The Psychology of a Training Request

Why are stakeholders asking for training?

It sometimes feels as if the requests for training are coming across our desks or into our inboxes at breakneck speed, even when we have suspicions that training won’t solve the problem. Even when we want to do more than fulfill pre-scripted training “orders.”

Maybe you haven’t been there. If that’s true, you’re lucky. Unfortunately, this experience was one I used to live every single day.

My team was creating fantastic, awesome, engaging training solutions but they weren’t solving the problems. We perfected our product, but it wasn’t enough. The training requests just kept coming. We wanted to think creatively about how to solve stakeholder issues, but the space and time to do that didn’t seem to exist.

It was easy to blame the stakeholder requesting the problem.

“They just keep asking for training and we know it won’t solve the problem!”

“There are so many more ways to learn than just an e-learning or class, why won’t they let us think outside the box to determine what’s really most effective?”

“Why does everyone assume they know how to do our jobs and tell us exactly what to create?”

But blaming the stakeholder doesn’t do anything other than self-impose a victim mindset. It isn’t helpful and definitely won’t change how we do our work in the organization. It’s time to ease up on the complaints and ask a different question. Why are stakeholders coming to us with pre-scripted training requests in the first place?

Personal Experience

Let’s shift our perspective for a moment from someone who works inside L&D and thinks about the most effective ways to learn to someone outside this viewpoint. What does learning look like to them?

If we step back in time to where most of us spent our formative years, we likely benefitted from child labor laws. Meaning most of those years were spent as students in classrooms instead of workers in factories.

In most places, the traditional education system is still intact, based on the structure behind the first universities. High schools and colleges still use the model of a “sage on the stage” where a credentialed teacher stands at the front, imparting their wisdom about a particular topic to a group of students. Success in homework assignments is geared towards knowledge more than application. Students who can memorize facts and data are rewarded in exams. We can argue the effectiveness of such an approach to learning, but the argument hasn’t changed the system.

Our adult human brains use our past experiences to inform decisions, make assumptions, and decipher unwritten expectations. So, when it comes to general knowledge of how learning happens, most people jump back to their past experiences. Experiences in a traditional education system.

Leaders and stakeholders in our organizations spend their time thinking about things like how to improve the business, produce more, solve big challenges, and get the most out of their team. They are not spending their days thinking critically about how learning happens and whether the methods of the traditional education system translate into the workplace.

When they have a need for learning, they don’t stop to think about what might work best. Instead, they send a request to L&D to create this learning experience in accordance with their preconceived expectations of what learning looks like based on their own past experiences.

This legacy thinking, that learning happens in a formal learning environment, isn’t meant to frustrate L&D. It’s simply what the stakeholder sees and understands to be the norm.

Pain Points and Challenges

Continuing our stroll through the stakeholder perspective, let’s consider what brought them to us in the first place. Why are they reaching out now?

Usually, our stakeholders don’t ask for training simply to be nice. In most organizations where I have worked or consulted, the “to do” lists are long, customers are demanding, and the pressure for teams to perform is intense. Leading employees in these conditions can be challenging and stressful especially if performance, technology, hiring, retention, or just regular human life issues make an appearance.

Good leaders can solve many of these challenges on their own, but they also know when they are in over their head. They know when something blocking optimal performance is outside of their capacity, and that’s when they reach out looking for help. Perhaps training has worked to ease the pain or solve the challenge in the past, so it seems like a logical step to contact the learning team. Maybe the learning team is awesome and trusted to do great work. In some cases, the stakeholder may not have the time or brainpower available to think about another solution. No matter the reason, most stakeholders reach out to the learning team in search of a remedy to a challenge or pain point.

Personal Experience + Pain Points/Challenges = Training?

This intersection of past experience and a pain point or challenge is usually what lands a stakeholder request for training in our inbox. But that doesn’t mean we need to respond to the request as stated. Armed with even this tiny amount of perspective, we can shift our next steps. What to do?

• #1 Respond with empathy and curiosity. Arm yourself with empathy for the stakeholder who has a challenge they need help to address and the curiosity to learn more. What is the pain point or challenge driving this request? What evidence can you find to confirm this is the root issue and not a symptom? What’s the reason this particular challenge is pervasive or urgent now?

• #2 Remember your learning nerdiness belongs to you. Most L&D professionals love to nerd out on the best ways for people to learn and develop. It’s part of why we do this work and why our jobs exist. We think about people development constantly, but our stakeholders don’t. Share what you know when it is helpful to steer the conversation in an alternate direction and/or open your stakeholder’s mind to new possibilities to solve their problem.

• #3 Trust their expertise. While you are the learning expert, this stakeholder is also an expert in their own area. The best solutions come from using the combined and differing expertise of all those in the room. Trust the expertise they bring as well as your own.

When we remove blame and dive in to better understand the reasons a request for training came our way, we respond differently. We can even begin to tilt the scales towards working as a more strategic business partner. We can still be helpful even if we don’t end up fulfilling the request as it was originally written. One might go as far as to say that’s part of our job.