Why Most Training Fails Before It Even Begins

Why does so much training still fail to change behaviour — even when the content is good, the facilitator is strong, and the intentions are right? 

In this episode, Gerry Murray talks to learning expert, Fergal Connolly, about one of the most persistent and costly problems in workplace learning: 

The gap between training delivered and behaviour changed. 

Fergal argues that the issue often starts long before the session itself. If the environment around the learner is working against application, even well-designed training may struggle to make a difference.

That has major implications for L&D, for line managers, and for leaders trying to decide where learning investment is really going.

Together, Gerry and Fergal explore why training is so often asked to solve the wrong problem, what better transfer design looks like, and why the future of L&D may depend less on creating faster content and more on understanding what actually helps people apply what they learn. 

If you care about leadership, learning, performance, or whether development really leads to change, this one is worth your time.

Fergal also shares a special offer for listeners during the episode. 

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Transcript

Welcome And What To Expect

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Leading People with me, Jerry Murray. This is the podcast for HR leaders, LD professionals, and senior leaders who want to bring out the best in themselves and the people around them. Every other week I sit down with leading authors, researchers, and practitioners for deep, honest conversations about what great leadership actually looks like in practice. And how your own mindset, behavior, and presence shape everything around you. If you want thinking that challenges you, tools you can use, and conversations worth returning to, you're in the right place.

The L&D Impact Evidence Gap

SPEAKER_01 0:49

One thing that's that's really come to the fore over the last few years, and well, for me, it's been there the whole time, but it really kind of was a realization for me is the lack of impact that we can show within learning and development. Like obviously, there's there's a lot of money spent in this space, there's a lot of people in L and D. But the fact of the matter is that we have such little evidence to show from a data perspective that what we're doing really helps.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

That's this week's guest, Virgil Connolly, who has spent more than a decade working inside LD and manager effectiveness roles in large, fast-moving global organizations. He now brings that experience into Multiply, the transfer intelligence platform he founded to help LD teams diagnose whether training will work before they even spend the budget. Multiply, of course, does a lot of other stuff too. In this conversation, we explore why so much training still fails to change behavior, why the environment around the learner matters more than many organizations realize, especially the impact of the manager. And what better training or learning transfer design looks like in practice. If you care about whether people actually apply what they've been taught, there's a lot in this conversation. Now let's hear what Virgil has to say.

Fergal’s Journey Into Transfer

SPEAKER_00 2:31

So, Fergal, you're a fellow podcaster and an Irishman, and um but you're also in the vanguard of creating tools to fix what we could call the training transfer problem with your new multiply software. And I I got to know you via the people in the transfer community over the last year or so, I think, or two years. And um, but before we talk about the multiply software and all the other stuff around that, perhaps please share with my listeners the journey that's led you to where you are today. And like, were there any epiphany moments along the way?

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Yeah, Jerry, there's a we do have a lot in common, Jerry. It's it's right, and it's um and it's great to be here with the with your listeners. Um yeah, so I've been in in this space for over a decade, you know, working in in different um internally within LD for various different tech companies. Um and I think it's it's an amazing place to be. I think it's it's similar to what you do, Jerry. It's it's helping people to perform more effectively, to to learn new things, to try new things, to expand their horizons, um, and ultimately to improve. So like it's definitely it's been a transformational journey for for other people, I like to think, but definitely for me and myself as well, because you're exposed to all sorts of aspects of the business. You you work with various different teams, and within learning development, you can really you can move around a lot. So you you know, you've got your your training facilitators, you've got your learning designers, your consultants, your your measurement specialists. It really is a great space to grow um and to learn new things. But I think one thing that's that's really come to come to the fore over over the the last few years, and well, for me, it's been there the whole time, but it really was a realization for me is the the lack of impact that we can show within learning development. Like obviously, there's there's a lot of money spent in this space, there's a lot of people in LED, but the fact of the matter is that we have such little evidence to show from a data perspective that what we're doing really helps.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Yeah. And as we record this, we're sort of halfway through the year, and this is when the six plus six budget forecasts get rolled up, and and and one of the probably greatest victims of budget cuts will be probably the L and D department. Um, you know, and then poor LD professionals are struggle to say, well, actually, what we do makes a difference to the business. So let's get into the software.

Why Multiply Exists Now

SPEAKER_00 5:22

What inspired you to develop Multiply and who is it for and why now?

