Between what is learned
and what is applied.
Transfer is the moment when learning becomes a lasting practice in real work. Research has studied it for forty years. Its conclusions are uncomfortable: the quality of a training is not enough to make it applied.
We measure satisfaction, not application.
Trainings are evaluated as people leave the room, while everyone is still motivated. We know how many people came, what they thought, sometimes what they remembered that day. Application starts the following Monday. And then, no one is looking.
This is not neglect, it is a professional boundary. The trainer’s responsibility stops at the door of the room. The manager’s begins without anyone having explained it. The participant is left alone between the two.
The space where transfer happens belongs to no one today.
What the research says
Content is only a third of the problem.
Work on transfer converges on three dimensions.
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01 What the participant brings.
Their motivation, their confidence in their ability to succeed, the clarity of what they came for. We treat this dimension as given because they enrolled. That is rarely true, and no one checks it before day one.
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02 What the training offers.
Instructional design, practice situations, the link with daily work. This is the only dimension really worked on today, so the one with the least left to gain.
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03 What the participant finds on the way back.
Chances to apply, time, a manager who cares, colleagues doing the same. This is where much of it is decided, and it is the part training almost never looks at. It can still be steered.
It is not a lack of will. It is a lack of organization.
If eight participants out of twelve give up, it is not that they do not want to. Nothing around them was planned so they could apply: no occasion, no time, no follow-up.
And that, unlike will, can be organized.
Extend the flow in time, and to other people.
Looking after the aftermath is not adding a reminder email. The flow starts before the session and continues for several weeks after. It brings in two actors training leaves outside: the manager and the peers.
A participant on their own falls back into old habits. With three people, the attempt is expected.
Flow
Team management — March session
And for your trainings, what would it look like?
Share one of your trainings with us and, in thirty minutes, we analyze together how to multiply its impact through effective transfer engineering.