Learn more about our leadership training courses, which are targeted to develop the skills leaders need to succeed at all levels of your organization.
Women’s Leadership Development
Keeping and advancing talented women in leadership roles requires more than individual training. Create an organizational culture that helps individual women and the organization thrive.
Our Women’s Leadership Development Solutions
Leadership Training for Women
Our Women’s Leadership Experience is a research-based women’s leadership program you can customize for your organization’s unique context and culture. Build on our trusted curriculum to equip women with the skills they need to advance even further.
Or offer our Advancing Technical Women program to women leaders in STEM roles or in the tech industry. Designed by former women engineers, this program helps hone women’s leadership skills so they stay and rise to more senior roles.
Our global, research-based open leadership development programs provide world-class leadership training and executive coaching for women and men to build greater self-awareness, influence, and communication skills.
Explore our leadership training offerings at every leader level and use our proven, world-renowned programs to build scalable leadership development training for your talented women leaders at all levels.
Custom Women’s Leadership Development & Culture Change Solutions
Partner with our experts in organizational leadership for a systemic review to ensure you have the strategy and culture to support your retention and promotion goals for women leaders.
Approaches include investments that strengthen your culture to foster peak performance, bring more voices to the table, and capitalize on the benefits of the way women lead.
Elevate Talented Women to Lead Your Organization
How to Develop — & Keep — Women in Leadership Roles
Leadership can be a little more complicated for women. Intersecting identities, double standards, burnout, and bias (both conscious and unconscious) all place disproportionate burdens on women leaders. That’s why it’s critical that organizations that want to develop and retain their women leaders make intentional efforts to provide support and training.
While offering leadership development to individual women can help organizations keep and advance talented women in leadership roles, we believe that’s only one piece of a larger puzzle. To truly benefit women, organizations must focus on their entire leadership culture.
At CCL, we’ve been trailblazing women’s leadership development since 1987 — conducting some of the earliest research on breaking the glass ceiling, and pioneering leadership training for women.
Driven by client demand, our programs have helped thousands of women leaders navigate workplace challenges and we’ve partnered with hundreds of client organizations for innovative women’s leadership development solutions.
Why Choose Us for Women’s Leadership Programs?
Advancing women leaders is essential to organizational health, innovation, and culture. For decades, we’ve led groundbreaking research on women in leadership roles, including the barriers they face and the conditions that help them rise. These insights — from women breaking the glass ceiling to systemic enablers of equity — shaped global conversations and influenced how organizations approach women’s leadership development today.
Rooted in our belief that remarkable leadership fosters authentic connections, opens doors to opportunities, and ignites change, we design leadership experiences that expand human potential and empower women at every stage of their careers. We go beyond skill development to instill new, deeper ways of thinking, honoring each woman’s unique starting point and enabling transformation from the inside out.
As your partner for leadership programs for women, we deliver:
- Nearly 6 decades of experience and leadership research that shaped the industry itself
- Solutions that revolve around your leaders — their strengths, vulnerabilities, and growth journeys
- A partner with deep understanding of your unique challenges, co-creating programs alongside you
- Top-ranked executive education and award-winning global partnerships
- A mission-based organization dedicated to the positive ripple effect of leadership
- Hands-on support that helps women step into their power, move from awareness to action, and lead authentically
Whether you’re strengthening your pipeline, accelerating rising talent, or building enterprise-wide women’s leadership development, CCL helps women leaders realize their potential — and transform the world around them.
Go Deeper on Leadership Training for Women
Discover our top 3 recommendations for organizations that want to support women’s leadership, based on our research, and how we’re helping organizations address systemic and culture-based challenges: Download our Women’s Leadership Challenge & Solution Report.
More About Leadership Training for Women
Having Women in Leadership Roles Improves Organizations
Our research has found that, in addition to driving bottom-line financial performance, having more women in leadership roles predicts higher job satisfaction and commitment to the organization — for people of all genders.
But for all the benefits of women in leadership, barriers still remain. That’s where investments in building a culture of inclusion matter. Organizations that want to recruit, support, retain, and promote high-potential women need to start by looking at the larger systems in which they operate to find the root causes of women leaving or not being promoted. Our experts can help.
Create a World-Class Women’s Leadership Development Initiative
A focus on organizational culture, combined with targeted leadership training programs for women, can make a dramatic difference. Development and support can help individual women better navigate challenges and prepare them for more senior roles. Our women’s leadership development programs offer a safe environment to explore building agency and self-clarity, aligning goals with intentions, balancing self-promotion with authenticity, building a strategic network, and creating greater work-life balance. And our executive coaching for women strengthens their skills and provides the support they need to continue their development.
Whether you’re looking for a customized solution to support the talented women in your entire organization, or scalable programs designed to strengthen your overall culture to be more equitable and inclusive, we offer a variety of evidence-based women’s leadership development training solutions, available both virtually and in-person.