SPEAKER_01 5:28

Sure. Um so Multiply is some software that I developed for LD professionals. Um and it's based on research, academic research, on the topic of transfer, on the topic of learning science, on behavior change. Um, and it really puts um multiple different best practices into a single platform. And the reason I created it was because LD people are stretched thin. They're working with multiple different stakeholders, they've they've many different jobs on their plate at one time. And but it's very, very hard for us to kind of apply best practices each and every time. Um, we're kind of always on this treadmill of like the the next project and the next project. And we don't take a huge amount of time to learn from the previous project, apply what we learned to the next project. And there are so many amazing resources out there. So one of my go-to all-time favorites is the Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning by Andy Jefferson and Roy Pollock. Uh it's a fantastic book that really breaks down all of the key elements when it comes to learning transfer and what we can do from an internal LD perspective, but also from an external consultant perspective to really do what we're we're here to do, and that's to help people to change their behaviors. But the issue is like I can go and read that book. Anyone in LD can go and read the book. But and but it's absolutely massive. It's full of incredible case studies and really applicable frameworks and things that we can do. So it's very exciting when you read this, like this is amazing, this is what I can do. But the challenge is I have to read it, internalize it, I have to bring it back to my team, I have to talk to my team about it, I have to get them on board, I have to talk to my manager for buy-in, I have to talk to various different people to begin to implement these things. I've then to design the things into my workflows, into the different people's workflows, um, and then I have to roll it out. So that's that's a massive amount of different friction points where things can break down. And and there's a lot of influencing there, there's a lot of change in just that me from me reading a book to me applying it. And it's it's similar to what people face every day when it comes to learning transfer. So we deliver a session, but then people go back to their jobs and there's friction. That the first thing that they meet is friction. Um, and then we ask ourselves, why aren't people doing this more effectively? So, what I tried to do um when I was when I was thinking about how could I help to reduce this friction and to also kind of combine to connect LD with with with the best practices, I thought the way that I can help is by creating a platform that removes that friction. It's it's it has the the best practices, it has the thing that you should do, and it gives LD um a really their default position for LD is to use the best practices. So it's kind of like a it uses um some some kind of behavioral uh economic kind of best practices. Um I don't know if you're familiar with the um the concept of smart defaults. So you just give people the healthy option, the the the right option to begin. And then if they choose not to do that, they have to they encounter friction and they need to remove that smart default. So, such as your company will auto-enroll you in a pension plan or auto-enroll you in like health benefits and that kind of thing. It's it's the right thing to do in inverted commas for the for the listeners, but if you choose not to to go along with that, you can you can you can roll back, you can opt out. But the the idea is to help people to do um what's best for them, basically. And that's what I wanted to kind of apply for for people in L D is just to help them to just their default option is the best practices. We don't need to guess, we don't need to go out and read the books, we don't need to complete the courses, it's just helping people to apply um the best things that's out there from a research point of view, so that they can apply it every day uh in in their practice in the in their next session, and it's easy to use, it's frictionless. So that's really the the why I really dove into this topic.

Linking Training To Business KPIs

SPEAKER_00 9:53

And so, in terms of you know, a lot of organizations investing heavily in training and then just sort of hoping that things will change afterwards, and what is that real business problem then that multiply is trying to solve? I I heard the stuff about friction and best practice. When you what's the business problem you're linking that to uh particularly if you're sitting in the LD seat or you're a leader questioning whether money is being wisely spent?

