Seven reasons why training and personal development don’t work‌.
by Anna Beckwith www.smithbeckwith.com
Seven reasons why training and personal development don’t work….
I’ve spent over ten years in training and development. Whilst I’ve met hundreds of course delegates who love learning and actively try to get as much out of each learning experience as possible, it’s always amazed me that many people will attend training courses or undergo coaching on the same subject time and time again, without it appearing to make any difference to their lives whatsoever. From an individual’s point of view, it’s important that you don’t fall into one of these traps, or you’ll severely curtail your ability to learn and apply new skills. From an organisations perspective, addressing some of the these issues before participants even get into the training course will help to ensure that you get the most value for money from any training and development intervention. Here are seven of the most common reasons why, for a large number of people, training doesn’t work…..
Reason # 1. The ancient Chinese philosophers had it right. He who knows but does not do….does not know. I was training a group of middle managers recently, on performance management. I asked the question ‘OK, who knows what SMART goals are.’ It’s fairly basic management stuff, really: Specific, Measurable, Aligned (or agreed or achievable) Relevant (or realistic) and Time-bound…. and every hand went up . I asked a follow up question ‘so how many of you write down your objectives in life and work as SMART goals, work to them and review them regularly – even your behavioural goals?’ Not a single hand went up. Here’s the thing. People KNOW what they should do. They’ve read the theories. They’ve heard to keynote speakers. They’ve bought the books. They’ve even been on the training course. They just don’t DO anything to put their learning into action.
Reason # 2. Most people will blame ‘the system’ rather than themselves. You’ll have experienced this yourself: someone comes to you for your expert advice on something, you provide that advice and they then proceed to ignore it completely and do their own thing...which, more often than not, doesn’t work. As a consultant I’ve been through this a number of times! Few people will take the responsibility of looking at themselves and thinking ‘what did I do wrong – how could I have done better?’. It’s easier – and less of a personal challenge - to blame something or someone else….even if they didn’t follow their advice in the first place. We find this a LOT in corporate training. Some people will find every excuse under the sun NOT to implement the training - their boss, their corporate culture, their direct reports, their department. I’ve lost count of the amount of times that someone has said “Anna, you don’t know how it is. In MY department / company / situation / whatever”…and proceeded to explain why they couldn’t possibly apply the learning themselves.
At the end of the day, on a few occasions they might be right. For the most part, though, it’s lack of motivation to apply the training that is the key issue. And the solution, to put it bluntly, to that lies nowhere else but with themselves....which can be a challenging issue for a trainer to address.
Reason # 3. Most people will do nothing with the (free) information that you give them. I never cease to be amazed at how much valuable content is given away free on the internet. At first, I thought this was a dangerous marketing strategy…and then noticed something strange happening: most people will hoard information and not do anything with it. (A little like all those training course manuals gathering dust in the bottom drawer of your desk!) Recently, a friend of mine told me that he was setting up a business and asked me for some advice (I’d set my own business up a few years beforehand). I gave him my best tips, and told him of some of the mistakes that I’d made in the hope that he would be able to avoid them. I also pointed him towards a free e-course that I’d written and that was available on line, which contained more information about the pre-planning stages (which is where he was at) of setting up a business. ‘Great’ he said ‘I’ll download it’. Did he download the e-book? No. Did he ignore my advice? Yes. Has he managed to set up a successful business. No. I guess the information is there if and when he needs it…but I’m not holding my breath. The point is, with personal development and with training it’s just easier not to change anything. Easier to stay in our comfort zone. What this means for the corporate learning and development department is this: successful corporate training is as much about giving people reasons for changing their behaviours as providing them with the tools and techniques. The tools and techniques on their own is not enough.
Reason # 4. Most people will listen to people who have failed at something in order to justify not taking action, rather than following the advice of people who are successful. I used to know someone who was a very successful network marketer. In his best month, he earned over £52 000 (around $100,000 at that time). He was a very generous man when it came to taking time to give advice and guidance to anyone who wanted to be successful in MLM, as he was. However, he still came across people who would say to him “it’s alright for you – I’ve got a friend who tried MLM and it didn’t work’. Let’s look at the logic of that for a moment, shall we. Supposing you knew someone who dropped out of College. If they told you ‘College sucks! Don’t bother going!” Would you believe them? Of course not! You’d not take the advice of someone who’d flunked…would you?? Most people would rather listen to someone who has failed to achieve and say ‘look, it doesn’t work’ , than to take the advice of someone who HAS achieved. Why? Because it’s easier and it takes less effort to align yourself with failure than to take action to succeed. A similar mindset also exists in the corporate world. It can usually be seen in the ‘We tried that before and it didn’t work’ approach. When someone focuses on a colleague who tried something and failed as an excuse not to tackle the issue themselves. Or concentrates on their upbringing,
circumstances, education, boss etc and the many people 'like them' who have failed, as a reason for NOT achieving themselves.
