Your Leadership Training Is Completely Broken

Walk into any corporate leadership training and you'll see the same setup that failed you in seventh grade. Chairs, slides, and someone talking at you about theories you'll never use.

Sixty billion dollars down the drain.

That's what organizations spend annually on leadership development programs that fundamentally don't work. The workplace application is low, and most programs underperform or fail entirely.

But here's what's really happening. We're teaching leadership like we're still in school. Walk into any corporate leadership training, and you'll see the same setup that failed you in seventh grade: rows of chairs, PowerPoint slides, and someone talking at you about theories you'll never use.

The problem runs deeper than boring content, though. Nearly half of all managers receive inadequate training for their roles as guides and mediators. They get thrown into leadership positions without proper preparation.

Yet we keep using the same broken model.

No training I ever took showed me how to go from peer to manager. No one told me how awkward it would be to sit across from someone I used to joke with and now had to give feedback to. And no workshop helped me when I asked my team how they were doing and got a fake All good, thanks.

None of the trainings gave me language that worked in a tense room. None of them helped me build a system I could consistently hold myself accountable to. And none of them helped me connect my team’s work to something that actually mattered to them.

Let’s just say it straight: most leadership training doesn’t help.

And the science around this is brutal. People retain just 10% of what they learn from traditional lectures, but retain up to 75% from experiential methods. Think about that gap. Traditional training gives you one-tenth the retention of hands-on experience.

Your brain evolved to learn through doing, not sitting. Leadership requires split-second decisions under pressure. You can't develop that judgment in a conference room.

Leadership happens in messy, unpredictable moments. A team member breaks down during a crisis. A client threatens to leave. Two departments can't agree on priorities. No workshop prepares you for the specific texture of these problems. The exact combination of personalities, timing, and stakes that make each situation unique.

Real leadership develops through repetition under fire. Through making mistakes when they matter. Through getting feedback that stings because the outcome was real.

Trainings and workshops are too broad and general, too clean, and too far from the actual job. You sit through it once and you’re done. There’s no follow-up, no feedback, and no system built from it. And definitely, there’s no accountability when it doesn’t translate into the job.

Here’s what I wish someone had told me. Leadership is not about the theory, it’s about what you do, how you show up, and how consistent you are. It’s about having a standard and holding yourself accountable to it.

The best leaders learn the same way athletes do. They practice specific skills in controlled environments. They get immediate feedback. They gradually increase the complexity and pressure.

Mentorship beats modules. Simulation beats slides. Real projects beat role-playing exercises.

Organizations that understand this, create apprenticeship, mentorship, and coaching programs. They pair new leaders with experienced ones. They give people actual responsibility with appropriate support.

They measure results, not attendance.

Most companies would rather spend $60K on a vendor than spend 60 minutes building an actual system that works. So, here are three things I learned the hard way, that helped me shape my standard. That standard became my leadership system: