The Training Isn’t the Problem. What Happens After Is: Steal This Strategy Series

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Welcome to Lead with Learning.
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I'm Tess, and here we explore what happens when the science of learning meets the art of leadership.
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Let's get started.
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What if we stopped managing adults based on what we think should work and started managing them based on what we already know about how people learn?
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Because education has spent decades figuring out how people build skills and develop confidence and respond to feedback and practice and eventually take ownership.
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Maybe businesses don't need another leadership framework.
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Maybe business just needs to borrow a few things from education.
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That's what we're doing in this steal the strategy series.
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We're taking proven learning strategies out of education and putting them to work in everyday leadership problems.
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Because the challenges that leaders face are usually learning challenges.
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I'm Tess, and this is Lead with Learning.
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Let's see what business can steal from education.
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Training isn't an event.
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Let me paint a familiar picture.
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You have a problem at work, maybe customer complaints are increasing, or managers aren't giving effective feedback.
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So what do you do?
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You schedule a training, you bring everyone into a room, or you put them all on Zoom, and you bring in an expert, and you spend two hours explaining a new process, and everyone nods, and maybe someone asks a really good question, and you send everyone the recording afterwards, and then congratulations, your training is complete.
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Except six weeks later, nobody remembers even half of it.
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And sometimes we're surprised by that, but we really shouldn't be.
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Because here's the uncomfortable truth: being exposed to information is not the same thing as learning it.
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And attending a training is not the same thing as being able to perform.
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Education has known that forever.
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And two of the most powerful strategies that we can steal are retrieval practice and spaced practice.
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Together, they give us a very different way to think about workplace learning.
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So let's start with retrieval.
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Retrieval practice is simply actively trying to recall information from memory rather than repeatedly rereading or reviewing it.
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And that distinction matters.
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Think about studying for a test.
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You could read your notes five times and think, yep, I know it, and everything looks familiar, but then when you close your notes and you try to explain it, suddenly, well, you don't remember anything.
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That's the difference between recognition and retrieval.
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Recognition says that looks familiar.
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Retrieval says, I can bring that information back when I need it.
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And in the workplace, that distinction is everything.
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Because your employee isn't going to have the training deck sitting in front of them when your customer is angry.
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They're not going to have your PowerPoint open when they need to give difficult feedback.
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And they're definitely not going to have their onboarding manual projected on a screen when a problem suddenly appears.
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They need to be able to retrieve what they learned and use it.
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That's the goal.
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So let's talk about why retrieval works.
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Research on learning and memory has repeatedly found that activating retrieving information can strengthen long-term retention.
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One of the classic findings in learning science is that practicing retrieval can produce better long-term retention than simply studying the material again.
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This is sometimes called the testing effect or retrieval practice effect.
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And here's the really interesting part the retrieval attempt doesn't always have to be successful for it to be useful.
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Trying to remember something and then getting corrective feedback can help strengthen the learning.
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That means a quick question can sometimes be more powerful than another explanation.
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Instead of telling your employee, remember the three steps or A, B, and C, you could just ask them, what are the three steps?
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Let them think, let their brain do the work, and then give them feedback if they need it.
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That tiny moment of effort really matters because you're not just putting information into memory, you are practicing taking it back out.
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Retrieval is only half of the strategy.
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Let's now add in spaced practice.
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Because if you practice retrieving something 20 times in one afternoon, but then never really use it again, you're still going to have a problem.
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That's where spaced practice comes in.
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Spaced practice means spreading learning and retrieval opportunities over time, rather than cramming everything into one session.
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This is another place where education has something important to teach leaders.
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Think about how often we train employees.
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Monday, training.
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Tuesday, back to work.
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Wednesday, forgot all the stuff from the training.
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Three months later, oh my god, we have to retrain everyone.
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So we schedule another two-hour training, and then we're surprised when the same thing happens again.
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That's essentially workplace learning by cram, forget, and then retrain.
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And it's really ineffective.
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So the mindset that we need to challenge is the idea that we trained.
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The sentence makes training sound like something that you do to people.
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You delivered the content, you checked attendance, you closed the Zoom room.
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Done.
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But learning doesn't happen on your organization's training calendar.
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It happens to people in their brains through exposure and retrieval and practice and feedback, application, and repetition over time.
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The training event is one part of that.
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It's not the whole thing.
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In fact, sometimes the training event is really just opening the door.
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And this is where leaders need to maybe rethink that question of asking, how long should the training be?
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We can shift that to what will help people remember and use this three weeks from now?
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Because that's a much better question.
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And we know from adult learning theory that relevance isn't enough.
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Adults generally want learning to be relevant and immediately useful to them.
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And that's really important.
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Relevance alone does not guarantee that they'll retain the information.
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You can give someone incredibly relevant information and they can still forget it.
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Think about your own life.
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You've probably attended a meeting where someone said something so incredibly important and you thought, wow, that's so useful.
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I'm definitely going to use that in the future.
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And then you left the meeting and you answered some emails and you had some calls.
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There were more meetings.
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There was maybe a lunch, and three other things happened, and all of a sudden by Friday, you vaguely remember that somebody said something that was so important, but you just can't bring it back to mind.
