We Don't Teach Theory. We Teach Execution.
Generic training doesn't change behavior. Equip your managers with the exact, research-backed scripts they need to hold people accountable, coach instead of micromanage, and drive measurable ROI.
Most Leadership Training Doesn't Survive Contact with Reality
Your managers don't need platitudes. They need practical tools to handle difficult people, drive accountability, and execute without excuses. That's exactly what Leadership IQ's research-driven programs deliver — specific words and scripts for the situations your leaders actually face.
Talk to a Training Expert →Script-Driven, Not Theory
We provide specific words and scripts for delivering tough feedback, managing narcissists, and resolving conflict without triggering defensiveness.
Built on Original Research
Every program is built on data from studying over 500,000 leaders, Fortune 500 CEOs, and billionaires. We teach what's statistically proven to work.
Measurable ROI
Training is useless if it doesn't align with business goals. We define KPIs, track progress over 12 months, and prove the impact on retention and engagement.
Tell Us What Your Leaders Are Struggling With
Whether you're training 10 managers or 10,000, we'll design a custom program around your specific challenges, culture, and goals. Fill out the form and Mark's team will be in touch within one business day.
- Custom onsite & virtual workshops
- 25-course Masterclass Library with Trainer's Guides
- 4–6 week certificate programs for cohorts
- 90-day executive coaching engagements
- Scalable train-the-trainer rollouts
Delivered by Mark Murphy — NYT bestselling author, Forbes Senior Contributor, and founder of Leadership IQ.
Choose the Right Format for Your Organization
Custom Onsite Training
High-impact, 1–2 day intensives delivered at your organization. Fully customized curriculum with interactive role-playing and real scenarios. Taught directly by Mark Murphy.
Learn More →Live Virtual Training
Custom-designed virtual sessions for distributed teams that want live facilitation without travel logistics. Single sessions to multi-week virtual series with Q&A.
Learn More →Masterclass Library
Perpetual access to 25 leadership courses covering every critical competency. Includes Trainer's Guides so your internal HR can lead sessions forever.
Learn More →Certificate Programs
4–6 week cohort-based programs for individual leaders or small groups. Covers coaching, emotional intelligence, goal-setting, and accountability with assignments and a final certificate.
Learn More →Executive Coaching
90-day intensive 1-on-1 coaching for senior leaders. The Blind Spot Breakthrough program uncovers hidden derailers using stakeholder interviews and delivers measurable behavioral change.
Learn More →What Makes Leadership IQ's Training Different
A quick look at our research-driven approach to leadership development — and why generic training doesn't work.
Our leadership training and leadership development programs are built on original research, including interviews with billionaires, Nobel Prize winners, Fortune 500 CEOs, and more than 1,000,000 leaders.
Customized Leadership Training Delivered at Your Organization
Leadership IQ's onsite leadership training programs are fully customized, 1–2 day intensives delivered at your organization by New York Times bestselling author Mark Murphy. These are high-impact, interactive experiences designed around your specific organizational goals, culture, and challenges — not generic "off-the-shelf" sessions. Every workshop includes pre-event consultation with key stakeholders, audience-specific customization, interactive exercises and role-plays, and post-event resources.
Below are three of our most popular onsite training tracks. Each can be delivered as shown or extensively customized — organizations regularly mix and match modules from across our entire catalog to create a program that's uniquely theirs.
This flagship 2-day program is designed for people managers at every level — from frontline supervisors to senior directors. It tackles the practical, day-to-day skills that separate great managers from average ones: how to set clear goals and hardwire accountability, how to coach rather than micromanage, how to motivate every tier of performer, and how to communicate difficult messages without triggering defensiveness. Participants leave with specific scripts, tools, and techniques they can apply the very next day to drive measurable improvements in their teams.