What Our Clients Are Saying
As a top-ranked provider of leadership development, we’ve shaped the industry for more than 50 years and are trusted globally to design and deliver solutions that enable individuals and organizations to reach their full potential. Clients around the world — including 2/3 of the Fortune 1000 — have partnered with us for women’s leadership development, driving remarkable transformations at their organizations.
But don’t just take our word for it — take theirs.
Ingersoll Rand partnered with CCL to develop a custom women’s leadership training program, delivering positive impact on company culture as well as team diversity. The company is not only achieving talent development and business goals, they’re also making a powerful — and enduring — difference in the lives of women leaders.
For 3 consecutive years, the Brandon Hall Group has honored Stellantis (formerly known as Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles) and CCL for the custom women’s leadership program we developed together. The program received a Silver award in 2022 and 2021, and a Bronze award in 2020, for excellence in the category of “Best Advance in Leadership Development for Women.”
“The program I was in had a lot of strong women… so seeing and understanding others who were at similar places in their career was really rewarding. There was a sense of community. To this day, I’m still in touch with one of the women, 8 years later … It really helped me, both professionally and personally, to understand who I was … and to be more confident in that.”
Emily Eakin
VP of Client Engagement
Traction on Demand
“In CCL, WICT found the ideal partner, well versed in providing best-in-class leadership development and bursting with faculty and staff committed to their clients’ success.”
Women in Cable Telecommunications
Let’s Talk About Leadership Training for Women at Your Organization
Have questions? Our experts are here to help. Let’s talk about how our decades of research and experience in organizational culture change and women’s leadership development can help to create a climate where all your talent can thrive.
Related to Women’s Leadership Training
Professional leadership coaching deepens and sustains leadership development. Learn more about our world-class leadership coaching services.
Drive business outcomes by partnering with us to create a customized leadership development program tailored to your organization’s context and culture.
Women’s Leadership Development: Research & Resources
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Statistics show that 2/3 of women in STEM roles quit within 15 years. Why, and what can individuals and companies do to advance and support women in tech?
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Watch this webinar to learn how “feminine” leadership traits can help strengthen organizational culture and address increasingly complex and systemic challenges.
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Organizations and individuals striving for gender parity in the workplace need to rethink systems and challenge assumptions in order to cultivate a culture capable of harnessing the power of all people.
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Together, we can help create a network of champions. Download our free resources on the importance of mentoring and sponsoring, particularly for women leaders – and learn how to get started today.
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Formal policies are just one piece of what’s needed to attract, develop, retain, and promote talented women in your organization.
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There are some persistent barriers to women’s advancement in the workplace. Learn how your organization can help grow your ranks of women leaders.
Frequently Asked Questions About Leadership Training for Women
What is the gap between men and women in leadership?
At many organizations, while half or more of frontline workers are women, there are fewer women moving up the ranks, with very few women executives at the top. In fact, women outnumber men at almost every educational level, yet hold just 24% of senior management roles and make up only 3% of Fortune 500 CEOs. Many companies struggle to tap the power of women’s leadership and have fewer women in the leadership pipeline because women in the workplace often face a disproportionate share of barriers to advancement, including double standards, the second shift, and the infamous glass ceiling.
How can leadership development help women break the glass ceiling?
Leadership development initiatives can help women break the glass ceiling. By offering women leadership training opportunities, providing greater flexibility and work-life balance, ensuring women leaders receive constructive feedback, and continuing to evolve organizational policies and practices, companies can keep and advance talented women in leadership roles. In addition, organizations should keep in mind that mentoring and sponsoring at work are important — particularly for women.
Why is leadership training important for women?
Recently, the pandemic has undone much of the progress women have made in the workforce in the past several decades. In fact, women are now leaving their careers at much higher rates than their male counterparts. Plus, they face additional barriers to advancement. This is why leadership training is important for women — now more than ever. Organizations must make intentional efforts to invest in the retention and support of their talented women leaders. Additionally, leadership development training helps women navigate the unique challenges they face, and advance and promote other high-potential women.
How do women in leadership make organizations better?
According to our research on women in the workplace, having more women in leadership roles actually makes an organization a better place to work, for people of all genders. We found that having higher numbers of women leaders predicted several positive organizational outcomes, including less burnout, higher job satisfaction levels, and greater commitment to the organization — for both women and men. Plus, extensive cross-industry research has found that having women in leadership helps to drive bottom-line financial performance.
What do women want from work?
For the most part, the same things that men do. In our research study of nearly 750 women and men leaders, we found that there were no statistical gender differences when it comes to how interested men and women are in raises, promotions, and leadership development opportunities, with 81% of women reporting that they were interested to extremely interested in leadership development training.
More questions? Our experts are here to help. Let’s have a conversation!
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