Purpose: The purpose of this empirical paper is to illustrate two leadership development programs in Swedish agriculture. Further, it is to compare the two programs related to outcomes in terms of barriers and challenges in the development process and suggest possible ways to continue the leadership development for business model innovation in the agricultural sector.

Design/methodology/approach: The data collection includes 54 interviews and a survey sent to 109 entrepreneursin Sweden. The interviews were collected with (i) entrepreneurs who participated in the Project ‘Ledarpraktikan’ (‘Leader practice’) (LP) 2013 and (ii) entrepreneurs who participated in the project ‘Lean Agriculture’ (LA) 2012. The survey was sent in the spring 2017 to 109 entrepreneurs (37 from ´LP´, 35 from ´LA´ and 37 not having participated in any of the programs called control group ´CG´). The overall response rate in the survey is 68% (51% from ´LP´, 80% from ´LA´ and 73% from ‘CG’. Content analysis and descriptive analysis have been used in the study.

Findings: From the qualitative studies, we can see that entrepreneurs having participated in ‘LP’ perceive that they have acquired deeper knowledge and understanding regarding selfleadership than entrepreneurs participating in ´LA´. The latter entrepreneurs also have described their need for more knowledge in self-leadership. The entrepreneurs participating in ´LA´ have, through analysis of the day-to-day work, acquired a more developed systematic working environment. The comparison between the three groups in the survey show that there are several similarities between the groups, for example they don´t see institutional rules to be barriers in their firm development process. We have found differences in barriers for business development in terms of (i) growth willingness, (ii) lack of employees, (iii) lack of support and (iv) lack of spare time.

Practical implications: There is a need for further leadership development knowledge in Swedish agriculture, both for entrepreneurs in the development of their business models and for agricultural advisors regarding their new role as coaches instead of traditional advisers.

Policy implications: It is important that organizations supporting financial solutions for the agricultural businesses also support leadership development programmes in the industry.

Originality/value: The originality with the paper is that there has been two large analyses regarding two leadership development programs in Swedish agriculture, which is unique in this industry.