Reason # 5. Most people think they know it all already. I have an acquaintance to whom I occasionally show business opportunities that I’ve come across. Actually, I don’t any more. Why? Because every time I did, he’d pick holes in it and tell me why, in his opinion, the company’s strategy wasn’t right, why it wasn’t going to succeed, why the product wasn’t needed…and so on. To be honest, I don’t need a wet blanket like that hanging around, but more to the point…he really thinks he knows it all! I‘ve met a similar mindset amongst some senior managers who seem to think that they are done learning, and ‘arrived’ some years previously in their careers when they first earned the title of manager on their door! The simple fact is that all medical evidence points to the fact that the human brain continues to learn from the moment we’re born to the moment we die. Learning is something we can and should continue to do throughout our lives…yet most people will finish college, attend a few professional training courses throughout their career…and miss the HUGE opportunity that we all have for learning, growing, developing, and advancing our ambitions. There are certain subject areas in which people think that they are already very good…and frequently aren’t. Communication skills is a case in point. Everyone likes to think that they are a good (or at least adequate) communicator…and yet many people are not as good as they would like to believe. I was once training a group of accountants who had asked for an advanced presentation skills masterclass as they were all very “experienced presenters”. It soon became clear that they might have been experienced in that they had given a great many presentations…but it was no indicator of quality. They genuinely struggled to walk and talk at the same time, and their understanding of body language was minimal. Even if we think we know something, we can still learn from a different perspective on the same thing. As a trainer, I come across this all the time: I could be covering the same subject area every week for a year – I’d still be learning new things, as each participant brings a different perspective, observation and experience to the course.
Reason # 6. Most people will work harder for their boss than they will for themselves. This is probably more relevant to personal development than to training. If your boss said “if you learn some new skills and put in the hours, I’ll pay you $50 k a month” – you’d do it, wouldn’t you?? Most people won’t take the time and the opportunity to work for themselves to achieve that…even though successful coaches, business leaders and personal development gurus are falling over themselves to help them to achieve their dreams. Those of you in traditional work environments will recognise people who are proactive about their own careers, and those who react to demands from the boss, legislation and whatever else, unwittingly adopting something of a victim mentality and not realising the genuine extent of their
influence over their own direction. Again, it’s easier and less of a risk to have someone else tell you what to do…and to blame when things don’t go they way you want them to.
Reason # 7. Most people don’t realise that they have a choice. This is perhaps the saddest reason why personal development and training can fail. Most people see themselves of victims of circumstance, of a difficult family upbringing, of a culture or society, of a work environment or a boss. These are usually the ones who have been ‘sent on the course by their boss’ rather than making a conscious choice to attend. Most people don’t realise they have a choice – OK, sometimes it can feel like the choice between a rock and a hard place, but most often, you DO have a choice. A choice whether or not to take responsibility for your life or to blame the system. A choice whether or not to ignore this article, or to take steps to develop yourself and your career, and maximise your potential. A choice whether or not to learn as much as possible from that training course you’ve been sent on…for your own benefit, not just your boss’s or the organisations. Realising that you have this choice is the first step to personal development and lifelong learning. It can be a challenge to acknowledge it, but it can also be the liberating and empowering factor that sets you on the road towards achieving your ambitions. For the individual, my challenge is this: be more than ‘Most People’. Join the relative few who embrace learning and actively seek to learn, develop, grow, and fulfil their personal potential. For organisations and trainers the question is 'how far are you going at the moment to address these 7 reasons?' If you're not, you'll have to accept that a significant proportion of your training budget could be going down the drain mid to long term. Training effectively is as much – if not more - about addressing these deep rooted attitudes and behaviours as about providing the theories tools and techniques to do the job.
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