SPEAKER_01 10:21

Yeah, great question. And this is I this is something that that people in LD are facing every single day. Because the truth is there are billions upon billions of dollars spent in LD every single year, and every one of those dollars is spent with the goal of helping people to do things differently, do things more effectively, help companies to achieve their goals. And our kind of our biggest problem with LD is our lack of ability to show that that money was really well spent because our employees are now doing XYZ more effectively, and that XYZ relates to the KPIs that we all care about and the goals of the business. Um this is our issue. We we find it very, very hard to connect um the things that we implement, the things that we we do to KPIs, to business goals. So, what I've tried to do is to make that connection so much easier. So we talked about removing friction. So, how can we create a system that helps people, uh let's say frontline LD people, to identify the goals of their business um really easily and to identify the correct behaviors to support that connect to the business? Um rather than thinking of it from uh oh, they need training and they need training on communication skills. Okay, let's deliver a training course and very will happen afterwards. But what if you connected it to the business first? And let's say it's it's a customer service uh focused business, and then clearly we need communication skills for our customer service reps because that affects um our our term rates, it affects our um our CSAT scores, it affects um how many kind of um how many tickets we can close and how quickly we can ticket we can close those tickets, um because our reps have better communication skills. So it's kind of taking it from the the the starting at the end, like like Stephen Covey said, uh starting at the end, where do you want to be? Then working backwards and just helping people in LD to use those best practices to get them from oh, it's communication skills training. So connect it to what's gonna happen afterwards, connect it to what's gonna happen to the business and why everyone should care. If you can do it that way, you get so much more buy-in from LD or for LD from the business because they can you can they can then see that there's a direct line between what the LD team are doing and what happens from a KPI metric um goals level of the business. And I think if we can start to do that at a bigger scale, that money that we're spending every year, it's it's gonna we're gonna see more and more uh return on investment. Uh LD will start to become much more aligned with the business, uh, but we'll start to see that uh this just this we'll start to be brought more into those strategic conversations where I don't know if you've heard the term, Jerry, but like we always ask for the seat at the table. Truth is a lot of times we don't deserve a seat at seat at the table because we just we don't have the metrics, we don't have the insights, and we can't kind of uh formulate what we do to the strategy of the of the business. But I think when we can start connecting things, connecting these different lines, connecting the dots, I think that will happen eventually for L and D, but we have to start now. We have to start yesterday, to be honest. But the best the next best thing we can do is starting now.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

We'll be right back after this short break. If you're finding value in this conversation, please subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts, and perhaps share this episode with a colleague who'd find it useful. Word of mouth is how good podcasts grow. And if you'd like to be part of the conversation beyond the podcast, I'd love to have you in the Leading People Community, a growing group of HR leaders, LD professionals, and experienced leaders who gather regularly for live sessions, discussions, and the kind of thinking you've been hearing today. You'll find the details in the show notes. Yeah. Well, Seat of the Table has been around for for a couple of uh functions for a long time. Um and it does it does mean that no matter how much you know about your topic and how much you believe in it, if you can't talk the language of your CFO, let's put that down as the kind of tough guy around the table. If you can't talk the language of your CFO, um and often a lot of CEOs come through finance, and that it makes it more difficult to uh to get what you do valued, and and therefore you know it comes under scrutiny, maybe unnecessarily. Now, one of let's get into some of the uh aspects around the multiply

The 40 20 40 Reality

SPEAKER_00 15:20

idea. And so, one strong idea that comes out because you gave me an access to a demo, so I did my research and I went in there and I had some fun. Uh, it's nicely designed. I can tell anybody who wants to go in and it's nicely designed. Um so one of the things in there, there's a sort of emerging principle. And I was thinking when you're talking there about the classic um training library, you know, like how many how many courses do we have in our library? Oh, communication course. Ah, don't we have one there? Did somebody dust it down, dust it down, roll it out? Um, which is often, yeah, it's ticking a box, but not necessarily uh maybe making a difference. So one of the ideas you have in the site and the way you've designed it is that only about 20% of the learning or training transfer is determined by the actual training itself. And you say that 40% depends on what happens before, and 40% depends on what happens after. So, what do most leaders in LD teams still underestimate about that other 80%?

SPEAKER_01 16:21

Yeah, absolutely. Great question, Jerry. Um it's it's the 80% that we're talking about is the the environment where you work every single day. Um if you think about how LD typically tries to support the development of people, is they take them out of the work environment. So they take them away and they put them into a training environment, which you know isn't all bad. You know, it's safe. You're able to make mistakes and that kind of thing. Uh, and you're not disrupting your work. So there's some some best practices there. But then we take them away, we help them to do things a bit differently, and then we send them back. And the learner goes back to the work environment. Nothing has changed in the environment, only the learner has new information or has some you know insight about what could be done differently. So it's it's it's the environmental support that's required around a person that really determines the behaviors um that they show every single day. Um so the manager, the employee's manager who's received training is one of the key determinants of what's gonna happen. Um we care what our manager thinks. Um our manager is the key to to bonuses, to performance reviews, to to getting that time off that you wanted um to move around shifts. You know, your manager really is the gateway between you and a lot of different things happening. So if your manager says that this is important, then you know that it's important. Um there's an example that I like to give is if you imagine uh you're you're signed up to a training course, but before the training course, your your people leader comes to you and she says, Look, this this this training's happening next week. Would you mind just going, you know, sitting for sitting through it? We need someone from the team who has uh who's attended and they know what's going on, but can you get back then? Because we need you on working on the cues or whatever we need you to work on. So in that situation, your manager has just told you that the training isn't important. That so you're gonna you're gonna go in, you're gonna sit down, but you're not gonna pay a bit of attention, you're gonna go back to your role, and that's kind of massive cost for your team. So if it was a one-hour training, whatever it was, you've lost productivity time from the employee, and your your team overall has lost productivity time. But like a simple tweak in the manager's approach, such as so the same situation, you're going to a training next week, but your manager she sits you down and says, Jerry, there's this session next week, I think it's really going to help us. Um it's it's something that's different that we don't have in our team, and it's but it's related to what we really care about. Can you would you mind going and really help us to understand how can we apply what you learn in that session to our work? So a 30-second conversation. But in that situation, Jerry, you're gonna go to that session, you're gonna be taking notes, you're gonna be uh absorbing what as much as you possibly can, because you know that your manager cares and that you're wanting your manager wants to see something different. So it's a very, very simple tweak, and it's just a thought experiment, really, because we need to start thinking in a more of a systems view to helping people to develop and helping people to change. And our biggest impact is by by by influencing the environment that's around the learner and not focusing as much on the learner itself. So the the 4020-40 split, you know, obviously the the pedants out there won't won't love that I've uh use those exact numbers because the numbers aren't exact, you know, it's gonna change uh from person to person, from training to training. But they're a good um kind of guideline um is that the the environment around training, the environment around the employee holds so much more influence on what people do differently than the training alone.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

