Why Most Professional Development Training is Like Watching Paint Dry (And the Three Things That Actually Work)
Look, I’m going to be brutally honest about the rubbish that passes for professional development in today’s market. I’ve been managing training programs across major Australian centres for the past close to 20 years, and frankly? About 78% of what I see makes me want to bang my head against a wall.
Just recently I endured a corporate training program that cost my customer $4,500 per head. Four and a half bloody thousand dollars. 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 manage a difficult conversation with an underperforming employee? Complete silence.
The Core Issue Everyone Ignores
The training industry has this weird obsession with making everything harder than rocket science. 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: give clear details quickly without being nasty. That’s it. But somehow they’d turned it into a complicated method with acronyms and flowcharts.
And don’t get me started on the follow up. Companies invest huge budgets on these programs, everyone agrees passionately during the sessions, takes their little workbooks back to the office, and then… absolutely bugger all. The workbooks end up in desk drawers alongside old business cards and USB cables that don’t fit anything anymore.
One business down south who spent twenty three grand on communication skills training for their management team. Half a year down the track, their employee satisfaction scores had actually gone down. Why? Because the training taught them to speak in corporate buzzwords instead of just talking to people like human beings.
What really makes my blood boil. When I bring this up with other trainers, everyone says I’m right, but then they keep booking the same trainers who deliver the same recycled rubbish. It’s like we are all trapped in some sort of professional development Groundhog Day.
The Things That Create Real Change (Plot Twist: The Solutions Are Obvious)
Through years of observing what works and what doesn’t, I’ve discovered that only a few key elements actually stick. All other stuff is overpriced showbiz.
First thing that works: peer learning circles. Not the structured buddy systems 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 work through real problems they’re facing right now.
I created a network for production leaders in manufacturing companies around western Sydney. No PowerPoints or worksheets, just casual chats over a meal about the stuff that keeps them awake at 3am. They’ve been meeting for nearly half a decade. Half a decade! That’s longer than many company partnerships survive.
The group tackled everything from managing tricky vendor relationships to keeping people connected while working from home. Actual challenges, practical answers, measurable results. Someone in the network figured out how to reduce his team’s overtime by nearly half just by implementing what another member had tried six months earlier.
Second thing : job shadowing 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 truly excelled in their area.
I organised for a digital marketing specialist to spend a long weekend with the head of marketing at one of Australia’s biggest companies. Less than a week. She learned more about running marketing campaigns and managing relationships than she had in two years of formal training. The senior marketing leader loved it too because it forced her to really think about why she makes certain decisions.
Success depends on smart pairing. You can’t just throw people together randomly. But when you nail the combination? Magic happens.
The final approach that works: hands on implementation where people have to put into practice something new while they’re learning it. Not simulation exercises or ancient case studies that aren’t relevant, but real initiatives with real consequences.
I worked with a financial services business where we identified actual process improvements each participant could make in their role. They spent the training course building those improvements, getting feedback from colleagues, refining, measuring results. By the end of the program, they’d already solved real problems and could see the difference in their daily work.
Common Mistakes in Training
I know this seems contradictory, but most training courses try to change too much at once. They want to completely reshape someone’s entire leadership style in 48 hours. It’s ridiculous.
Real transformation occurs when people concentrate on one specific skill and practice it until it becomes completely natural. Like truly instinctive, not just until they can apply to do it when they’re thinking about it.
One business leader I worked with who was hopeless at giving constructive feedback. Instead of sending her to a general leadership course, we concentrated solely on feedback conversations. She practiced the same core structure until she could do it naturally Three months later, her team’s performance had gotten significantly better, not because she’d become a brilliant boss immediately, but because she’d mastered one crucial skill properly.
What else gets on my nerves is the obsession with personality tests. DISC, Myers Briggs, personality typing, colour profiling. Companies throw thousands on these things, and for what? So people can say “I’m a red personality, that’s why I hate meetings” and use it as an excuse to sidestep difficult discussions?
They’re not entirely useless, understanding yourself matters. But these tests often become excuses rather than development opportunities. I’ve seen teams where people won’t collaborate because their results indicate conflict. It’s fortune telling dressed up as science.
What About Return on Investment
Let’s talk about return on investment because that’s what really matters. Typical programs have no way to track results beyond “satisfaction scores” and completion rates. It’s like judging a restaurant based on how many people finish their meals instead of whether the food actually tastes good.
The programs that work measure behaviour change and company outcomes. Hard data, not warm emotions. The professional circles I set up? They track specific problems solved and money saved. The job shadowing arrangements? We measure capability development via comprehensive assessment and ongoing monitoring.
A production company calculated that their professional group saved them over a third of a million dollars in its first year through operational improvements alone. That’s a solid return on the cost of monthly pizza and meeting rooms.
The Bottom Line
Look, I don’t have all the answers. I’ve made numerous blunders over the years. I once created a leadership course that was so mind numbing I dozed off while presenting. Serioulsy. The customer never called back.
But I’ve learned that the best professional development happens when people are tackling real issues with real consequences, getting guidance from practitioners with genuine experience, and concentrating on specific skills they can practice until they become completely natural.
All the other stuff? It’s just costly performance that makes executives feel like they’re developing their workforce without actually creating real improvement.
I might be overly critical. Perhaps those roleplay activities actually work for some people. But after close to 20 years of watching companies invest in development that doesn’t last, I’d rather put money towards initiatives that genuinely improve performance.
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