LBS Leading Teams for Emerging Leaders 2026 Guide

London Business School Leading Teams Programme Overview

The Leading Teams for Emerging Leaders programme at London Business School addresses one of the most critical transitions in professional life: moving from individual contributor to team leader. This intensive 5.5-day executive education programme brings together emerging leaders from across industries and geographies for an immersive learning experience at one of the world’s most respected business schools.

Based at London Business School’s campus in Regent’s Park, the programme combines rigorous academic frameworks with hands-on practical exercises. Participants engage in leadership simulations, team exercises, case discussions, negotiation scenarios, and coaching sessions designed to build the specific competencies needed for effective team leadership in today’s complex organisational environments.

What sets this programme apart from generic leadership courses is its focus on three interconnected themes: leadership self-awareness, team dynamics, and delivering results through others. Rather than treating these as separate skills, the curriculum integrates them into a cohesive development journey that begins with a pre-programme personality assessment and culminates in a personalised action plan for continued growth after returning to the workplace.

The programme is particularly valuable for professionals who recognise that the skills that made them successful as individual contributors are not the same skills required to lead teams effectively. Whether you are about to step into your first leadership role or have recently taken on team management responsibilities, this London Business School programme provides the frameworks, tools, and confidence to make that transition successfully.

Why Choose LBS for Leadership Development

London Business School consistently ranks among the world’s top business schools, with particular strength in organisational behaviour and leadership development. Choosing LBS for executive education means accessing faculty who are not only leading researchers but also experienced practitioners in the fields they teach.

The programme’s in-person format at the Regent’s Park campus creates an environment that cannot be replicated online. The physical immersion in a world-class learning environment, combined with the energy of a diverse peer group, accelerates both personal reflection and skill development. Participants report that the intensity of face-to-face interaction, including real-time team exercises and live coaching, creates breakthroughs that online programmes rarely achieve.

The cross-cultural dimension adds significant value. With participants drawn from different countries, industries, and organisational contexts, every team exercise and group discussion exposes learners to diverse leadership perspectives. This diversity mirrors the reality of modern global organisations and helps participants develop the cultural intelligence essential for leading in interconnected workplaces.

London Business School’s approach to leadership education emphasises evidence-based practices grounded in organisational behaviour research. Rather than relying on popular leadership frameworks or motivational concepts, the programme draws on rigorous academic research to provide tools and techniques that have been validated through systematic study. This academic foundation ensures that participants leave with approaches to leadership that are both practical and intellectually sound. For other executive education programmes from top-ranked institutions, explore university programmes on Libertify.

Programme Curriculum and Daily Schedule

The Leading Teams for Emerging Leaders programme follows a carefully structured weekly schedule that builds competencies progressively from foundational concepts to advanced application. Each day addresses specific leadership dimensions while maintaining a coherent learning arc throughout the week.

Monday establishes the foundations by defining leadership and exploring what effective leadership looks like in practice. A critical focus on understanding derailment, the common patterns that cause promising leaders to fail, provides essential self-awareness early in the programme. The day concludes with individual coaching sessions where participants receive detailed feedback on their NEO PI-R personality assessment results, creating a personalised baseline for the week’s development.

Tuesday shifts focus to teams: defining what makes teams effective, exploring team design principles, and engaging in collaborative teamwork exercises. Participants learn how team composition, role clarity, and psychological safety influence team performance. The hands-on exercises provide immediate experience in applying these concepts to real group dynamics.

Wednesday develops influencing skills and decision-making capabilities. These sessions address how leaders can guide teams toward effective outcomes without relying solely on positional authority. Participants practise influence techniques and learn to navigate complex decision-making scenarios where multiple stakeholders have competing interests.

Thursday covers communication, feedback, and developing others, core skills for any team leader. Small group coaching sessions provide a safe environment for practising difficult conversations, while negotiation exercises build practical skills for reaching agreements in professional settings. The combination of theory and practice ensures participants can apply these skills immediately.

Friday brings the week together through a comprehensive team exercise that integrates all the skills developed during the programme. Action planning sessions help participants create specific, personalised plans for applying their new capabilities in their workplace. Peer support groups form to provide ongoing accountability and encouragement after the programme ends.

London Business School Leadership Assessment and Coaching

One of the most distinctive features of the London Business School Leading Teams programme is its integration of the NEO PI-R personality assessment with personalised coaching. This combination transforms what could be a generic leadership course into a deeply personalised development experience.

The NEO PI-R (NEO Personality Inventory-Revised) is a comprehensive personality assessment that measures five major domains of personality: Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. Unlike simpler personality tools, the NEO PI-R provides granular insight across 30 specific facets within these five domains, giving participants a detailed map of their natural tendencies and how these influence their leadership approach.

