In one possible scenario, a company sends its 15 managers on a five-star leadership course at a hotel in Dubai. Everything looks wonderful, they’ve had a professional facilitator, everything has been planned down to the smallest detail, and then two months later everything that was wrong is still wrong.
The instinctive follow-up is: “Would online have been better?”
That is the wrong question. It’s rarely the format that is the issue. The problem is that most organisations treat this as a checkbox exercise rather than as an active process. That said, format does seem to matter and it is worth getting it right.
The Case for In-Person Leadership Training
What in-person does better than any virtual format is force people out of their daily context. Remove the laptops, the Slack notifications, the constant interruptions. Something shifts. A management team taken offsite for 48 hours will engage at a level that a Zoom call simply cannot replicate.
In the case of in-person programs, the tipping point is that one moment of honesty when one of the executives running it admits to a career setback. In the virtual world, however, it’s difficult to achieve that level of authenticity when people are joining via Zoom from their home offices while their kids are running around and alerts are popping up.
In-person gives a skilled facilitator real-time access to people’s nonverbal cues, their energy levels, the moment something lands. There is an accountability that comes from having been in the same room. They’re going to bring up everything you’ve talked about in this room at the meeting next week. That’s harder to back out of.
Where Online Leadership Training Actually Wins
Online programs designed with care can outperform in-person interventions, often with unexpected findings.
A logistics business with managers in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah ran six, 90 minute, online workshops over three weeks, with inter-session applied work. The results exceeded most of their normal face to face programmes. This was important because learning took place in the same context as application as concepts introduced in the Monday morning seminar were practiced with teams in the Monday afternoon meetings and lessons learned were reviewed in the Wednesday seminar.
This is the basis of the science of spaced learning. Neuroscience tells us that the brain needs time to process and cement any new learning. After two days of intensive training, people are inspired but only remember about 20% after a fortnight. Online overcomes the barriers of the physical classroom, with introverted line managers who rarely speak up instead engaging with chat and breakout rooms in larger groups.
Where Both Formats Fall Short
The most common mistake in both formats is to focus on the mechanism of delivery before defining the problem.
If they don’t know how to give feedback, they need deliberate practice, not a two-day retreat. If they don’t trust each other, no virtual icebreaker will help. For cultural change, a launch in person creates energy and connection with online events sustained over the following months, with the format determined by the purpose.
The Hybrid Approach That Is Actually Working
The best Leadership Training in Dubai proactively co-design this approach:
they tend to start with in-person workshops (to build trust and find common ground), then move to regular online sessions discussing the challenges of the moment and easing by managers, before finally gathering quarterly in-person for strategy and alignment sessions.
One of our clients who used this model for two years saw their manager promotion rate rise from 60% to 91%. In particular, skills were developed rather than events.
The Real Cost Question
But none of these comparisons take into account the cost of moving someone to the wrong role or the lost productivity of highly skilled people who leave the organization or teams that only work at reduced capacity. These costs are seldom represented in the training budget spreadsheet, and they usually dwarf the cost of training development.
Also Read: The Best Leadership Training Programs in Dubai for 2025
Frequently Asked Questions
Is online leadership training more effective than in-person training?
Both can work, and both can fail; this depends on their design, the delivery of lessons, and whether the programme addresses the relevant problem. In-person is better for building trust, web-based for spaced practice. Organizations like DeANTS design interventions around the unique problem the leadership group needs to address, rather than defaulting to a preferred delivery mode.
What should Dubai businesses do to develop their leaders?
The real cost is not developing the leaders. DeANTS partners with SMEs and corporates across the UAE to design programs that offer them financial suitability without sacrificing outcomes.
What if managers are too busy for multiple sessions?
If managers cannot find time for development, the issue is not scheduling, it is organizational priority. Virtual works. Blocking 90 minutes of time for a desk session is trivial. A two-day absence is not. DeANTS’s L&D Outsourcing model works by integrating development into the normal working rhythm of busy teams, rather than treating it as a separate event to squeeze into the calendar.
How should ROI be measured?
Monitor managers’ engagement survey scores and internal promotion and stay rates as well as individual, team productivity, and team engagement scores at the 30, 60 and 90-day intervals. DeANTS conducts pre- and post-assessments and individual readiness reports to provide objective data for all areas of a client’s development as part and parcel of its programs.
Likewise, a blended program is often best delivered by the same provider, although the framework must be consistent. DeANTS designs and delivers experiential learning in both online and physical environments for clients in the UAE, KSA and the Maldives. All of our engagements are purposefully designed and smoothly delivered as a learning journey that brings together a full experience rather than a series of isolated events.
DeANTS is an outsourced Learning & Development partner based in Dubai for leadership and EQ-based corporate training. Visit deants.org or contact support@deants.org.
