What’s Actually Wrong With Corporate Training Programs (Plus What Actually Creates Real Change)
Look, I’m going to be brutally honest about the garbage that passes for professional development these days. I’ve been managing training sessions across the eastern seaboard for the past nearly two decades, and frankly? About three quarters of what I see makes me want to quit the industry entirely.
Last month l sat through a “leadership excellence workshop” that cost my customer nearly five grand each. That’s serious cash. For what? Endless presentations full of meaningless jargon and role playing exercises that made grown executives do things that would embarrass a kindergartener. Seriously! I’m not making this up.
Let me share the dirty secret of the training business. The majority is created by folks with zero real world experience, run a company, or dealt with real workplace drama. They’ve got their fancy certificates from institutes I’ve never heard of, but ask them to handle a difficult conversation with an underperforming employee? Complete silence.
The Real Problem Nobody Talks About
The training business has this weird obsession with making everything complicated. I was at a conference in the Gold Coast last year where a presenter spent way too long explaining a “revolutionary new framework” for giving feedback. Ninety minutes! It boiled down to: tell people what they did, when they did it, and be decent. That’s it. But somehow they’d turned it into a 47 step process with acronyms and flowcharts.
What happens after training is even worse. Companies throw huge budgets on these programs, everyone agrees passionately during the sessions, takes their little workbooks back to the office, and then… nothing. The workbooks end up in desk drawers alongside old business cards and USB cables that don’t fit anything anymore.
I had a client in Adelaide who spent $23,000 on communication skills training for their management team. After 26 weeks, their employee satisfaction scores had actually gone down. Why? Because the training taught them to speak in corporate buzzwords instead of just having normal conversations.
This is what drives me absolutely mental. When I point this stuff out at business meetups, everyone says I’m right, but then they keep booking the same trainers who deliver the same recycled content. It’s like we are all trapped in some sort of endless cycle of mediocrity.
The Things That Create Real Change (Hint: It’s Simpler Than You Think)
Having seen countless training initiatives crash and burn, I’ve learned that only a handful of approaches actually stick. All other stuff is overpriced showbiz.
What works best: people learning from people. Not the formal mentoring schemes where someone gets matched with a mentor they’ve never met and they force conversation over lattes. I’m talking about getting small teams of colleagues from similar roles together regularly to actually solve real issues they’re facing right now.
I created a network for production leaders in factories across the outer suburbs. No formal structure or rules, just casual chats over a meal about the stuff that keeps them awake at 3am. They’ve been meeting for longer than most TV shows run. That’s impressive staying power! That’s longer than some people stay in jobs.
The team tackled everything from handling problematic contractors to keeping people connected while working from home. Genuine problems, workable fixes, tangible outcomes. One of the guys figured out how to cut his team’s overtime by nearly half just by adapting what another member had tried six months earlier.
Another effective method: workplace observation with people who are actually skilled at what they do. Not job shadowing with any random person with spare time, but with people who’ve really figured out how to do things well.
I set up a connection between a marketing professional to spend three days with the head of marketing at one of Australia’s biggest companies. Just 72 hours. She learned more about executing strategies and dealing with internal politics than she had in countless workshops and courses. The senior marketing leader loved it too because it forced her to examine her own decision making approach.
The trick is finding the right matches. You can’t just pair random people and hope for the best. But when you get it right? Amazing things occur.
What really sticks: real application: project based learning where people have to apply something new while they’re learning it. Not fake scenarios or ancient case studies that aren’t relevant, but real projects with real consequences.
I worked with a financial services business where we found actual workflow improvements each participant could make in their role. They spent the training course developing those improvements, getting feedback from colleagues, improving, tracking results. By the end of the program, they’d already fixed real improvements and could see the difference in their daily work.
Common Mistakes in Training
This might sound inconsistent, but typical courses are overly ambitious. They want to completely reshape someone’s entire leadership style in two days. It’s completely unrealistic.
The best changes I’ve seen happen when people concentrate on one specific skill and practice it until it becomes second nature. Like truly instinctive, not just until they can apply to do it when they’re thinking about it.
I had one executive who was terrible at giving constructive feedback. Instead of putting her through standard development courses, we focused solely on feedback conversations. She practiced the same basic structure until she could do it instinctively Three months later, her team’s performance had increased substantially, not because she’d become a brilliant boss immediately, but because she’d mastered one crucial skill properly.
Another issue that annoys me is the obsession with behavioural profiling. DISC, Myers Briggs, personality typing, communication style indicators. Companies throw thousands on these things, and for what? So people can say “Oh, I’m an INFJ, that’s why I hate meetings” and use it as an excuse to escape uncomfortable situations?
They’re not entirely useless, self awareness is important. But these tests often become crutches instead of tools for growth. I’ve seen teams where people won’t collaborate because their profiles suggest incompatibility. It’s astrology for company people.
Let’s Talk ROI
Time to address the money side because that’s what genuinely important. The majority of development initiatives lack metrics beyond “feedback forms” and attendance figures. It’s like judging a restaurant based on how many people finish their meals instead of whether the content was valuable.
Successful development monitors actual improvements and business impact. Concrete metrics, not subjective opinions. The professional circles I set up? They track actual problems resolved and costs reduced. The job shadowing arrangements? We measure skill improvements through 360 degree feedback and regular evaluations.
One manufacturing business calculated that their peer learning network saved them nearly 350K in its first year through process improvements alone. That’s a pretty decent return on the cost of monthly pizza and meeting rooms.
What It All Means
Look, I don’t have all the answers. I’ve made plenty of mistakes over the years. I once designed a leadership course that was so mind numbing I dozed off while presenting. Serioulsy. The client went silent forever.
But I’ve learned that the best professional development happens when people are solving real problems with real consequences, getting guidance from practitioners with genuine experience, and focusing on specific skills they can practice until they become second nature.
Everything else? It’s just expensive theater that makes executives feel like they’re developing their workforce without actually creating real improvement.
Perhaps I’m being unfair. Maybe some of those tree hugging exercises actually work for some people. But after nearly two decades of watching companies invest in development that doesn’t last, I’d rather spend the budget on things that actually make a difference.