Participants complete the assessment before arriving at London Business School, allowing sufficient time for professional scoring and interpretation. On the first day of the programme, individual coaching sessions provide guided feedback on the results. A trained coach helps each participant understand their profile, identify strengths to leverage, and recognise potential blind spots that could affect their effectiveness as team leaders.

The coaching component extends beyond the initial NEO PI-R feedback. Individual one-to-one sessions are complemented by small group coaching, where participants share insights and learn from each other’s development journeys. This multi-layered coaching approach ensures that self-awareness translates into concrete behavioural change rather than remaining an abstract intellectual exercise.

The peer support groups formed during the programme provide an ongoing accountability structure. Participants commit to specific actions and check in with their peer group after returning to work, extending the programme’s impact well beyond the five days at London Business School. This sustained support model addresses one of the most common challenges in leadership development: ensuring that insights gained during training actually translate into lasting workplace behaviour change.

Team Dynamics and Collaborative Skills Training

The team dynamics component of the London Business School programme addresses a fundamental challenge facing emerging leaders: building and maintaining high-performing teams. The curriculum covers both the theoretical frameworks for understanding team effectiveness and practical exercises for developing collaborative skills.

Team design sessions explore how decisions about team composition, role definition, and operating norms influence performance outcomes. Participants learn to diagnose team dysfunction, understand the stages of team development, and implement practices that build psychological safety — the foundation for teams where members feel comfortable taking risks and sharing ideas without fear of negative consequences.

The programme provides hands-on experience working in both face-to-face and virtual team settings, reflecting the hybrid reality of modern workplaces. Participants discover firsthand how leadership dynamics shift when team members are not physically co-located, and they develop strategies for maintaining team cohesion and communication across digital channels.

Collaborative teamwork exercises throughout the week put theory into practice. These are not simple icebreakers but carefully designed simulations that create realistic team challenges requiring participants to apply leadership, communication, and problem-solving skills simultaneously. The debriefs following each exercise, facilitated by experienced faculty, help participants extract maximum learning from their experiences.

Social awareness and conflict management receive dedicated attention within the team dynamics curriculum. Emerging leaders often struggle with conflict, either avoiding it entirely or handling it poorly. The programme develops participants’ ability to recognise and address conflict constructively, turning potential team breakdowns into opportunities for growth and improved collaboration.

London Business School Faculty and Teaching Approach

The London Business School Leading Teams programme is delivered by a distinguished faculty drawn from the school’s Organisational Behaviour group, one of the strongest departments in any global business school. Faculty members combine academic expertise with practical experience, ensuring that every session connects research insights to workplace reality.

Selin Kesebir, Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour, brings expertise in social psychology and how cultural values shape leadership effectiveness. Her research on moral elevation and social identity provides unique perspectives on what inspires followers and builds team loyalty. Niro Sivanathan, Professor of Organisational Behaviour, is known for his work on decision-making, persuasion, and the psychology of power, directly relevant to emerging leaders developing their influence capabilities.

Aneeta Rattan, Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour, contributes expertise in mindsets, diversity, and inclusion, helping participants understand how belief systems affect team dynamics and leadership effectiveness. Her research on growth mindset and belonging has direct implications for how leaders create environments where all team members can thrive.

Teaching Fellows Amy Bradley, Mark Conley, and Lucy Ford bring additional practical perspectives to the programme. Their roles bridge the gap between academic theory and applied practice, ensuring that participants can translate conceptual frameworks into everyday leadership behaviours. The faculty mix varies by programme iteration, but the consistent quality of London Business School’s faculty ensures every cohort receives world-class instruction.

The teaching approach deliberately balances multiple learning modalities. Case studies, group exercises, team simulations, journaling, peer discussions, and coaching sessions create a rich learning environment that accommodates different learning styles and maximises engagement throughout the intensive week.

Who Should Attend: Ideal Participant Profile

The Leading Teams programme is specifically designed for a well-defined audience: professionals at the inflection point between individual contribution and team leadership. Understanding whether you fit the ideal participant profile helps ensure you will maximise the value of the investment.

The primary audience includes individuals who are currently in their first leadership role or are about to step into one. Most participants have some management experience, typically less than five years, which means they have enough workplace context to engage meaningfully with the material while still being early enough in their leadership journey to benefit from foundational development.

The programme is equally relevant for those who are gearing up to take on leadership responsibilities. If your organisation is preparing you for a management transition, completing this programme before the transition provides frameworks and confidence that enable you to hit the ground running rather than learning through trial and error.

Decision-makers with limited experience managing both in-person and virtual teams find particular value in the programme’s hybrid team exercises. As remote and hybrid work models become permanent fixtures in many organisations, the ability to lead effectively across physical and digital environments has become a non-negotiable leadership competency.