Execute Without Excuses
- How to get every employee focused on hitting their goals
- How to align employees' goals with your goals
- How to set HARD Goals that are Heartfelt, Animated, Required, and Difficult
- How to hold accountability conversations without creating resentment
Coach Instead of Micromanage
- How to coach an employee's unique motivational drivers
- How to give feedback that employees can hear and apply
- How to use Word Pictures to make feedback resonate
- How to identify and address employee shoves (warning signs)
Motivate Every Performer
- How to differentiate your management for Stars, Steady Eddies, and Strugglers
- How to recognize the 5 Team Player roles
- How to challenge high performers without burning them out
- How to stop wasting time on low performers who won't change
Communicate Without Defensiveness
- How to deliver difficult messages without triggering defensiveness
- How to manage narcissists, blamers, and drama queens
- How to resolve conflict without creating resentment
- How to lead through change and manage resistance
This program is designed for leaders at the director, VP, and senior leader levels — those responsible for aligning teams to a broader vision, driving cross-functional initiatives, and leading cultural change. It goes beyond day-to-day management skills to address the strategic, visionary, and relational capabilities that separate effective leaders from merely competent managers. Participants learn how to inspire deep engagement, build coalitions across siloed organizations, and lead through ambiguity and change.
Vision and Strategic Alignment
- How to articulate a compelling vision that drives action
- How to align teams to organizational priorities
- How to use cascading goals to connect frontline work to strategic objectives
Influence and Coalition Building
- How to build influence without positional authority
- How to lead cross-functional and matrixed teams
- How to navigate organizational politics productively
Leading Through Change
- How to anticipate and manage resistance to change
- How to make decisions under ambiguity
- How to maintain team morale during transitions
Culture and Engagement
- How to build a culture of psychological safety
- How to identify and retain your most valuable talent
- How to create an environment where people choose to give discretionary effort
This program is designed exclusively for C-suite executives, presidents, and business unit leaders — those at the top of the organization who are responsible for overall performance, board relations, and enterprise-wide strategy. The content addresses the unique pressures, blind spots, and challenges that only arise at the executive level. It's built around the Leadership IQ Executive Readiness Index (ERI), a validated assessment measuring five executive competencies.
Strategic Thinking & Decisiveness
- The ERI Decisiveness dimension — why it's the universal weak spot
- How to make high-stakes decisions faster without sacrificing quality
- How to avoid analysis paralysis and delegate decision-making effectively
Political Acumen & Influence
- How to read and shape organizational politics at the enterprise level
- How to build alliances that survive leadership transitions
- How to manage board dynamics and stakeholder expectations
Scaling Leadership & Agility
- How to build leadership capacity across the organization
- How to adapt your leadership style to market disruption
- How to develop successors without creating dependency
Executive Presence & Strength
- The ERI Strength dimension — projecting confidence in uncertainty
- How to deliver messages that inspire action across the organization
- How to maintain resilience under sustained pressure
Live Online Leadership Training Tailored to Your Team
Leadership IQ's live virtual training brings the same research-driven content and interactive facilitation of our onsite programs to a flexible online format. Ideal for distributed teams, global organizations, or companies that want to minimize travel while still getting highly customized, facilitator-led training. Sessions are designed for small groups (typically 15–40 participants) to ensure meaningful interaction, practice, and Q&A. Programs range from single 90-minute workshops to multi-week virtual learning series with weekly touchpoints.
Single-Session Workshops
90-minute to 3-hour sessions on a specific topic. Ideal for team meetings, kickoff events, or targeted skill-building.
Multi-Week Virtual Series
Weekly 90-minute sessions over 3–6 weeks. Builds depth with practice and assignments between sessions.
Recordings & Resources
All sessions are recorded. Downloadable resources and toolkits included for post-training reinforcement.
25 Leadership Training Courses on Every Critical Competency
These 25 courses (each approximately 1 hour long) address the 25 most critical leadership competencies, from hiring to conflict resolution to delivering feedback to change management to innovation and more. Each online leadership training course integrates cutting-edge leadership skill research with immediately actionable tools, scripts and techniques for effective leadership. These leadership training courses work for managers and executives in every leadership role, from new leaders to senior leaders.
Managing Narcissists, Blamers, Drama Queens & More
Specific scripts for handling the Big Five difficult personalities — narcissists, blamers, drama queens/kings, chronically negative people, and the overly sensitive. Learn how to contain negativity, deflate egos (even when they outrank you), stop the blame game, and turn problematic employees into productive contributors.
