Let me share something that’ll almost certainly get me banned from the development business: 73% of the skills development programs I’ve attended over the past 20+ years were a total waste of time and resources.
You know the style I’m describing. We’ve all been there. Those spirit-killing workshops where some well-paid facilitator swoops in from the big city to lecture you about game-changing methodologies while displaying presentation presentations that look like they were designed in the stone age. Attendees stays there fighting sleep, counting down the hours until the merciful end, then walks back to their desk and continues doing precisely what they were performing before.
The Harsh Truth No One Desires
That fateful day, early morning. Standing in the parking area adjacent to our main workplace, witnessing my top team member put his private possessions into a pickup. Third departure in recent weeks. Everyone citing the identical reason: workplace culture problems.
That’s business jargon for leadership is toxic.
The most painful component? I honestly believed I was a competent supervisor. Many years advancing through the chain from entry-level employee to senior leadership. I knew the work aspects fully, exceeded every performance metric, and felt confident on running a well-organized team.
What I missed was that I was steadily damaging team morale through total incompetence in all aspects that genuinely is significant for leadership.
What We Get Wrong About Skills Development
Too many local firms manage education like that fitness membership they signed up for in early year. Noble intentions, initial enthusiasm, then spans of disappointment about not applying it appropriately. Firms plan for it, staff join reluctantly, and stakeholders acts like it’s producing a difference while silently wondering if it’s just costly procedural obligation.
Conversely, the firms that honestly prioritize enhancing their employees are crushing the competition.
Study industry giants. Not precisely a tiny participant in the Australian commercial environment. They dedicate approximately substantial amounts of their full payroll on skills building and advancement. Seems too much until you recognize they’ve evolved from a local beginning to a international force valued at over 50 billion dollars.
There’s a clear connection.
The Competencies No One Covers in University
Academic institutions are brilliant at offering conceptual material. What they’re failing to address is showing the people skills that truly shape career advancement. Skills like social intelligence, navigating hierarchy, offering comments that encourages rather than discourages, or knowing when to resist unrealistic deadlines.
These aren’t natural gifts — they’re learnable skills. But you don’t gain them by coincidence.
Take this case, a capable professional from the area, was regularly passed over for progression despite being highly skilled. His boss eventually advised he attend a communication skills program. His quick response? My communication is adequate. If colleagues can’t understand straightforward instructions, that’s their problem.
After some time, after mastering how to adjust his approach to multiple listeners, he was supervising a team of multiple engineers. Same abilities, similar intelligence — but vastly better results because he’d developed the talent to connect with and impact colleagues.
Why Technical Skills Aren’t Enough
Here’s what nobody explains to you when you get your first leadership position: being good at doing the work is absolutely unrelated from being effective at directing staff.
As an skilled worker, results was obvious. Follow the plans, use the correct materials, test everything twice, complete on time. Defined requirements, tangible products, little complications.
Overseeing employees? Wholly different arena. You’re handling emotions, drivers, individual situations, conflicting priorities, and a thousand aspects you can’t control.
The Learning Advantage
Successful businesspeople calls exponential growth the most powerful force. Skills building works the similar manner, except instead of financial returns, it’s your capabilities.
Every fresh skill enhances prior learning. Every workshop delivers you systems that make the subsequent development activity more powerful. Every training joins concepts you didn’t even know existed.
Look at this situation, a coordinator from Geelong, started with a simple planning course several years back. Seemed easy enough — better coordination, task management, task assignment.
Not long after, she was accepting managerial functions. Twelve months after that, she was leading major programs. These days, she’s the newest manager in her firm’s history. Not because she automatically advanced, but because each training session exposed hidden potential and provided opportunities to growth she couldn’t have conceived originally.
What Professional Development Actually Does Nobody Mentions
Disregard the company language about upskilling and staff advancement. Let me describe you what education actually delivers when it functions:
It Changes Everything Favorably
Education doesn’t just teach you different competencies — it teaches you continuous improvement. Once you recognize that you can gain competencies you originally assumed were beyond you, your outlook shifts. You begin considering difficulties uniquely.
Instead of considering I’m not capable, you begin realizing I require training for that.
One professional, a project manager from Western Australia, expressed it beautifully: Before that delegation workshop, I felt supervision was something you were born with. Now I see it’s just a compilation of acquirable abilities. Makes you ponder what other beyond reach things are simply just learnable abilities.
The Bottom Line Results
Senior management was in the beginning questioning about the financial commitment in management development. Legitimately — results weren’t guaranteed up to that point.
But the outcomes demonstrated success. Employee retention in my team dropped from 35% annually to hardly any. Customer satisfaction scores rose because processes functioned better. Work output increased because team members were more invested and taking ownership of outcomes.
The entire financial commitment in development programs? About limited resources over almost 24 months. The expense of finding and preparing new employees we didn’t have to engage? Well over significant returns.
What I Got Wrong About Learning
Before this experience, I thought professional development was for failing workers. Improvement initiatives for difficult workers. Something you engaged in when you were experiencing problems, not when you were achieving goals.
Completely misguided perspective.
The most successful managers I meet now are the ones who continuously develop. They engage in development, learn constantly, pursue coaching, and regularly search for methods to enhance their capabilities.
Not because they’re inadequate, but because they know that leadership skills, like practical competencies, can continuously be advanced and enhanced.
Start Where You Are
Education isn’t a drain — it’s an asset in becoming more capable, more efficient, and more fulfilled in your work. The consideration isn’t whether you can finance to commit to enhancing your organization.
It’s whether you can handle not to.
Because in an marketplace where AI is transforming jobs and machines are taking over processes, the reward goes to exclusively human talents: innovation, social awareness, complex problem-solving, and the talent to navigate ambiguous situations.
These competencies don’t appear by coincidence. They demand conscious building through structured learning experiences.
Your business enemies are at this moment building these capabilities. The only matter is whether you’ll participate or get left behind.
Begin somewhere with skills building. Start with one specific skill that would make an immediate difference in your existing role. Try one program, read one book, or engage one mentor.
The compound effect of sustained improvement will amaze you.
Because the optimal time to initiate improvement was in the past. The alternative time is this moment.
The Final Word
That Tuesday morning in the car park seeing valuable employees depart was one of the hardest business events of my employment history. But it was also the trigger for becoming the sort of supervisor I’d forever imagined I was but had never truly gained to be.
Training didn’t just enhance my executive talents — it entirely revolutionized how I tackle difficulties, associations, and improvement chances.
If you’re examining this and believing Maybe I need development, cease deliberating and begin acting.
Your upcoming self will reward you.
And so will your team.
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