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And that's not a motivation failure.
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That's a memory problem.
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And our workspaces are full of information competing for people's attention.
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So if we want people to remember something, we can't just make it feel relevant.
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We have to give them multiple opportunities over time to retrieve that information.
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So what does that even look like at work?
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Let's take something really simple.
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Imagine you're training managers on how to give effective feedback.
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You spend 90 minutes teaching a feedback framework.
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You explain the model, there's examples they can practice, they can watch a video, everyone gets to practice once and then everyone goes back to work.
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Three months later, you'll probably discover that managers aren't using it.
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And the answer would be maybe we need another training.
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But what if instead you built retrieval and spacing into the leadership system from the start?
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Day one, take some time to teach the framework.
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Day three, ask people without looking at your notes, what are the components of the framework?
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It takes two minutes.
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That's the retrieval practice.
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A week later, you can give managers a short scenario.
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An employee keeps missing deadlines.
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How would you approach the conversation?
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That's retrieval practice with added in application.
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Then two weeks later, you're asking, what's one feedback conversation that you've had this week and what did you do?
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Now they have to actually retrieve from an experience that they had.
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At week four, you give them another scenario, but maybe make it more challenging because now they get to apply that skill in a different context.
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And maybe two months out, you ask them to coach another manager using the framework.
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Now the learner has moved from remembering to applying to teaching.
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That's a completely different learning experience.
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And none of it required a two-hour training.
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And remember, retrieval doesn't have to be a quiz.
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It's really important because I can already hear some people thinking, like, oh my God, am I supposed to give people tests now?
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No, not necessarily.
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A quiz is a form of retrieval.
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It's definitely used in education, but retrieval can be so much more natural than that.
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You could just ask, what do you remember from last week's training?
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Or what are the first two things you would do in this situation?
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Those are all questions to ask to create retrieval opportunities.
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And they're incredibly quick.
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You can build that into one-on-ones or team meetings, coaching conversations, Slack messages, manager check-ins, onboarding, staff meetings, project debriefs.
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You literally do not need a learning management system to make people retrieve information.
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You just have to think a little bit more intentionally.
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And then there's that idea of spacing.
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Let's talk about spacing.
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The simplest way to think about it is don't teach it once, revisit it repeatedly.
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But, and this really matters, don't simply repeat the exact same thing.
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Don't use the same question, don't use the same slide or presentation.
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The goal is not let me show them this four times.
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The goal is to revisit the idea in different contexts over time.
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So for example, on day one, you could ask, what is effective delegation?
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Around day five, during a meeting, you might be able to ask, which tasks from this list should we delegate?
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Maybe in the second week, you're presenting them with a delegation problem and asking, what would you do?
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By week four, you could say, tell me about a delegation decision that you've made.
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By month two, you're already asking, what have you learned about delegation that you didn't understand two months ago?
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Now you're creating that learning rhythm and you're helping move that information from I heard this once, to I remember this, to I can use this.
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So let's apply this idea to onboarding because onboarding can be really overwhelming.
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Number one for the brand new hires who are learning all of this information at once, but also for the leaders and the people who are in charge of navigating what information gets shared when, how often.
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Organizations can really struggle with onboarding because there's just so much to juggle.
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We tend to throw everything at a new employee their first week.
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We tell them about policies and systems and procedures and benefits and don't forget workplace culture and this is important for compliance, and here's all the technology you're going to need to understand.
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And here's the expectations of your job.
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And oh, if you need help, here's a list of people who you can call, and here's definitely what you should not do, and here's where the bathroom is.
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Oh my God.
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Somehow we're surprised when people leave these days and they don't remember everything.
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And they don't remember everything.
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They might not remember anything.
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They literally might go home and just need to take a nap because their brain hurts.
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Imagine instead of that onboarding, it became more of a 90-day learning experience if we space it out over time.
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Week one, we're really focused on essential information with spaced practice and application.
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Week two, retrieve that essential information.
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How can we find ways or ask questions to bring that information back to the surface?
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Week three, we're really focused on applying all of that information into a real life situation.
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Week three, we're focused on how to find ways to apply that information into real life situations.
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Week four, check in.
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What are they still unsure about from that information bank?
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By the second month, it's time to revisit the critical processes.
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Month three, we're asking them to explain the key responsibilities independently.
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And now onboarding isn't here's everything you have to know.
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It's let's build what you need to know over time.
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That's a different philosophy altogether.
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The other benefit of retrieval practice is that it can also reveal learning gaps.
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Retrieval doesn't just strengthen memory, it gives information.
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Let's say you ask five employees to walk you through what they would do if a customer escalated a complaint.
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Four people give you the same basic answer, but one person gives you something completely different.
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Well, that's really valuable information.
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You know there's a learning gap and you found it before the customer complaint happened.
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This connects beautifully to our earlier episode on formative assessment.
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Remember, formative assessment is about gathering evidence while the learning is still happening so that you can adjust what happens next.
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And retrieval practice gives you that evidence.
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You don't have to wait for that final outcome.