Professionals who wish to adjust their leadership style and acquire new tools for leading effective teams, even if they already have some management experience, will benefit from the programme’s emphasis on self-awareness through the NEO PI-R assessment and coaching. Many participants discover that patterns they considered strengths actually require calibration in a leadership context, and the programme provides the insights and frameworks needed to make those adjustments.

Practical Skills: Negotiation, Influence, and Communication

Beyond leadership theory and team dynamics, the London Business School programme dedicates substantial time to three practical skill areas that emerging leaders need daily: negotiation, influence, and communication. These sessions provide frameworks and practice opportunities that participants can apply immediately upon returning to work.

The negotiation component goes beyond basic bargaining techniques to explore how leaders can reach agreements that strengthen rather than strain working relationships. Participants practise negotiation scenarios designed to simulate the types of conversations leaders have regularly: resource allocation discussions with peers, expectation-setting conversations with senior stakeholders, and performance negotiations with team members.

Influencing skills receive dedicated attention because emerging leaders often lack the positional authority to simply direct others. The programme teaches influence techniques grounded in organisational behaviour research, helping participants understand how to build credibility, frame proposals persuasively, and navigate organisational politics without compromising their integrity.

Communication and feedback sessions address the specific challenges that new leaders face: giving constructive feedback to former peers, communicating difficult decisions, and developing others through coaching conversations. Participants practise these skills in a safe environment with real-time feedback from faculty and peers, building both competence and confidence for workplace application.

The integration of these practical skills with the broader leadership and team dynamics curriculum creates a comprehensive toolkit. Rather than learning negotiation, influence, and communication as isolated competencies, participants understand how these skills interconnect within the context of team leadership and organisational effectiveness. This integrated approach is a hallmark of London Business School’s executive education philosophy. For other leadership development programmes, explore the university programmes directory on Libertify.

London Business School Programme Outcomes and Action Planning

The London Business School Leading Teams programme is designed to deliver tangible outcomes that participants can measure against their pre-programme development goals. The structured action planning process on the final day ensures that insights and skills translate into specific workplace behaviours.

The primary outcome is a successful leadership transition. Participants leave with the self-awareness, frameworks, and practical skills needed to lead teams confidently and effectively. The combination of personality assessment, coaching, and hands-on practice creates a development experience that addresses both the cognitive and behavioural dimensions of leadership growth.

Specific skill outcomes include the ability to inspire and engage team members, lead both in-person and virtual teams, manage conflict constructively through enhanced social awareness, give and receive feedback effectively, negotiate and influence without relying on positional authority, and design teams for optimal performance.

The tailored action plan created during the final day is not a generic template but a personalised document that reflects each participant’s NEO PI-R profile, coaching insights, programme learnings, and specific workplace context. This plan provides a concrete roadmap for continued development after the programme ends.

Peer support groups add an accountability dimension that extends the programme’s impact beyond the classroom. By committing to regular check-ins with fellow participants, learners maintain momentum and receive ongoing support during the challenging process of implementing new leadership behaviours in established workplace dynamics.

As David Feuga, Regional Director for Middle East and Africa at ITW GSE, noted: “This is the perfect programme for people at that point in their career when they’re about to transition from contributor to leader.” This testimonial reflects the programme’s focused value proposition and its effectiveness in addressing the specific needs of emerging leaders navigating this critical career transition.

How to Apply and Programme Logistics

The London Business School Leading Teams for Emerging Leaders programme runs multiple times throughout the year, with each cohort providing a fresh mix of participants and perspectives. Understanding the logistics helps candidates plan their attendance and maximise the value of their investment.

The programme takes place at London Business School’s campus in Regent’s Park, one of London’s most prestigious locations. The campus provides state-of-the-art learning facilities in a historic setting, with accommodation and dining options available nearby. The central London location also offers excellent transport links for international participants.

Programme fees are not published in the brochure to allow for flexibility across different dates and any applicable discounts. Candidates can obtain current pricing and available dates by visiting london.edu/ltel, calling +44 (0)20 7000 7366, or emailing ltel@london.edu. Early registration is advisable as cohorts are kept small to maintain the personalised coaching and small group dynamics that make the programme effective.

There are no formal academic admission requirements, making the programme accessible to professionals from diverse educational backgrounds. The key criterion is career stage: the programme delivers maximum value for those with typically less than five years of management experience or those preparing for an imminent leadership transition.

Before the programme begins, participants complete the NEO PI-R personality assessment, which requires approximately 45 minutes. This pre-work is essential to the programme experience, as it provides the foundation for individual coaching sessions on the first day. Candidates should allow adequate time between registration and the programme start date to complete this assessment thoughtfully.

For organisations looking to develop multiple emerging leaders, London Business School offers team enrolment options. Sending several participants from the same organisation can amplify the programme’s impact by creating a shared leadership language and mutual support network within the company. To compare this with other top leadership programmes, browse university programmes on Libertify.