The role of external training in changing mindsets and supporting cultural change

Corporations invest considerable time and resources in training their employees to enhance professional performance to deal effectively with constant market changes and new commercial challenges. As Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motor Company, wisely noted, “The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay.”

Therefore, training and development are a must for a competitive company. Training is also considered one of the tools available to support corporate cultural change. However, it remains a challenge to identify the most effective methods to facilitate learning and ensure its application in daily tasks.

Many training program initiatives, especially the ones targeted to improve soft skills and generate cultural change, often do not deliver the expected results. The common idea is that creating change and improvement through training is an arduous process that remains an ongoing challenge, requiring several iterations to produce tangible results.

Trying to achieve the same objectives without training could prove to be even more difficult. So, what is the answer? This article elaborates on the benefits and limitations of internal negotiation training and the role of external training in changing mindsets and supporting cultural change. It goes even further to describe the decisive elements of training programs that generate desired and meaningful outcomes.

Is the 70-20-10 model the answer?

The 70-20-10 model is a popular framework in corporate learning and development. It suggests that:

• 70% of learning comes from job-related experiences (experiential learning)

• 20% from interactions with others (social learning)

• 10% from formal educational events (formal learning)

Whilst the model is widely accepted and sounds reasonable, it is largely theoretical and lacks substantial empirical evidence. Nonetheless, it underscores the idea that a significant portion of learning occurs on the job and through social interactions. This means learning by doing, by seeing others do things, through making mistakes and by receiving feedback. No learning process should ignore the importance of what happens on the job, but as we will see later what we can manage on the job to create learning has its limitations.

As a side note, allocating only 10% of the impact to formal education or training makes one wonder about the quality of training programs in the market. Too many programs in the market are focused on the content or provide a fun experience that doesn’t stick to the learning but rarely combines different necessary elements to create sustained change. Let’s look at how companies evaluate training for a better understanding of this phenomenon.

Evaluating training

Companies have systems to evaluate training. The different levels at which companies usually evaluate training programs are:

• Reaction or satisfaction. Usually established right at the end of training through surveys that measure quantitative scores and qualitative comments on how satisfying, engaging and relevant the experience was.
• Learning. Did the learning take place? Often focused on content or knowledge, it tries to assess whether people learned what they were supposed to learn. This level works fine when it comes to data, specific content or knowledge, but it is harder to measure when it involves skills or behaviors. In these cases, it is not enough to measure the theoretical understanding of a skill or a set of behaviors, but what matters is whether they are being applied properly.
• Behaviors. This level is meant to evaluate if people are applying the behaviors and skills that they were supposed to learn on the job. Are they behaving differently because of the training program?
• Impact or results. Here is where the ultimate goal of the training program is being measured. Does the training generate a positive business impact? Is there a clear return on investment? The problem is that results are often multifactorial and the training programs are difficult to isolate as the root cause of business impact.

Several programs in the marketplace are satisfying and engaging and could even make people understand what they were supposed to learn, but that doesn’t mean the experience will translate into an actual change of behaviors and generate a tangible positive business impact.

Challenges in changing mindsets

Changing employees’ mindsets to adopt new behaviors and habits is notoriously difficult, especially when relying solely on internal training programs. Companies often develop internal trainers, mentors, or coaches to promote best practices and teach the company’s methods. While these internal coaches can be effective for certain purposes, they may struggle to bring fresh perspectives or challenge ingrained, ineffective practices supported by the company’s culture and overcome cultural blind spots. Accordingly, people might learn but not necessarily change.

Internal coaches might excel in teaching technical skills or provide basic coverage and foundational understanding of certain skills and ways of doing things but often fall short in developing soft skills or in effectively driving cultural change. Soft skills are deeply rooted in personal and emotional beliefs and perspectives, making them harder to teach through traditional methods and to be driven by experienced colleagues.

Soft skills, technical skills and cultural change 

Soft skills encompass communication, teamwork, negotiation, leadership, problem-solving and emotional intelligence.

Soft skills, unlike technical skills, are deeply rooted in personal and emotional beliefs and perspectives and are also reinforced by organizational culture. Since organizational cultural changes occur at a much slower pace than market dynamics, companies constantly struggle to keep up with change.

External formal training can be a valuable tool to help drive cultural change and change mindsets. To improve soft skills, it is essential to address the foundational mindsets that underpin ineffective practices and habits and also bring experts who don’t have the same company’s blind spots.