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You can discover what people actually know right now and then respond to it.
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And here's where we get to the part where businesses care the most.
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Because we're going to talk about performance.
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Because the ultimate goal isn't is the employee going to be able to pass the quiz after the training?
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The goal is can they use this information when it really matters?
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And that is transfer.
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Transfer requires much more than remembering information.
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People need opportunities to apply learning in situations that resemble the work they're actually performing.
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So retrieval might look like what are the steps?
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But application looks like, here's what happened with your customer.
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What would you do?
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And that's where learning becomes really usable.
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You're moving from remembering to applying to adapting.
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And that final step is critical because real work rarely looks exactly like the example in the training room.
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And here is a big mistake to be on the lookout for spacing without purpose, because that's another trap.
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You can technically space learning out, but still do it kind of badly.
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For example, if you send out an article on Monday and on Friday you send out another article, two weeks later you send out a reminder.
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Well, congratulations, you've spaced out the emails, you've spaced out information, but you haven't necessarily spaced the learning because spacing works when the learners are doing something with the knowledge, not just receiving it.
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They retrieve it from the back of their minds, they apply it, they explain it, they practice it, compare it, use it, reflect on it.
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So it's not just spacing out how often you give the information, it's spacing out the opportunities to use that information.
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And if we're going to take this seriously, there are a few things that leaders need to stop doing.
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Stop expecting one training session to create mastery.
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Training can introduce learning, but it rarely completes it.
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Stop confusing attendance with learning.
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Someone sitting through a three-hour workshop proves that they were physically present.
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It does not prove that they can perform.
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Stop making refresher training your first response.
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If people forget something, don't automatically schedule another lecture.
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Try retrieval and spaced practice first.
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Stop asking, does everyone understand?
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Almost everyone knows how to answer the question.
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You have to say yes.
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Instead, you can ask them to shoot, you can ask them, show me, or walk me through it, or what else would you do?
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Because now you're getting evidence.
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So here's a simple model you can steal.
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Teach, retrieve, apply, space, repeat.
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So let's dig into that a little bit.
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Teach.
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Introduce the concept, give people enough information to get them started.
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Retrieve.
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Ask them to recall without looking.
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Questions like, what do you remember?
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What are the steps?
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What would you do?
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Without having them read the paper or the slide that it came from.
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Next is apply.
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Put the learning into a realistic situation.
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Here's a customer problem.
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What would you do?
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And here's four, space.
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Come back to it later, but not tomorrow because you happen to remember it.
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Be intentional with spacing and bringing back that information.
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Is it next week and then two weeks later, a month later?
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And the last step is repeat.
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Keep creating opportunities to retrieve and apply until that skill becomes increasingly accessible and usable.
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That's how you move from we trained them to they can actually do it.
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So here's your steal this strategy challenge.
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Think of one thing your team was trained on recently.
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Maybe it was a new software system or a compliance procedure, a sales process, whatever it was, and ask yourself: how many times have they had to retrieve this information since the training?
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If the answer is they haven't, then here's your opportunity.
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This week, don't schedule another training.
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Instead, create one five-minute retrieval opportunity.
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Ask, without looking back in your notes, what are the three most important things we learned about this?
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And then give them a real life scenario.
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Okay, now let's say this happens.
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What would you do?
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And that's literally it.
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It takes five minutes and you turned a training event into a learning process.
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And here's the leadership lesson I'm hoping people can take away from this.
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Training is not something that you complete.
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Learning is something you reinforce.
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If your organization invests thousands of dollars in training and then expects employees to remember everything six months later, the problem may not be the quality of the training.
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The problem may be what happened after the training.
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Because learning needs to go somewhere.
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It needs retrieval, it needs practice, it needs feedback and application and time.
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And this changes the role of the leader.
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The leader isn't just the person who sends people to training, the leader becomes part of the learning environment.
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You're now the person who's asking, what did you remember?
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Or how did you use it?
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Where did you get stuck?
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Or what would you do differently?
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That's leadership through learning.
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And here's the irony: the most effective learning interventions at work may be some of the smallest.
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A two-minute question, a five-minute scenario, a follow-up conversation next week, those small moments can do something the giant training events cannot do by itself because they keep the learning alive.
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So next time someone says, We already trained them on that, I want you to ask, yes, but what happened after that training?
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Did they retrieve the information?
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Did they practice?
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Did they use it?
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Did they get feedback?
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Did they have time to revisit it?
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Because training isn't the finish line, it's the starting line.
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And if we want employees to actually remember what they learn and use it when it matters, we have to stop treating learning like an event.
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We need to treat it like a process.
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Teach it, retrieve it, apply it, space it, repeat.
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Because your employees don't need more information.
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They need more opportunities to use what they know.
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And maybe that's one of the most valuable things businesses can steal from education.
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I'm Tess, and this is Lead with Learning.
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And the next time someone asks you whether the team has been trained, don't just tell them when the training happened.
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Ask a better question.
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Can they actually do it?
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Because that's the difference between training and learning.
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Thanks for listening to Lead with Learning.
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I hope you're walking away with something you can put into practice.
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Until next time, let learning change the way you lead.