Hiring for Attitude
Attitude accounts for 89% of hiring failures. Based on the bestselling book featured in Forbes, Fast Company & CNBC, learn the 5-part interview question that reveals coachability, 6 words that ruin behavioral interviews, new textual science that uses candidates' pronouns and verb tenses to predict performance, and a structured evaluation form for every candidate.
How To Inspire & Retain Your High Performers
High performers have a different psychology than other employees. Learn their 3 unique psychological drivers, the 4-part retention conversation script using our Shoves & Tugs model, 2 phrases high performers say when hiding what's demotivating them, how to set HARD Goals that put them into a Flow State, and the 1 corporate culture type they like best.
Taking the Pain Out of Performance Reviews
Only 6% of CEOs think performance appraisals are useful. Learn 2 sentences that make every review more comfortable, how Transactional Analysis creates an Adult-Adult partnership instead of Parent-Child dynamics, the correct order for discussing performance, money and goals, and Word Pictures to clearly delineate expected vs. actual performance.
Do More Coaching and Less Managing
The best leaders do more coaching than managing. Learn the 6-question coaching mindset assessment, 3 drivers of manager-employee trust, 4 types of probing questions that reveal deeper issues, a 5-step process (based on rational emotive behavior therapy) to help employees overcome self-limiting beliefs, and how to replace backward-looking feedback with Constructive Dialogue.
Giving Tough Feedback Without Making People Angry
81% of managers avoid confronting subordinates about inappropriate behavior. Learn the 6-step script for delivering tough feedback without triggering defensiveness, how to delayer conversations into Facts, Interpretations, Reactions and Ends, why you should never use "I statements" or a "compliment sandwich," and 1 sentence that opens and deescalates tough conversations.
Enhancing Your Emotional Intelligence
Emotional Intelligence is more predictive of leadership success than raw brains or years of experience. Take the 20-question EI Assessment, then master the tripartite model: Self-Awareness (understanding your own emotions), Other-Awareness (reading others' emotions), and Emotional Management (managing and influencing emotions). Includes an 8-part exercise and 3 steps for reading people accurately.
How to Speak So Everyone Listens
93% of leaders think they're effective communicators — yet only 11% of employees agree. Learn the 4 communication styles (Analytical, Personal, Functional, Intuitive), how to speak to a room filled with different styles using Multipathing, 3 tricks for when you and your boss have different styles, and 5 words to say when the other person isn't listening.
Getting More Influence Without Authority
Learn the 7 Personality Drivers that determine why people will (or won't) listen to you, 4 common mistakes that instantly make you less influential, how to diagnose whether someone is likely to be your Champion or Antagonist, 3 sources of power you didn't know you had, and how to develop influence in flat or matrix organizational structures.
How To Build Support For Your Change Efforts
70% of change efforts fail and mismanaging change is the #1 reason executives lose their jobs. Learn whether your change should be Evolutionary or Revolutionary, how to reframe communications so change sounds like opportunity rather than threat, 3 points that must be in every change memo, how to win over fence-sitters and deal with resisters, and 2 steps to prevent backsliding.
These are 10 of 25 courses in the complete Masterclass Library. See the full catalog to see all available topics.
Each course comes with a Trainer's Guide — discussion questions, exercises, and deeper-dive materials — so HR teams can turn a 1-hour course into a half-day of team activities. Courses can be consumed à la carte or combined into a comprehensive leadership development curriculum.
Trainer's Guides Included
Each leadership training course comes with a Trainer's Guide that your internal training team and organizational leadership can use to conduct face-to-face sessions based on the content from each course. These Trainer's Guides contain discussion questions, exercises, deeper dives, and more. We are the only leadership training firm that actually helps internal leadership trainers in this way.
Perpetual Access
There are no renewal fees — ever. A few minutes after purchase, you receive an email with information to access the downloads of the video programs (video mp4 format), the PDF slides, and the Trainer's Guides. Upload the videos into your own LMS or shared drive. Your organization keeps these materials forever.
Scalable for Any Organization
Whether your organization has 10 managers or 10,000, the Masterclass Library scales to fit. Integrate the courses into your existing LMS, run them as lunch-and-learn sessions using the Trainer's Guides, or build a structured multi-week leadership academy. Many organizations combine the library with live training for a blended approach.
