Why Training Your Employees Does Not Work!
Author: Irma Gonzalez

If you are a business leader who spent the last 10 or 20 years in your business, how many training sessions have you attended? How many training sessions have you sent your people to?

I know I went to plenty of training sessions especially back in the 90’s. These were training sessions mostly offsite about interesting topics.

These were training sessions that would relieve us from going to the office for a day or two. For many who hate their jobs that was quite a relief. Of course, the subject of employees who hate their job is completely another newsletter (coming soon).

For now, let’s stick with training, what is it? And why it does not work. As an example let’s talk about a training session from those days, whose title stuck with me: The Power of Effective Listening.

It was a seminar given by a powerful speaker and I kept the materials because I thought I would refer to them one day. Have I referred to them in the last 12 years? No, of course I haven’t.

And what do I recall? I recall some key points but aside from that, I recall and use very little.

So, why does training does not work? Why is it that when we go to a ‘great’ training session, we feel we are changed, but very soon we settle back into our own selves?

First of all, in most cases, there is no follow up for all the training we receive. Since in training we are expected to follow up on our own.

Training is beneficial up to certain level in our development. Training works when we are learning a brand new skill. But the bottom line is training does not work when our goals are bigger since we require individual attention to reach them.

D. Logan and J. King authors of ‘The Coaching Revolution’ use a very clear comparison between training and coaching. They say that when we first enter college a single professor can teach sometimes over 100 students in one classroom.

As we progress in our college education the classroom size is considerably reduced.
In fact, by the time we are in graduate school classroom size has been reduced to 25 or less students. It is clear the attention a professor is giving students is becoming more individualized.

Now, the student desires to become an expert in her field, so she enrolls in a doctoral level program where the class will have 5 students.

By the time this student works on her dissertation she will have 3 or 4 professors in her committee. The ratio of individual attention is now almost 4-1 in the student’s favor.

It is clear how it is difficult for the training model to include follow up directly with the individual, since there can’t be individualized attention.

And unless the training is absolutely essential in this persons’ work it is very possible they will NOT make changes in their behavior to help them reach the goals the training was trying to achieve.

Logan and King’s put it very clearly, ‘Today’s managers and employees have to refine and redefine their skills to become global leaders in their field’.

To achieve becoming a global leader a business coach is absolutely necessary.

To unlock the unrealized potential of managers and employees individualized attention is required. And that is one of the benefits that coaching provides us that training can’t.

Coaching helps us realize our full potential. When we can see our potential clearly we can move on to decide what we can do with it.

Only when our behavior changes to match our potential, can we achieve what we most desire. Only when we are coached can we reach our maximum potential!







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Irma Gonzalez is a Business and Career Coach, writer, seminar leader and inspirational speaker. An active listener, she uses a relaxed conversational style to help business leaders explore fresh options, gain clearer insight into their own situations and initiate valuable solutions that benefit everybody. Reach her at 407-384-7317, 407-497-9930 Irma@IrmaGonzalez.com and www.IrmaGonzalez.com

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