The Learn–Practice–Assess Loop

Hi Reader, Daria's here.

I've been running leadership programs for years, across very different industries. And the best ones weren't much different in content or in the facilitator. There was always something else that made a program work.

The problem with most training is that nothing changes after it's finished. People learn something, go back to their desks, and carry on exactly as before. We tend to blame the content, or the facilitator, or the people. It's rarely any of those.

In the latest Built by People Leaders episode, I talk with Maria Kolesnikoff, executive coach and former Head of Talent Management at a large bank, about why content-based development changes so little.

Here’s a simple way to test any program before it launches. Development has three parts, and a program only works if all three exist.

Learn. The content. The session, the reading, the model. This is the part every program has, and it’s the only part most programs have.

Practice. The place where people apply the new behavior on real work, with real stakes, in the weeks after the session. If you can’t name where practice happens — which project, which meeting, which conversation — it isn’t happening.

Assess. The feedback loop. Someone observes, someone tells them what they saw, and it counts for something. It needs to be a clear judgment about whether the new behavior showed up.

When we miss the second and third, we fail our development program.

Why it works

Two reasons. First, behavior change takes effort, and people are sensible about effort. As Maria puts it, people "like to be in their comfort zone" — leaving it needs a reason. Practice and assessment supply the reason.

Second, it forces development out of the L&D calendar and into the organization's system. Once assessment is real, it has to connect to something real: performance reviews, the talent review, promotion, the bonus. That is basically the main motivator for people to start doing something differently.

Try it this week

Take one program you're running or planning. Write the three headings — Learn, Practice, Assess — and fill them in with specific details.

Under Learn: what exactly are we teaching?

Under Practice: where will they do this, on what work, in the next 60 days? Name the project or the meeting.

Under Assess: who will observe it, what will they look for, and where does the result land? Performance review, talent review, succession list, bonus criteria — pick at least one.

If any column is empty, you've found your gap. Fill the emptiest one first. You don't need to redesign the whole content or find a better facilitator - you need to fill in those gaps.

One line worth keeping

"Let them motivate themselves to be involved in the educational process." — Maria Kolesnikoff.

The full episode has the rest: how she rebuilt a talent program that nobody was buying into by interviewing every stakeholder group and handing them back their own ideas, why entertainment is the wrong cure for a motivation problem, and the language gap between HR and the business that costs L&D its budget. Listen on your favorite platform.