Yeah. And it also plays into this idea if the manager says, I want you to run a session and teach your teammates, uh, not only is it communicating it's a serious thing going there, it also I suppose there's a word like you could be it's forcing the person to be there and pay attention. However, it's also a teachback from a neuroscience point of view is a fantastic way for somebody to really understand what they've been learning. And I am always reminded about our fellow countryman George Bernard Shaw, who did the training and teaching world a terrible disservice with this quote that floats around, which is those who uh can do and those who can't teach. And that is the greatest load of BS. Because actually, if you're in a you, as you probably be in training rooms, you're asked a question, the expectation is you know the answer, or you can work out the answer, or you can work through the answer. You can't do that unless you really understand what you're talking about. But that doesn't just apply to the the T the guy in the front of the room, that applies to every single person who leaves that room. Can can they actually translate that into because it the in a training room you don't have the same work conditions all the time, so the person has to be able to take that, not only understand it, but they need to be able to translate it into their work environment.

Diagnosing Transfer Before Building Training

SPEAKER_00 21:47

So um, I I think that brings me to this other really cool feature you have in the software. Um, you talk about a transfer readiness diagnostic that helped that sort of has. Happens before the training is even designed. And what does that diagnostic help you or an LD person see early that most organizations only discover too late? And could you share some examples? Because this is, I think, getting in a little bit to that world of training is no is not an event. It's but too often it is an event. People turn up going, What's going to happen here? And you say, What did you discuss with your manager? Well, nothing, but he approved it. He said I could be here today. And what is the what is what is I've been noticing recently is uh that person, some people will jump up at 9 45, and I'm talking about in-person training, and they'll say, I have to, and they grab their phone and they wrote jump out, and they come back 10 minutes later and say, I'm really sorry, my boss called me.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:48

So so you're kind of you got this paradox. The manager wants their person to learn, and their manager is the person preventing them from actually being present enough to learn. But tell us about the diagnostic because the diagnostic, I found that quite fascinating. Uh the way you've thought this through, and and you have thought it through, so that's the great thing. So tell tell the listeners about you know what's that about. Absolutely, absolutely. My guest this week is Fergal Connolly. Coming up, why training is too often treated as an event, and how a better diagnosis before the program even begins could save organizations a lot of wasted effort and money. Stay with us.

