Message to Decision-Makers: Why Training Doesn't Transfer
“Most leader and team development programs don’t produce significant changes in behavior. The evidence of this fact has been in front of us for many, many years. Talented trainers present excellent programs, participants usually enjoy the programs, and many of them come away enlightened and motivated. But in most cases, many months later, there are few if any noticeable changes in behavior to justify all the expense and effort.”
Of course he wasn’t the first to say this. His “shocking” statement was actually just the latest reminder. In the world of HRD, this challenge has been referred to for over a decade as “transfer of training,” the fact that what is learned in the classroom often doesn’t transfer to improved behavior patterns on the job—where it counts.
As he said, it’s usually not the fault of the trainers or their programs. These programs, if presented in the context of organizational support, alignment with business goals and performance shortfalls, on-the-job application, ongoing feedback, coaching, accountability and integration with organizational systems, would result in lasting changes in behavior and a direct impact on the bottom line.
Whoa! That’s quite a context! So paying for world-class training isn’t enough? It was hard enough for decision-makers to justify the considerable time and money for the programs in the first place, and we expect them to invest in these other actions before, during and after training?
It’s important for them to know why. For senior leaders to make this commitment, even if it means actually fulfilling their expectations for results and getting a substantial return for their investment, they need to understand what it takes to make lasting changes in leader behavior—why it’s so hard to achieve transfer of training.
The ultimate answer to “why” comes not from HRD, but from neurology.
Skill learning is not an event, but a gradual physical process that takes place in the brain. In the case of every ingrained behavior pattern, the dendrites of specific brain cells grow and connect to other brain cells, forming synaptic connections. Thus a skill is, at bottom, a behavior pattern that is driven by a unique network of interconnected brain cells. A leadership skill is a complex network of brain cells that coordinates perception, analysis and decision-making, triggering action.
This is the physical reality of behavior patterns. No neural network, no skill. Or put a different way, if you want to improve a leadership skill in training, the program must stimulate the brain to grow new neural connections, forming a more effective pathway. What stimulates dendrites to grow and connect? Behavior. Repeated behavior — lots of repeated behavior. Practice and more practice. Anyone who has learned a complex physical skill knows this is true. It takes an amazing amount of practice to learn how to hit a golf ball with a sand wedge, or to serve a tennis ball for a winner, and so on. Hit a thousand golf balls. Hit a thousand tennis balls. And these skills are not as complex as leadership skills.
Before a skill is ingrained, the brain must try to make the behavior pattern happen without the neural network. So even with a difficult effort of concentration, performing the skill will feel awkward and frustrating. After the connections are physically in place, the effort will seem like second nature — easy, automatic. And best of all, once the brain cells are connected, the person “owns” the skill. It’s physical — so hard to disconnect that the skill may now be considered permanent.
To compound this challenge, leaders in training programs aren’t learning brand new behavior patterns. More precisely, they are making changes in old habits, behavior patterns they learned and reinforced during the decades of their lives that preceded the training. So learning new patterns means working against the comfortable old patterns. This represents a significant problem for everyone involved in the training because the old habits are deeply ingrained. And because it takes months of consistent, persistent repetitions of the new behavior pattern to connect the neurons, the old patterns are always there to fall back on when frustration occurs, or when there is a lack of reinforcement in the environment.
Message to your executive decision-makers:
Pay attention to these realities of leader development. There’s a physical, brain-based reason why paying for world-class training programs is not enough to get the results you’re looking for. Now you understand why you need to commit upfront support, establish feedback and reinforcement programs and remove barriers to on-the-job application of skills — if you want training to “stick.”
- Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., CEO, Performance Support Systems, Inc.
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