4–6 Week Leadership Certificate Programs
For leaders who want a structured, guided learning experience, Leadership IQ offers cohort-based online certificate programs that run 4 to 6 weeks. Each week includes approximately one hour of video lessons plus an assignment and quiz — totaling about 2 hours of work weekly that participants can fit around their schedule at their own pace. Participants progress through the curriculum on the same schedule, fostering accountability and peer discussion. Every program concludes with a certificate of completion. Individual managers can sign themselves up, or organizations can enroll 10, 20, 30 or more managers to go through a program together.
A Selection of Upcoming Courses
Team Players Unlocked: Using The 5 Role Superpowers To Build Elite Teams
Based on Mark Murphy's latest book, learn to identify and leverage the five critical team roles — Director, Achiever, Stabilizer, Harmonizer, and Trailblazer — to build higher-performing teams.
What Great Managers Do Differently
Master the behaviors that separate great managers from average ones — from giving tough feedback to motivating every tier of performer to building accountability and driving results.
Hiring for Attitude
Based on the bestselling book, learn cutting-edge interview techniques to hire candidates who will thrive in your culture. Attitude accounts for 89% of new-hire failures — these techniques fix that.
Decoding the Generations: How to Lead Boomers, Gen X, Millennials & Gen Z
Understand the unique motivators, communication preferences, and work styles of every generation in today's workforce — and learn to lead each one effectively.
Managing Employee Performance
Learn the complete performance management toolkit — from setting clear expectations and diagnosing performance gaps to coaching improvement and building high-performance cultures.
Emerging Leaders: Transforming High Potential Employees Into Leaders
Designed for high-potential individual contributors transitioning into leadership roles. Teaches them to think and act like leaders with immediately applicable tools and frameworks.
New cohorts launch regularly. Organizations enrolling multiple participants should contact us for group pricing.
View All Upcoming Courses →The Blind Spot Breakthrough: 90-Day Executive Coaching
For senior executives seeking the most intensive, personalized leadership development available, Leadership IQ offers the Blind Spot Breakthrough — a 90-day executive coaching engagement designed to uncover and address leadership style blind spots with measurable, data-driven results. This is executive education delivered one-on-one, helping leaders become more confident and responsible in their approach while producing the kind of targeted behavioral change that group programs cannot.
The 90-day coaching program can complement group training or stand alone as a focused executive development engagement. The accelerated timeline appeals to busy executives by delivering measurable improvement in a defined period.
Learn More About Executive Coaching →Leadership Principles and Emotional Intelligence
Every Leadership IQ program is built on core leadership principles that have emerged from decades of research and real-world practice. We don't teach fads or superficial theories — we teach what actually works in leadership.
Leader as Coach — Not Command-and-Control
The era of "bosses who simply give orders" is over. The best leaders act as coaches who guide, motivate, and develop their people. Being a "coach" doesn't mean being soft — it means having advanced skills in motivation, communication, and influence to get results without resorting to fear or authority. Instead of barking orders, a leader-as-coach asks probing questions, listens actively, and helps employees find their own solutions, creating an environment of trust and continuous improvement.
100% Leader — Challenge + Connection
A 100% Leader inspires employees to give their full effort — studies show these leaders enjoy the highest employee engagement. They strike the right balance between challenging their team (setting gutsy goals, pushing people to excel) and forming an emotional connection (showing empathy, understanding individual motivators). We help leaders identify their current style and adjust to achieve that critical balance.
HARD Goals — Setting Inspiring Goals
We challenge the traditional notion of "realistic" goals by teaching the HARD Goals framework: Heartfelt, Animated, Required, and Difficult. While SMART goals often encourage modest expectations, HARD Goals push teams past their perceived limits and create a sense of urgency and passion. People and organizations perform best when pursuing challenging, meaningful goals — turning dry objectives into emotionally compelling visions that inspire growth.
Accountability and No-Excuses Culture
Great leaders cultivate teams of people who take ownership, solve problems, and refuse to make excuses. We provide scripts and techniques for leading employees through the stages of denial, blame, excuses, and anxiety into a mindset of true accountability where they become responsible, proactive contributors who address issues head-on.