SPEAKER_01 23:47

Yeah, so the diagnostic is it's really uh it's trying to get a sense of the environment, the issue, the employees, everything that relates to this training. So we we mentioned earlier on that training is a massive cost, and obviously there's the the financial cost of of of like let's say uh creating a training it's it's up by itself, or to uh using a content library or or bringing in like an external facilitator or something like that. So they're very direct costs. But there's also the the the secondary cost of removing people from their roles to go to a training. Uh so the productivity issues and the the time away from tasks that that comes along with uh with going to a training. So what happens a lot of time in LD is we kind of get the order that we need training, and a lot of times our response is okay, when would you when would you like it? When when do you need this? Um and I think that's kind of come over the years through L and D being so overworked. I mean, so um just being kind of being the percent the perception has grown about LD, just they deliver training and uh they give us what we want. Um but what we want in LD is to help people and to to develop their skills and to help the businesses that we're that we're here to support. So what I've done with the diagnostic is try to really get a strong understanding of the issue. So like what are the actual behaviors that you're seeing? Um so let's say a training request comes in and they say, I want uh communication skills. The diagnostic helps the person who's requesting the training to really define that issue in behavioral terms. If they can't define the issue in behavioral terms, then it's probably not going to be a training issue. So the diagnostic helps to them to really frame their question in a this is what is happening and this is what should be happening from a behavioral perspective. Um it diagnoses uh any issues with regard to tools and processes, um, and it also helps to understand the the environment around uh the issue itself. So it looks at it from three perspectives. So there's the requester's initial information that comes in, and that triggers a request for information from the employees themselves who are performing this behavior, and their supervisors who can actually um confirm or deny that this is an issue. So these are the people who see the behaviors um every day. And what it does is it collects information from these three different perspectives and triangulates the data to really give LD a solid understanding of this is or is not a training issue. Um, training will help or will not help, or we can do something differently other than training. Um, when you've got the diagnostic data, you can confidently say uh if training will work, or you can confidently say that training will not work. So it gives you this really these great insights to be able to go back to the requester, to the businesses that you support, and say, This is an issue with regards to processes. Training can't fix that process. This is an issue with regards to uh a manager setting expectations, like you said earlier on, Jerry. Uh so the manager says go to training, manager says come back from training. So they're giving you mixed messages there. But what the di what we never really have is that understanding of the environment around uh the issue itself. So and and like we know from the research, it's the environment that really determines the behavior. So but if the environment hasn't been diagnosed, hasn't been understood, we can throw training at that problem all day long and never get anywhere. But if we understand the environment, if we understand what people will go back to, we can actually predict whether a training will work or if a training will fail. So it gives us incredible information um to just to make better decisions about where we spend our time, about where we spend our money. And it gives L D some I think of it like a shield, like a shield to say no. Um, because it's very, very hard to say no in L and D. And what I wanted to do was is create something that gives LD data in order to say no, that'll back up their no to say, look, we can do this training, but it's gonna cost you this amount of money, and we see that there's like a 10% chance that this will actually lead to any kind of behavior change.

SPEAKER_00 28:33

Yeah. And so I'm hearing that it's going to save time, money, effort, energy uh before you start rolling something out that may not work. You see, because you give it a score. I think you're using a traffic light system to give it a sort of readiness score. Um, and I would just like to share because you know, training is one of the things I do a certain percentage of the year. Um I'm sure any trainer out there, anybody who's maybe been in LD, will identify with this one. You're you're called in to either upgrade or create a training, and you're getting a briefing, and you're hearing stuff, and you're thinking to yourself, and I'm going back to what you said earlier, um, this is a systemic issue in this company or organization. Um and the training isn't going to per se sort it unless everybody goes through the same training. You know that it's a bit like health and safety. Like, there's no point in putting five people through health and safety if 500 people work in the factory, and and health and safety is a critical factor. You need to put everybody through the training. But often you're sitting there and you're thinking, hmm, they want to do a training for this, and it will make some difference. But the issue is um uh a cultural one, for example. I mean, I was in one training uh I was asked to do once, and uh I've written about it on some of my um uh newsletters, but it was please come in and teach more junior people how to communicate with the senior people in the organization. And long story short, the feedback after I did two cohorts. It was uh it wasn't in Belgium, it was another country. I did two cohorts, and what alarmed me actually when I was sitting in reception on the day one was there was a screen showing um book a meeting with the psychologists, and they could book with five psychologists, but only 300 people working in this building, right? I'm thinking, why do you need five psychologists? Anyway, long story short, we get to the end of the second cohort, and the training turned into more of a kind of a consultative, like get throw stuff at me and I'll help you type of thing. I ended up more in a sort of interactive session. But one young lady said at the end, she said, I I really enjoyed this training, and uh I don't think I should have been on it. She said the senior management team should have been on this training. And so what emerged was that the throughout this was there was massive lack of psychological safety. The reason why people weren't perceived to be communicating with the senior management team was that they were scared. Um, and so you're sitting there going, it doesn't really matter how good this training is, doesn't really matter that I opened it up as a clinic to everybody after a while because I just had lots of material and I could help them. But the real issue was uh a systemic issue in that organization, and and that becomes very frustrating. And I sense that with this transfer readiness diagnostic that you've built, you're gonna catch that stuff uh early on.