The value of external training

External training can be a powerful tool for driving cultural change and shifting mindsets. To improve soft skills, it is paramount to tackle the underlying mindsets that support ineffective practices and habits. Effective soft skills training should:

1. Focus on small groups. Allowing for ample practice and abundant, meaningful individual feedback for people to self-reflect and better assess the way they are doing things and consequently examine their mindsets and habits in terms of how effective they are in dealing with their business challenges and whether they need to be replaced by more effective alternatives.
2. Allocate enough investment of time. Ensuring that participants dedicate sufficient time to the training rather than treating it as a checklist exercise. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day and equally, a change of mindset or the replacement of bad habits don’t happen overnight.
3. Utilize diverse methods. Incorporating self-discovery activities, gamification, role-playing, opportunities for trial and error, self-questionnaires and feedback from colleagues and experts to make the learning meaningful, memorable and fun. It is not the content that makes the difference but a well-thought-out and executed methodology to facilitate learning. The proof of this is that knowledge is out there, but reading a book will not make a difference in people’s behaviors and will not change a mindset.
4. Be led by experts. Bringing external experts with extensive business experience provides credibility to the content and dynamics and offers industry perspectives while ensuring that the facilitator knows how to manage the learning experience. An expert should have expertise in at least three areas: expertise in the topic or soft skill, expertise in the market or industry and expertise in facilitating learning.
5. Grounded with relevance. A training program should constantly address real-life challenges and focus on application and not just the understanding of things. Knowing something is not the same as knowing how to do something and execute it properly.
6. Provide an impactful experience. The learning experience should be memorable and the learning should resonate with the participants. The objective is to trigger emotional and practical memories and responses once people are faced with situations in which they must apply the learned skills and behaviors. Otherwise, people will unconsciously default to old habits.

Training the maximum number of people in the minimum amount of time at the minimum cost will not deliver the maximum expected results.

Supporting the training process

For external training to be truly effective, training providers should partner and work closely with companies towards a commitment to support the process. This includes:

• Follow-up. Regularly checking in with participants to reinforce learning.
• Post-training tasks. Assigning tasks that require the application of new skills or the use of tools.
• Encouraging best practices. Promoting and rewarding the adoption of new behaviors and attitudes.
• Providing incentives. Offering incentives to help create and maintain new habits. In the end, what matters is that the learning sticks and generates a positive business impact. Learning, if it is not meaningful or practical, or is not properly supported in time, will tend to fade away against the power of previous belief systems and emotional components of old habits.

Key takeaways

Creating change in people is difficult and the best way to leverage training for that purpose is not always clear.

Internal trainers can support the teams, teach technical skills, provide basic coverage of soft skills and help guide people through “the way things are being done” in the company.

Internal trainers can effectively teach hard skills and support part of the change process but often struggle to drive cultural change or exhibit the same results with soft skills.

By investing in external quality training and supporting employees internally throughout the learning process, companies can drive and foster a culture of continuous improvement and adaptability, ultimately maximizing business impact.

If your goal is to drive cultural change and change mindsets, the training should be done in small groups, allocating enough time for people to examine their own mindsets and habits and support them with the replacement and application of more effective ones for their real-life challenges.

To drive cultural change and change mindsets, bring external experts who don’t share the employees’ blind spots and have at least three areas of expertise, in the topic or soft skill, in the market or industry and in facilitating learning.

In addition, make sure that you are contracting a proven and impactful program, that the supplier has a proper follow-up and reinforcing plan and that your company also encourages and incentivizes the adoption of the desired attitudes and behaviors.

More reading and listening…

Embedding negotiation for success  article by Alexander Zhang, Senior Consultant, The Gap Partnership

Chris Prahler | Inside my head podcast hosted by Michael Perlish, Principal, The Gap Partnership, featuring Chris Prahler, Vice President Global procurement & CPO, a seasoned professional with a 25-year journey spanning from Target to Chewy and Lowe’s

For more, visit www.thegappartnership.com/insights

About the author

Rodrigo Malandre is the Head of Latam and an Associate Partner at The Gap Partnership. He has a degree in psychology and an MBA. He has over 20 years of experience in change management, training and consulting. He has done business projects in over 20 countries with over 100 companies.

About The Gap Partnership

The Gap Partnership is a management consultancy specializing in negotiation. We help organizations drive profitability, increase efficiency and reduce cost.

Negotiation is an integral part of everything a business does. It exerts a critical influence on the profitability and market value of the organization.

At The Gap Partnership, we provide development programs and negotiation training to our clients. We work with you to understand your challenges and performance needs. Our negotiation consultants come from your industry and will support you with a 'complete' solution that embeds learning, measures capability and delivers sustainable change.

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