by Venchito Tampon | Last Updated on December 7, 2024
One of our Rainmakers training clients approached us recently and told me that they’ve invested a lot of money in previous training but have never seen its effectiveness on their employees.
It’s a sad reality I’ve seen in many companies. Yet, many continue doing leadership training, whether in-house or outsourced, without evaluating if the exact training impacts results.
In this post, we’ll examine why leadership training fails and what to do about it (and what you should avoid) so you can maximize the training investment.
Common Reasons Leadership Training Fails
1. Lack of Clear Objectives
Many training programs, including topics on leadership and management, start without clear objectives. As common sense as it sounds, HR teams hire outsourced training providers without first understanding their employees’ needs.
They would consider hiring a leadership trainer, but the reality is that the root cause analysis of their needs went beyond just leadership—examples would be a lack of performance management systems or conflicts rampant among team members that can’t be easily solved by just doing leadership training.
Without specific goals, leadership training lacks focus. Therefore, it is difficult to measure success.
2. Generic Training Content
Leadership programs often use one-size-fits-all content. This is rampant in many public seminars, given the variety of participants.
However, as soon as they conduct in-house programs for their companies, few companies customize their leadership training to address the language, context, behavior, and existing challenges of their participants, making the training irrelevant and ineffective.
3. Lack of Support or Buy-in from the Management Team
Training programs sometimes need more buy-in from senior leaders or top management. Without visible support, participants may not take the training seriously. As we know, leaders must model the behaviors of learning, unlearning, and relearning in today’s agile environment.
You can have the best corporate trainer or facilitator. Still, without full support from top management to invest in leadership training, it wouldn’t even start taking action on any available plans.
4. No Follow-Up After Training
Leadership training often ends without follow-up or reinforcement. If it’s not designed specifically to elevate participants’ skills and knowledge, it becomes a one-time event.
At most, 10 to 30% can only be retained in someone’s mind. You wouldn’t see measurable impact without even applying it and following through.
If you’re not intentional in leadership training, participants will return to their routines, and new skills may be forgotten. Without practice, coaching, and feedback, training benefits fade quickly.
5. Ignoring Organizational Culture
Training programs may clash with the company’s culture. For example, training that emphasizes collaboration might not succeed if the organization values hierarchy.
Participants may feel disconnected from the training content and sometimes view it as an additional activity rather than a means to improve the leadership team.
If this happens, you will see high resistance to learning in training, which could affect the entire learning experience.
6. Poor Trainer Selection
The quality of the trainer can make or break a leadership program.
Trainers who need more expertise or connect with participants can reduce engagement and learning. By understanding their participants’ context, trainers offer templated and generic content that people in the room find irrelevant and disconnected from their daily work.
Be selective when hiring a corporate training provider. Find a company with a proven track record of providing effective corporate training programs that drive business impact to organizations.
7. Focusing Solely on Theoretical Knowledge
Some training programs emphasize theory without providing practical application. Participants need help to connect concepts to real-world scenarios, limiting their ability to apply what they learn.
This is where training design comes in. The trainer or outsourced facilitator must know how to design training to include activities and workshops that can attend to different learning styles of participants. Given that not all learners are purely listening to every content, some would need to have kinesthetic or visual activities to grasp the lessons better.
8. Overloading Participants with Information
Cramming too much content into a short timeframe can overwhelm participants, making it difficult for them to retain information and implement it effectively.
You can’t expect your participants to retain all that information, so better yet, be observant and structure the training to be more learner-centric, allowing participants to digest the content.
You need to properly design the training and possibly recommend an extended duration, such as a two-day program for leadership training, for instance, to allow more facilitating of group discussions and case studies.
9. Failure to Measure Results
Many companies need to assess the impact of their leadership training. Without data, it’s impossible to determine whether the training achieved its goals.
A training evaluation method must be used for every leadership training. This ensures that each participant will get critical takeaways and practical lessons from the training, measuring the knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need to acquire from the program.