SPEAKER_01 31:32

Way ahead of time. Way ahead of time. Yeah, would that be true? Yes, because you you found out out that in the room, um, while the money the money had already been spent, people had already been taken away from the roles, and you uncovered it. Uh, what the diagnostics helps to do is to flag all of that really early in the process so that you have it either going in um or you can make um data-informed decisions on what to do differently.

SPEAKER_00 32:00

Yeah.

Presence First Then Learning Then Action

SPEAKER_00 32:01

So I've been doing some research of my own for the last couple of years. Um, I've been asking people very simple question at the beginning of many trainings, but what challenges, you know, what are the challenges they have when they're on when they're learning stuff? And uh at the beginning it was more kind of icebreaker type connecting people to the training. And as I started pulling that data in, I started to notice an amazing pattern. Um, and uh I'm I'm I'm I'm going to be talking about it in public over you know the next few months. Uh, but what what emerged from this was that people were struggling less with this idea of motivation and willingness to learn, but more with the conditions around learning. Um and you know, I think this plays to what you're talking about, what happens before, what happens afterwards. Um, like one of the things is this ability to be actually present in the room. Uh I I I I came up with this kind of a moment which which I've written about saying um you cannot transfer what hasn't been learned and you cannot learn what you don't attend to.

SPEAKER_01 33:12

Oh yeah, I like that a lot.

SPEAKER_00 33:14

Um because because I there's a lot going on around how do we get the tra how do we get it back to the workplace, but I'm noticing something else than that. That goes back to my example earlier. A person is sitting there and all of a sudden they're gone. Either they're gone because they've opened their phone or they're they're in the room but they're not present, or they're out of the room. Uh and it gets worse online because people just close their cameras off and then they disappear, and you're going, hello, hello, is it are you still there? Or they go to a breakout room and they don't go to the breakout room, they go somewhere else, and then you don't know whether they're coming back. So, so how how does how does your work with multiply perhaps touch on these factors about actually uh enabling people to come into a training room, whether it's online or physically, and actually be present enough to learn?

SPEAKER_01 34:04

Yeah, absolutely. What you're hearing from people has actually been been studied very widely, and uh Will Dalheimer does a great job of explaining it. He uses the the L RA model, so the E L or A. So your your first goal uh uh in a training is to engage because if you do not engage, people won't learn. So L is the learn is the is the L in the LRA model. And if they don't learn, they obviously can't remember it afterwards, and if they don't remember it afterwards, they can't act. So he uses that model to really kind of simplify the the process of what should happen, and like the goal of this is why we're in the training, is the act afterwards. So he uses that model. I just thought I'd thought I'd bring that up because there are a lot of similarities between uh what you said there. Um so how does multiply get people into that state? So multiply really focuses on on the environment, like like we said. So, how do we get them to engage in a session? So if we've connected through our diagnostic the through our diagnostic, we've understood the issue, we've understood um that this should be a training after all, and that the training is actually connected to the things that people care about in the business, such as achieving our goals or meeting our quarterly KPIs. So we've done a massive amount of work there already to get to that point. But then when a campaign actually starts before a session, managers are engaged uh through the multiplied platform. Um they're told what's happening and they're encouraged to set up a five-minute call with their employee to discuss what the employee will get out of the session. Um and it takes it takes five minutes. I know managers are busy, but is there a manager who doesn't want to achieve their goals? Is there a manager who does not want to improve the performance of their team? That's a that's a question for another day, I suppose. Um but it helps to set up the environment um for engagement and for learning. So that happens before the session, and uh from a learner's perspective, they have uh priming communications and they have uh different things to get them thinking before about the session before the session ever happens. So multiply is really about the environmental side of things. So if you were to implement this for one of your programs, your session would stay mainly the same. But where multiply where work is in the environmental side of things. And then after that session, um again, the manager has support, the manager has its own um like guide path, how to help their employee as they return from training, the right questions to ask, um, there's coaching support, there's um there's there's the action plan for the learner that they've created and they've agreed to follow through on. The manager can see these things. So it's really helping. If we can design something from the start to be something that people care about, creating that engagement, creating that um those kinds of like those on-ramps and off-ramps out into and out of training becomes so much easier because people actually care about these things that we're working on, and it's not just ah, communication skills. I'm gonna go to that for sure. I'll be back in an hour. You know, it's it's important, and that's what the work that we do is important. What we're doing is developing people. We're we're a key enabler of performance in in companies. So we shouldn't be just a tick-the-box. Performance should not be a tick-the-box. Uh training is you know, just one tool in the tool belt that can do these things, but it's it's a very powerful tool when it's designed correctly. And that's what I'm trying to do is to create the conditions for transfer rather than just giving people a faster way to deliver training or whatever's happening around there these days.

