends Report.
How is The Venned Group different from other leadership training providers?
We build custom & semi-customized programs. Every program is designed around your organization's specific gaps, values, language and diagnosed through the S.P.A.R.K. Assessment™. We bridge the gap between c-suite expectations and frontline output through middle management.
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