When designing a leadership development program it is important to include internal leaders in the design of a program but its also important to leverage them as speakers for the program as well. Recently I launched a leadership accelerator program with an external instructor providing the bulk of the content. However I also added an internal speaker series where key leaders within the organization. The instructor provides an understanding of fundamental concepts and established best practices while the internal leaders give the topic an organization specific context. Sponsors and participants find this approach incredibly effective.

In a program we developed for new managers we did not include internal speakers and quickly noticed that was a missing component. When internal speaker share their experience and reference the content presented in the classroom the message and learnings are reinforced.