Have you heard of the “Forgetting Curve”? You do training, the workshop gets good feedback, the facilitator is engaging, participants leave with energy and ideas. And for a while they try to put it into practice, but a few weeks later, it’s gone. Managers are behaving the same way they always have. The investment feels hard to justify, and trust in “leadership development” quietly erodes.
The problem is not that leadership training does not work (it really can!) It’s that much of it is designed in a way that makes lasting behaviour change unlikely. Here are four reasons leadership training fails to stick, especially when it comes to new manager leadership skills.
1. Training without context is easy to forget
All learning happens inside a context. Without it, even well-designed programs fade quickly. Think about onboarding a new employee. If we teach them everything they need in the first week, most of it disappears. Knowing how to apply for leave months before you ever will is kind of pointless. By the time you get around to applying for leave you’ve forgotten what you were taught. So smart companies stagger the training so that it happens when the employee is going to be using it. And because they learn it in this context, its more likely to be useful (and stick).
Leadership training has to take a similar approach. When the participant can take their insights and skills and apply them directly the very next day, the training works. They have a context for it, and they likely already can see a need for it in their day to day lives. In this kind of situation, the training is welcomed because it solves a problem, not resented because it interrupts.
So timing is key here, conduct training when it will matter most to the participants. We often design programs that are timed to happen at major milestones: such as stepping into your first leadership role, or moving from mid-manager to senior leader in the organization. When we do that participants see immediate value, and the organizers of the training see immediate growth.
2. Inconsistency creates noise, not capability
Sometimes, companies treat leadership development like a buffet. They want to pile as much as they can get from as many different providers as possible, and if you’ve ever gone to an all you can eat buffet, you know that can make a real mess. In the training context this creates inconsistency and noise.
Leadership doesn’t happen in isolation; it’s not an individual sport. People are leading and being led at the same time. They interact with peers, managers, and teams across the organization. When everyone is using different language and frameworks, alignment is impossible.
A consistent leadership approach matters because it creates shared expectations. It shapes how people talk about leadership, how values show up in daily decisions, and what “good leadership” actually looks like in practice. When managers share a common leadership language, feedback becomes clearer, development conversations improve, and behaviours are reinforced across teams.
For HR and L&D, consistency helps to create credibility for their team. When training feels coherent rather than fragmented, it shows that there was a plan. That consistency builds trust with leaders and makes the investment easier to defend.
3. Insight without action does not change behaviour
Another reason that the training may fail is that a lot of leadership training leans heavily on theory. Participants have an academic experience and leave with insights, models, and memorable moments. They might feel inspired, but inspiration alone does not change how people behave at work.
Behaviour change requires doing something differently, repeatedly, in real situations. Theory can help explain why something matters or how it happens, but it doesn’t actually do anything to fix the situation.
When we design new manager programs, we focus on practical leadership skills: giving feedback, setting goals/expectations, having difficult conversations, managing emotions as well as performance. Our participants lave the training room feeling that they understand leadership more, and are able to DO leadership better.
If training does not translate directly into action, it won’t deliver results. The most effective programs focus on application, not abstraction.
From an ROI perspective, this is critical. Having an “aha!” moment of insight and inspiration is great, but “aha!” doesn’t pay the bills. What pays the bills is when the team can work better, lead more competently and generate more trust, engagement, retention, and performance in their teams.
4. No accountability means no follow-through
Okay, so our training is timed right and uses consistent terminology and conceptual framework. This is the right approach and it needs consistent application and follow up.
A team attends a leadership program, return to work, and nothing in their environment changes. Their manager does not reference the training (because they weren’t there), in the rush and pressure of day to day work, participants fail to try out the newly learned techniques, and pretty soon things revert to the way they were.
Because the sponsor of the training did not attend it themselves, there is no experience, and no mechanism for accountability. Over time, skills decay, habits revert, and the learning curve turns into a forgetting curve.
Accountability does not have to mean micromanagement; it starts with modelling the behaviour, and can be as simple as managers asking, “What did you try from the program?” or “How are you applying this with your team?” When the language and ideas from the training span across all management levels, and when participants are held accountable for applying them, the training sticks and learning becomes behviour.
What this means for HR and L&D leaders
Choose your leadership training based on a design and methodology which supports serious, long term behaviour change. And ensure that your entire environment is set up to help leaders and manager succeed.
Effective leadership development can be key to company success. When we can develop our teams in a consistent way, hold them accountable for their responsibility for their own growth; when we have a consistent view of what leadership means, we are more likely to create great leaders who stick around.
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