Evidence-Based Decision Making
Good leadership isn't just intuition — it's informed by research. Surprising data points challenge assumptions: 89% of hiring failures come from attitude, not skills; 81% of managers avoid needed feedback. We teach leaders to gather data from surveys, self-assessments, and stakeholder feedback to guide strategies.
The Most Important Leadership Skill: Emotional Intelligence
Every great coaching leader has mastered Emotional Intelligence. EQ is more predictive of leadership success than raw intellect or years of experience. Leaders high in EQ build strong rapport with their teams, navigate stress and conflict more effectively, and retain talent. We break EQ down into practical sub-skills and exercises:
Self-Awareness
Leaders first learn to identify and understand their own emotions, triggers, and behavioral tendencies. Through quizzes and reflection exercises, they recognize patterns in their responses — like discovering they become defensive when receiving feedback. Increasing self-awareness is the foundation because a leader can't manage what they don't notice.
Other-Awareness (Empathy)
Leaders practice reading others — picking up on emotional cues of team members and colleagues. Through role-play scenarios they discern an employee's unspoken concern during a conversation. We provide scripts for showing empathy and caution against responses that shut people down. People follow leaders with high EQ and quickly leave those with low EQ.
Emotional Management (Self-Regulation & Relationship Management)
Leaders learn concrete tools: breathing or pausing techniques when anger rises, conversation strategies to de-escalate emotional situations, and one-sentence openers that acknowledge tension and set a collaborative tone. We include exercises like the "trigger word" activity — identifying words that inflame conflict and practicing alternative phrasing.
Train Your Whole Team: Scalable Programs
Training one or two leaders can have a ripple effect, but training an entire team or organization creates a culture of leadership excellence. Leadership IQ emphasizes scalable programs — whether your team is a small department or a Fortune 500 company with thousands of managers.
Library of 25 Leadership Masterclasses
A turnkey curriculum covering all major leadership topics with perpetual access for a one-time cost. Every supervisor uses the same scripts and models, creating consistency in leadership practices across the organization. New hires or newly promoted managers can be onboarded with the same materials years down the line.
Internal Cohort Scheduling
Run private cohorts of our multi-week programs. Schedule 30 managers to progress through six weekly modules together with facilitated discussions. We help set up these cohorts or train your HR facilitators to run them. A hybrid approach often works best: a live kickoff by Mark Murphy, self-paced modules for several weeks, then a live closing session.
Train-the-Trainer Materials
We are one of the only leadership training firms that provides materials expressly for internal trainers. Each course includes a Trainer's Guide with discussion questions, exercises, and deeper-dive materials. We also supply slide decks, handouts, and scripts so your HR team can take our content and run with it.
Manager-Led Reinforcement Sessions
Empower department heads to host "lunch-and-learn" sessions using the course content. A manager can play a 10-minute excerpt at a team meeting, then use the guide's questions to discuss real applications. These manager-led sessions keep training alive long after the formal program.
Drive Positive Change That Aligns With Business Goals
The value of leadership training lies in the results it produces — stronger employee engagement, higher productivity, better talent retention, and successful change initiatives. Leadership IQ's programs are engineered to drive positive change that aligns with business goals.
Define Measurable Outcomes
We help organizations clarify what "success" looks like from the start. Whether it's reducing high-performer turnover, increasing employee trust as measured by surveys, or speeding adoption of a new strategy — by identifying key performance indicators (KPIs), we aim the training toward those results.
Pre- and Post-Assessment
We establish baselines before training begins and measure afterward to quantify the improvement. This can include pre/post surveys of leadership competency, engagement pulse surveys of employees reporting to trained leaders, and skill tests. Real data replaces guesswork about whether training "worked."
Long-Term Reinforcement
A one-off training event, no matter how great, tends to fade. Leadership IQ builds reinforcement into every plan — through follow-up sessions, ongoing course access, Trainer's Guides for managers, and regular touchpoints. These structures keep new leadership behaviors alive months and years after the initial training.
