Many training programs have impressive completion rates, detailed curricula, and satisfied learner feedback. But six months later, it’s hard to point to specific behavior changes or business improvements.
If you’ve felt that, you may be running training theater programs that look professional but don’t drive real development.
Turns out 75 percent of CEOs don’t believe their leadership development programs impact the business, even while their L&D teams celebrate high completion rates and 4.5-star satisfaction scores. The metrics say success. The business results say otherwise.
The Seductive Trap of Vanity Metrics
Training theater happens when organizations measure what’s easy rather than what impacts the business. You’ve seen it: the mandatory annual compliance training everyone clicks through while multitasking. The leadership workshop with beautiful workbooks that gather dust. The e-learning platform tracks logins instead of behavior change.
These programs share telltale signs:
- Completion rates as a primary KPI
- Certificates employees collect but don’t value
- Test scores that measure short-term recall, not application
- Happy sheets that capture post-lunch satisfaction, not skill development
The real problem isn’t that these metrics are wrong—it’s that they create false confidence. When boards see 98 percent completion rates, they assume development is happening. When employees ace knowledge checks, managers assume behaviors will change.
But knowledge and behavior are entirely different.
What Real Development Actually Looks Like
Real skill development doesn’t happen in conference rooms or through learning portals. It happens when employees practice new behaviors during actual work, receive feedback, adjust, and practice again.
Think about how you learned your most valuable professional skills, probably not from a PowerPoint deck.
Instead of training events, imagine training woven into work itself. A supervisor learning safety leadership doesn’t need another workshop. They need to practice conducting thorough safety walkthroughs during their rounds, document near misses as they occur, and address violations in real time with their team.
This shift changes everything:
- From attendance to application: Success means using skills, not just showing up
- From satisfaction to skill-building: Development requires practice, not just positive feelings
- From completion to progression: Learning continues until behaviors become habits
A global aviation company discovered this difference when it replaced in-class time-management training with integrated practice. Instead of teaching the Eisenhower Matrix in a classroom, they had employees complete on-the-job activities to categorize their actual daily tasks, identify what to delegate, and eliminate non-essential activities during regular work.
The result? 60 percent of participants showed measurable improvement in time management behaviors (Flint Learning Solutions data). Not test scores. Actual behaviors their managers witnessed on the job.
Measurement That Actually Matters
Here’s where most organizations get tripped up. They know traditional metrics are insufficient, but what should they measure instead?
Start with behavior change.
Before any development initiative, identify the specific behaviors you need to change. Then measure them before and after—both through self-assessment and manager observation. When supervisors report witnessing their team members conducting more thorough safety checks or having difficult performance conversations, you’re measuring what matters.
Track these instead of vanity metrics:
- Behavior frequency: How often are people demonstrating new skills?
- Manager observations: What specific changes do supervisors witness?
- Business impact: Which KPIs move when behaviors change?
One financial services company wanted to improve career development conversations—a behavior directly linked to their retention challenges. They implemented bite-sized activities that managers completed within their normal workflow to practice specific conversation techniques with their teams. The results: 54 percent of managers showed improvement, and those improvements correlated with reduced turnover in their departments.
That’s measurement with teeth.
But measurement alone won’t create change. You need leadership to understand and support this new approach.
Getting Leadership Buy-In for Real Results
Executives don’t care about completion rates. They care about business outcomes.
Frame your measurement conversation around problems they’re already worried about: “Our turnover costs us $1.2 million annually. Here’s how we’ll measure whether development initiatives reduce that number through specific behavior changes.”
Lead with business impact, follow with behavioral metrics, and skip the satisfaction scores entirely.
Present this simple framework:
- Business challenge we’re addressing
- Specific behaviors that will impact the challenge
- How we’ll measure behavior change
- Expected business outcome from changed behaviors
When leaders see this clear line from development to business results, support follows.
The curtain is falling on the training theater. Organizations are waking up to the difference between programs that look good and programs that work. The question isn’t whether you’ll make this shift—it’s how quickly you’ll start measuring what actually matters.
Your next development initiative is your chance to prove the difference.
References
- McKinsey: What’s missing in leadership development
- Flint Learning Solutions data client implementation data ³ Flint Learning Solutions financial services client results
