Paper short abstract:

Local government institutions have found that strengthening organisational capacity for designing policies and programme interventions is fundamental to achieving development goals. This research assesses the training strategies, whether customised, and their influence on the participants.

Paper long abstract:

The importance of leadership capacity in decentralised local government (LG) institutions have been emphasised because aside governance, LGs have a developmental role such as poverty reduction, quality public service delivery and accountability; as such LG institutions have found that strengthening capacity for designing policies and programme interventions is fundamental to achieving sustainable local development goals. research has found that developing customised or training strategies that are tailored to their work help Leaders build capacity to create and sustain the vision, inspire, model, prioritize, make decisions, provide direction, innovate and motivate others in an effort to achieving the mission of the organisation. The main objective of this article is to assess participants' views on the training programmes they have particiapted in, whether the programmes were customised or more tailored to their core mandates, the type(s)of strategies used, and how the training strategies influenced outcomes such as peer-to-peer connections, information sharing, empowerment, and learning to lead to the achievement of their functional mandate, which is local level development. The study employed the mixed method approach including qualitative, quantitative and documentary reviews. questionnaires and interview guides were used to collect data. The research found that LG institutions in Ghana designed training programmes that are tailored to participant's core mandates. A chi-square test of independence also found a strong association between the strategies and outcomes such as peer-to-peer connections, information sharing, empowerment, and learning. The research results have practical implications for LG institutions in terms of design of training programmes and leadership capacity building.