Why the development of leadership is still struggling with the transfer of learning – years later – lift

I was delighted to receive an email from McKinsey recently with the convincing object line: “Why the leadership development programs fail.” Naturally, I was excited. I assumed that there must have been new research, new information or even a renewed commitment to meet the well -known challenges of learning transfer.

But by opening the article, my excitement quickly faded. It turned out to be a reissue of an article initially published in 2014 – ten years ago!

McKinsey label like “archives,“But the fact that they are republishing it now suggest that they always believe that this problem persists. And they are not mistaken – the development of the masterpiece continues to face the same fundamental challenge: How to guarantee that learning actually leads to a sustained change in behavior and a measurable impact in the workplace.

The idea for faults learning projects as a Silver Bulte
In 2014, I wrote a powerful answer To this article by McKinsey. He rejected one of the commonly proposed solutions: the integration of learning projects in the context of development programs. Although learning projects can be precious, they are not the miracle solution to solve the problem of learning transfer.

The simple fact of assigning a project does not guarantee the application of learning, change in behavior or commercial impact – the changes that a person is put in place remains with the project. This does not lead to a sustained change in behavior in the daily role of learners, in particular without structured follow -up, responsibility and continuous support.

A customer case study: a high -quality leadership program missing transfer
This conversation is not only theoretical. I was in a customer meeting last week during which they shared the details of a leadership program they had successfully executed for five cohorts. He had all the characteristics of a robust program:

✅ Great participant's commentary
✅ Complete mentoring
✅ engaging and high quality learning content
✅ A mixed face -to -face and online learning approach
✅ An integrated project component
✅ Graduation and report on project results

However, despite all these efforts and investments over five years, the organization knew that it did not create a real transfer of learning. This is why they approached me.

This raises an important question: How can a program designed with so much reflection, effort and structure always provide a transfer of learning?
I shared my point of view with them, in particular around projects and the way they relate to the transfer of learning. Although projects may seem to be a strong link between learning and change of behavior, they are often seated outside the normal role of a daily participant. Consequently, they do not necessarily integrate new behaviors in the workplace and the daily roles of the learners, in a lasting way.

The transition from projects to action plans
Instead of counting on projects, I suggested exchanging them for action plans directly linked to the role of the participant. This means:

✅ Ensuring commitments is immediately relevant for their real world responsibilities
✅ Creation of action steps which lead to a real change in behavior in the workflow

The customer jumped on this idea – they liked the passage of abstract projects to the planning of the action based on roles. However, action plans alone are not enough.

The missing part: self-reflection for a lasting change
Their current strategy involved group discussions at the start of the following module on what the participants had applied. Although useful, this is not enough to generate an individual behavior change.

To go beyond the upper 20% of naturally committed learners and create a significant impact for 60% in the middle, we need powerful and structured self-reflection. This guarantees that participants are not only talking about group learning but actively engage with their own commitments, challenges and progress. Our learning to transform ™ ™ methodology does exactly that.

It is time to modernize the development of leadership for a real impact
If McKinsey still reports this problem a decade later, it is surely time for organizations to stop counting on obsolete solutions and starting to integrate real learning transfer strategies in their leadership programs.

If your leadership programs are of high quality but need an upgrade – one that focuses on real transfer, measurable results and real behavior change – real behavior –Let's talk about. We work directly with organizations where we associate ourselves with leadership training providers. We also have data analysis to follow and demonstrate the impact.

I would be delighted to help. Send me a line where Contact meAnd let us make the development of leadership really transformational.

Photo of Amy Hirschi on Disable