SPEAKER_00 37:59

Yeah. I often sometimes think that people turn up to trainings with the the question in their heads going, I wonder if there's anything to learn here. And you know, it's it can be a function of a lot of factors. Um, am I hearing that managers get nudges then from the software? Like they're not just because actually it's okay saying the manager has a role to play, but managers are not training professionals, a lot of them, right? And they're not they're they're not in that world. They're maybe trying to make a deadline, they're trying to manage a warehouse, they're trying to manage a uh whatever a front desk in a hotel, whatever they're trying to manage, they're they're thinking about can I get to where we need to be by the end of today without too many problems, right? They're not thinking about what pedagogical um you know principles am I need to apply today to talk to my people. So, how does how does Multiply help them with the language and and the nudging that they need, just to say to them, by the way, Fergal went on a training the other day, you should really check in with him to find out you know how he's going to use that.

SPEAKER_01 39:08

Yeah, uh super question, Jerry. Because it how multiply works is it it doesn't speak to the managers in you know um dense uh scientific language. It's it speaks to them like managers and it it doesn't even talk to them about training transfer, it just really promotes good manager skills. So meeting with your team is a good manager skill, understanding what's going on with your with your employees, knowing where they are, knowing how they're contributing to the business is a good manager skill. Uh checking in on what's happened after training is just a good manager skill. So it's it's I I don't talk to managers about I don't, yes, like you said, they're not training professionals, they're managers. Um and I think all managers want to use um use be the best that they can be to support their teams. Um and all the tool does is just give them that right information at the right time so that they can be the best manager that they can be in that moment. And again, it all links back to um the goals of the business that the managers are already aligned to. Um so yeah, it just promotes positive manager practices. It's not about learning, it's not about training, it's about you know helping the manager to achieve their goals, we frame it like that.

SPEAKER_00 40:26

And I think it's worth just re mentioning for the benefit of the listeners that you are actually in an organizational world at the moment where you're you're not just making this up, you're actually dealing with real managers in all shapes and forms every day, right? Uh in your role. So um you can talk to this from a position of strength and depth, right?

SPEAKER_01 40:51

Absolutely. Yeah, this is something that we deal with every day. Um but like anyone in LD will will recognize a lot of what I'm saying. Um because it it's it's not just a in LD, we can't just deliver the simple fix. It's it's it's a systemic issue, like you mentioned, Jerry, and it's it's we're one we're one part in a wider ecosystem. Um so yeah, this is born of my my years of experience working within tech companies, um, enabling transfer through uh tech-enabled software, but also ultimately understanding the people perspective. You can't just throw tech at the experience and expect it to work. You need to understand that people are complex, people are are lazy at times, but you know, people care about certain things. So when you can understand what people care about in your business, you've got a much better opportunity uh to actually move them in the direction that the company wants.

SPEAKER_00 41:52

And that's consistent with a theme that comes up time and time again with other guests on this Leading People podcast. Um, a couple of quick more questions.

What Leaders Need To See

SPEAKER_00 42:02

At the end of the process, what do you want leadership to be able to see that they usually don't see today? And how does that change the conversation about the value of LD? So let's say the company takes your software in. Obviously, somebody's gonna have to approve this. I presume you're not giving it out, gonna give it out for free. So basically, at the end of the day, leaders will probably say, you know, you guys took this software, even if it's only to pilot it, what what difference does it make? So, what do you want leaders to see um that they're not seeing today?

SPEAKER_01 42:31

So, what leaders see today is how many people attend the training um and potentially what people thought of the training. Um for the now, I know that I'm not speaking for absolutely every team and every leader, but for the vast majority, that's the best that we can give them. So, what I want to enable LD to do is to show LD that, or sorry, to show the leadership that from the top down, from your biggest goals uh to your your your quarterly milestones, whatever you want to do, that L and D can help you every step of the way. And LD has an important role to play in helping you to achieve your goals. And we can do that through targeted training, through targeted uh performance enablement, through helping people to perform more effectively with the support of their manager and to actually give them the line of sight between training did this, that KPI moved, and that led to, that contributed to the goals that were achieving. So it's all about helping LD to position themselves as an impactful strategic business enabler rather than the training providers.

SPEAKER_00 43:42

Okay, and a final question I have here is, and that translates what you just said a little bit into if multiply does work as intended, what changes about the specific role of LD itself, especially in a world where the content creation is becoming increasingly easier and easier through AI and A. Tools. So how will the you know what will so it's okay now you're talking about first of all, LD can translate and communicate the impact. However, what's gonna happen what might happen to the role of L and D professionals if they were to, for example, embrace multiply? How would that change their day-to-day?

SPEAKER_01 44:19

I think if you can we're in a bit of a bit of a quandary in LD. And as you kind of alluded to, the content generation is getting faster. Um, and they're being sold, LD is being sold to as you need faster content, you're spending all your time creating content. Well, here is a thing that can create content even faster. But that's a dead end for LD. And I want to warn everyone who's leading to this in the LD side of things that faster content won't get you anywhere. It's just going to get you to the same dead end in a faster car. That's all that will do. Um so you need to be aware of that and to be, you know, just kind of cognizant that these things are out there, but it nothing will fix the issue that you're trying to solve. Um, and our goal in LD is to help people to change, to improve, uh, to impact goals. Faster content won't get them there, shorter content won't do it. It's an environment issue. It has always been an environment issue. So, how LD will change is they will understand the environment, they will understand the real drivers of behavior change, and they'll get out of the content game as quickly as they can. Like potentially understanding the environment that you're working in. So, if you're to run multiply across several different campaigns, you'll be able to see like there's a sales team and AIPAC who are incredible at coaching, but you can compare that to um um an operations team in in the media. And the operations team are are doing okay, but they just don't have the coaching. So you can then connect the you've got the insights then to make a decision. Like, do you want to connect the sales APAC team, understand them a little bit more, what are they doing? Uh what what what are the behaviors that they're that they're showing so effectively when it comes to this environmental aspect, but then show that to the the Mia operations team and have them to get up to the level of the sales APAC team. So we don't have that right now in LD. We take it on a very training by training basis. Uh if we ever have the opportunity to go back and really look at it. But with something like this, it helps you to understand the the real organizational maneuvers that are at play and that we just never really look at in LD. Um so we really get us like that organizational view of what's happening, like what's underneath, like what is truly driving these behaviors to change or to not change.

The Seed And The Soil

SPEAKER_00 46:54

So we've covered quite a lot of ground, Virgil, but we could cover a hell of a lot more, I'd say, if we had another half an hour or so to talk about stuff. Um so coming to the end of the conversation, Virgil, uh what what um if my listener could take away just one big idea from this, what would that be?

SPEAKER_01 47:18

The one big idea, and I hope everyone I think if you're coming to something like the the the leading people podcast, like you're interested in how to develop, you're interested in learning what's happening next. And I hope everyone who's listening is already thinking what's happening next, and if you're in LD, you're kind of thinking two steps ahead of where is my role going to be with all of the the change that's happening outside of the companies when it comes to the technology shifts, how AI is encroaching into the LD space as much as possible. So if there's one thing that I want people to get out of this, it's to look at the ground, look at the soil, look at the grass, look at the conditions, look at that. Um don't just look at the the single seed. Because it's we need to take a systems holistic view to how we're helping people to grow. And I think only through really understanding everything that's around the seed is going to help the seed to grow.

SPEAKER_00 48:17

Okay. So, Virgo, um, how can people contact you? I'll put I'll put links in the show notes, but how do you would you like people to contact you? And do you have anything special for my listeners today that you would like to offer them?

SPEAKER_01 48:31

Fantastic. Jerry, yeah, I'm always happy. I'm all very um vocal on LinkedIn uh about the topic of transfer. So if anyone would like to connect, please do. I've got the Multiply Transfer website. We can take a look, you can learn a little bit more. Um, but for special offer for the leading people podcast, um if three people connect with me, send me a message, I will get them personally set up on the platform uh for three months for absolutely for free. Um just for just for the listeners of the leading people podcast.

SPEAKER_00 49:04

Yeah, and and it's worth it if you're in this space out there, or even if you're not an LD professional, learning development professional, I would say even as a leader, you can go in and see how clever and how well uh thought through Virgo's platform is. So I would recommend that. Virgo Connolly, thanks for sharing your insights, tips, and wisdom with me and my listeners here today. Jerry, it's been an absolute pleasure listening to Connelly. And that's it for this episode of Leading People. If you're new here and enjoyed today's conversation, I'd love it if you subscribed. It's the best way to make sure you never miss an episode. And if you are a regular listener, the best recommendation is always a personal one. So, if this episode made an impact on you, please share it with a friend or colleague. It might just be the best thing they listen to this week. Until next time.