And when we say 'doesn't work', what does that mean? Well, in short, improved behaviour and skill demonstrated back in the workplace, a new default setting in each delegate, sustainable over time. If the organisation investing in the training has got it right, then the improved behaviour and skill will deliver the performance improvements required, along with a return on the investment that all involved would be duly proud of.

Furthermore, how about 'done averagely?’. What does that look like? Well, that’s a whole chapter in itself but suffice it to say one could pick from any number of 'howlers' that we see all too often. How about not ensuring sufficient clarity and robustness of why the training is being done in the first place, or omitting to set any kind of measurement criteria. What about partnering with a supplier that does nothing to assist in building real commitment amongst the delegates, or ensuring that the actual learning interventions are tailored, relevant and inspiring to them?

By way of example, let’s say you want to run a course for people managers to be, well, better at ‘managing people’. This is a complex area, as there are many components of being a great (or a poor) people manager.

So let’s take just one aspect of being a people manager that we work regularly with, that of giving team members high quality feedback. This includes both positive and corrective, improvement based feedback, and whilst the latter is clearly harder for most of us, we shouldn’t assume that the former is easy, and that there is enough of it out there in the workplace, because there simply isn’t.

So if we are running a one day course for people managers on let's say ‘giving (better) feedback’, which could also be badged ‘how to have difficult conversations’, ask yourself how effective a traditional course is likely to be. A day with one trainer doing lots of presenting and talking, loads of slides showing models and theory, a few delegate discussions, and each delegate making some commitments to what they will do at the end.

So let’s start with the ‘before’...with most ‘training courses’, there is little or no assessment or ‘gap analysis’ prior to the course, so it’s essentially a ‘sheep dip.’ As we have already stated, this is the first issue, as it’s highly unlikely that the delegates are walking through the door in any way committed and clear on why they are there, and what success looks like, let alone raring to go.

Now let’s move on to the actual training itself …even if the delegates are committed, asking people to improve and do something that they find inherently difficult, challenging, or even scary, is never going to be improved to any degree if people are merely told how to do it (in a text book kind of way).

Even if they are allowed to discuss how to do it, this has limited impact ...being shown how to do it has some impact, but what they really need is the magic ingredient, that of being able to PRACTISE it in a no consequence, low risk environment and work on it, and get feedback on it. Delegates need to be able to personalise it, to try new approaches and experiment, in a way that they are highly unlikely to do in a real ‘live’ situation.

So one of the relevant quotes we use about this very thing is captured by the rower Ben Hunt-Davis, a gold medal winner at the Sydney Olympics, and in his book, ‘Will it Make the Boat Go Faster?’ he said…