About Mark Murphy
Mark Murphy is the founder of Leadership IQ, a New York Times bestselling author, a Senior Contributor to Forbes, and one of the most widely cited leadership researchers in the world. He has been consistently ranked as a Top 30 Leadership Guru, and his research studies have reshaped how organizations think about performance, engagement, and leadership effectiveness.
His books include the New York Times bestseller Hundred Percenters: Challenge Your People to Give It Their All and They'll Give You Even More; Hiring for Attitude (featured in Fast Company, The Wall Street Journal, and selected as a top business book by CNBC); HARD Goals: The Science of Getting From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be; Truth at Work: The Science of Delivering Tough Messages; The Deadly Sins of Employee Retention; and his latest, Team Players: The Five Critical Roles You Need to Build a Winning Team.
He has lectured at the United Nations, Harvard Business School, the Clinton Foundation, Microsoft, IBM, MasterCard, Merck, Charles Schwab, Aflac, and hundreds of other organizations spanning virtually every industry. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, Fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Inc., CNBC, U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and more. He has appeared on CNN, NPR, CBS News Sunday Morning, ABC's 20/20, and Fox Business News.
All leadership training programs are fully customized to your unique needs and can be delivered in-person, online, or through a blended approach.
Frequently Asked Questions About Leadership Training
What makes Leadership IQ's training different from other leadership training programs?
Unlike generic "off-the-shelf" training, Leadership IQ's programs focus on practical behavior change — giving leaders specific tools and scripts they can apply immediately on the job. All training content is grounded in our ongoing research on what drives leadership success, ensuring that every lesson targets behaviors proven to improve engagement, accountability, and results. We also provide Trainer's Guides with every course so organizations can extend the learning through internal workshops.
Who are these leadership training programs designed for?
Leadership IQ offers programs for leaders at every level — from high-potential individual contributors transitioning into leadership roles, to middle managers and department heads, to C-suite executives. Programs like Emerging Leaders are designed for new leaders, helping them gain the confidence and skills to lead others effectively. Our executive coaching and advanced cohort programs serve seasoned leaders looking to refine their leadership style. HR professionals tasked with developing leadership talent across the organization also benefit from our train-the-trainer resources.
What delivery formats are available?
Our leadership training is extremely flexible. Options include live onsite workshops (half-day to multi-day), virtual training sessions (90-minute to 3-hour modules), on-demand e-learning through our video course library (perpetual access, learn at your own pace), and multi-week cohort-based certificate programs (4 to 6 weeks). Often, the best solution is a blended approach — for example, a live kickoff workshop followed by several weeks of online micro-courses and virtual coaching sessions. This flexibility makes it easy for leaders to invest in their career development without disrupting day-to-day responsibilities.
Do your programs offer certificates or continuing education credits?
Yes. Multi-week programs like The Leader as Coach and Emerging Leaders end with a certificate of completion, demonstrating that participants have mastered the material and passed a final test. While we don't pre-certify with every association, our programs meet the rigor required for continuing education, and we support attendees who seek CEU/PDU credits by providing detailed syllabi and proof of attendance. Many participants successfully apply these hours toward credits with SHRM, HRCI, PMI, and other professional associations.
How do you measure the impact of leadership training?
We help organizations implement a structured measurement strategy: pre-program assessments to establish baselines, immediate post-training evaluations of knowledge and planned application, 90-day follow-up surveys of both participants and their direct reports, and 12-month comprehensive evaluations of KPIs. For executive coaching, we conduct before-and-after stakeholder surveys to measure observable behavioral change. We also assist with creating case studies to showcase ROI.
Can these programs be scaled to large organizations?
Absolutely. Our Library of 25 Masterclasses provides perpetual access for a one-time cost, so you can train hundreds or thousands of managers with consistent content. We help organizations set up internal cohorts, train facilitators with our Trainer's Guides, and design rollout timelines that minimize business disruption. All virtual sessions are recorded for reuse, and our content can be integrated into your Learning Management System for on-demand access.
Ready to Develop World-Class Leaders?
Leadership IQ's training programs challenge assumptions, provide actionable tools, and change how leaders think, speak, and act. If you're looking for leadership training that builds confident leaders who can lead others to long-term success, let's start the conversation.
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