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Blog post
What it takes to build an award-winning leadership programme
Every organisation invests in leadership development. Far fewer create leadership programmes that genuinely change how people lead - and can prove it. So what separates an award-winning leadership programme from one that simply fills a training calendar?
We've been thinking about this a lot lately, having just been recognised with a Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Award - Silver for Best Leadership Development Program for the programme we designed and delivered with our client Urenco. It's the latest in a run of internationally recognised leadership partnerships, and it offers a useful lens on what "award-winning" really requires.
The short answer: it isn't about slick content or a big budget. It's about designing for the business challenge ahead, building the right leadership capabilities, engaging people properly, and measuring impact from day one. Here's what that looks like in practice.
Start with the business challenge, not the training gap
The best leadership programmes don't begin with a course catalogue. They begin with the question: what does the business need its leaders to be able to do - now and in the years ahead?
For Urenco - operating in the fast-growing, highly regulated civil nuclear sector — that meant equipping people managers with the confidence, consistency and global mindset to lead through rapid change. The programme was shaped through manager focus groups across every region and aligned to the organisation's own competency framework, so it targeted real challenges rather than generic leadership theory.
As Dan Godfrey of Hemsley Fraser puts it:
"From the outset, this was about designing a programme for the business challenges on the horizon, not just fixing the holes in front of us, with measurement built in from day one rather than bolted on. Just as important was a deliberately engineered, culturally attuned engagement strategy that kept momentum and traction alive across their global regions. It's been a privilege to help bring that ambition to life."
This is why so many award-winning programmes are custom leadership programmes. A tailored design maps directly to your strategy, culture and context — the things a ready-made course can never quite reach.
Make impact measurable from day one
If there's one thing that consistently defines an award-winning leadership programme, it's rigorous measurement - designed in from the start, not added as an afterthought.
For Urenco, a multi-level measurement framework tracked engagement, learner experience, capability change and business impact. The results speak for themselves:
World-class Net Promoter Score of 76
across nearly 800 participants
93–97% attendance
sustained across every workshop and every country, over several months.
Capability development
the proportion of leaders rated at the top capability level more than doubled — from 40% to 84% just 12 weeks after completion, with every measured behaviour improving.
Engage people — everywhere they are
A brilliant design fails without engagement. Award-winning programmes treat communication and engagement as a discipline in their own right, especially across global, multi-cultural organisations.
The Urenco programme ran across four countries and five sites, using local facilitators, native-language delivery and culturally attuned communications so it landed with equal impact everywhere. Sustained 90%+ engagement across regions, languages and time zones doesn't happen by accident — it's engineered.
Connect learning to performance
Ultimately, leadership development has to show up in performance. The programmes we're proudest of create visible, measurable change in the way people lead and the way the business runs.
With Urenco, applying new goal-setting and accountability skills helped drive appraisal completion to 97% across the business — at sites that previously had no formal performance process at all. That's the throughline of any great programme: better leadership capabilities lead to better performance management, which leads to better business results.
Proven across industries
Alongside our recognition with Urenco, our work has earned Gold at the Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Awards for Best Leadership Development Programme with the consumer health group Perrigo, and we've delivered global leadership programmes such as CHC Helicopter's frontline leadership initiative spanning seven countries - plus award-winning partnerships with global organisations including BAE Systems and Shell.
Frequently asked questions
Trusted by global organisations across industries, we deliver outcomes that matter:
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Confident, capable leaders
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High-performing, motivated teams
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Cultures that drive innovation and measurable business results
Award bodies such as the Brandon Hall Group look for a clear fit to business needs, strong programme design and delivery, high adoption across the organisation, and - crucially - measurable benefits for both participants and the business. In practice, that means designing for real challenges, building the right leadership capabilities, engaging people effectively, and measuring impact from the outset.
The most robust approach measures across several levels: engagement (attendance and participation), learner experience (satisfaction and Net Promoter Score), capability change (like-for-like before-and-after assessment of behaviours), and business impact (performance, engagement and progression). Building measurement in from day one — rather than bolting it on later — is what makes the results credible.
A custom (or bespoke) leadership programme is designed around your organisation's specific strategy, culture and challenges, rather than delivered off the shelf. It aligns to your competency framework and business priorities, which is why tailored programmes so often deliver - and demonstrate — the greatest impact.