How to Make Leadership Training Effective and Successful
This should be the next question after knowing why leadership training fails. After all, if some programs don’t exceed certain expectations, it’s better to avoid them at all costs and ensure you’re getting the most value out of each leadership training program.
Here’s how to make leadership training effective and successful.
1. Identify Specific Training Needs
Conduct a thorough assessment to identify gaps in leadership skills.
Set clear and measurable objectives before starting any training program (or training implementation).
It should all start with a training needs analysis. Training needs analysis identifies the performance gaps of each individual, team, or department to ensure employees possess the necessary knowledge, skills, and attitude after the training has been conducted.
Are they lacking in certain skills like leadership communication, strategic thinking, culture building, influencing, or creating a high-performance team?
Be more specific in your training goals. Instead of simply saying, “I want to improve the customer service skills of my participants”. You could do more research and create a training objective of, “I want to increase our CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) by 20% (from 69% to 89%).”
Using this approach, you can now measure the training effectiveness weeks or months after it has been given to your employees.
2. Customize, Personalize, and Individualize
The best thing about conducting in-house training programs is the luxury of the trainer’s customization, personalization, and individualization of the training design and delivery based on the context of the organization and individual participants.
Customizing content means addressing your organization’s specific needs. This must include knowing the company’s mission, values, and core values so as to align your training delivery—the words and language you use—with their existing context.
With customization, you include case studies, examples, and scenarios that reflect real challenges participants face, not any problem the industry faces. This makes the training relatable and actionable.
This is essential for leadership training as you’re talking to specific groups that will dictate the culture of their teams and organization. So, understanding where they’re coming from will help you and the participants connect to the message and make the training worthwhile for learning.
3. Involve Participants in Design
Engage participants in designing the training. Conduct a focus group discussion with selected participants so you can ask questions related to their current challenges as a leader.
Ask as many questions as possible to identify needs, challenges, and expectations. This is one of the best ways to customize your leadership training, as you can deliver it in a way that speaks directly to the learners.
After all, leadership training is not about you. It is about the experience of learners.
4. Utilize the Power of Multimodal Training
Today’s new best practice for facilitators, trainers, and speakers is using multimode elements to engage participants. These include using online survey tools (e.g., Mentimeter), interactive workshops, role-playing, group discussions, and case studies to keep participants engaged throughout the training.
It also helps better retain knowledge and concepts. This is why a solid training program that includes breaks is necessary.
Focus on a few critical topics per session. Use spaced learning techniques to break content into manageable parts over time. Allow participants to practice and reflect on what they learn before moving on.
5. Provide Continuous Learning Opportunities
Leadership development is an ongoing process. Establishing a follow-up plan for continuous learning helps build momentum and upskill and reskill to enhance the competencies of your leaders.
To reinforce key concepts, schedule periodic check-ins, workshops, or coaching sessions. You may also offer access to resources like online courses, webinars, and mentorship programs.
6. Integrate Training with Organizational Strategy
Link leadership training to the company’s strategic goals.
Show participants how improving their leadership skills contributes to achieving these goals. You may include this as part of your introduction to the module to instill the compelling reason (“why”) for the leadership training.
This approach better frames the training as a necessary investment rather than just another activity to attend to.
7. Foster a Culture of Learning
If you’re part of the HR and learning and development, encourage a growth mindset within your organization.
Recognize and reward employees who demonstrate improved leadership skills. This reinforces the value of development. Reinforcement is critical for people to accept better and manage change as they embark on a new journey of growth and development.
Be a Lifelong Learner-Leader
Leadership training fails when it lacks focus, relevance, and follow-up. To make training effective, companies must set clear objectives, customize content, and ensure ongoing support.
Leadership development is not a one-time event but a continuous journey. With the right strategies, organizations can create programs that deliver lasting results.
By addressing these common pitfalls and implementing the solutions provided, companies can transform leadership training into a valuable tool for growth and success.
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