Most corporate training fails because it prioritises information over behaviour. It relies on passive learning that people quickly forget, rarely connects to real workplace pressures, and doesn’t engage emotions. Behaviour change training only works when people actively experience, reflect, and practise new behaviours in realistic contexts.
The Problem with Traditional Training: Information Without Impact
Despite significant investment, much corporate training underperforms. Research consistently shows low recall rates within weeks of traditional programmes, particularly those built around slide decks, lectures, or one-off workshops.
The issue isn’t effort or intent — it’s design. Traditional training assumes that if people know what to do, they will do it. But knowing is not the same as behaving.
Most programmes are:
Passive, asking people to listen rather than participate
Abstract, detached from real workplace dynamics
One-dimensional, focused on cognitive understanding alone
According to research cited by Forbes, employees forget up to 90% of new information within a week when learning is not actively reinforced. Without relevance, emotional engagement, or practice, learning simply doesn’t stick.
This is why employee engagement during training often feels superficial — people attend, nod, take notes, and return to work unchanged.
Cognitive Learning vs Emotional Learning: Where Behaviour Actually Shifts
Behaviour change does not happen in the rational brain alone.
Cognitive learning helps people understand concepts, frameworks, and language. Emotional learning, however, is what drives reflection, self-awareness, and ultimately change. People alter behaviour when they feel the impact of their actions — not when they’re merely told about it.
Neuroscience and learning theory both show that emotionally charged experiences are encoded more deeply in memory. CIPD regularly highlights that learning connected to lived experience, emotion, and social context is far more likely to translate into sustained behavioural change.
This is why experiential learning — learning through experience rather than instruction — is critical. It creates moments of recognition, discomfort, insight, and choice. These moments stay with people long after a training session ends.
If leadership development or behaviour change training doesn’t create emotional resonance, it rarely creates real-world impact.
Why Experiential Learning Leads to Learning That Sticks
Experiential learning shifts people from being observers to participants. Instead of talking about behaviour, it allows people to see, feel, and practise it in action.
Effective experiential learning:
Mirrors real workplace situations
Encourages reflection rather than instruction
Allows participants to experiment safely
Surfaces unconscious habits and assumptions
This approach increases recall dramatically. Participants don’t just remember what was said — they remember what happened. Many can recall specific moments, insights, and behaviour shifts months or even years later.
This is what “learning that sticks” actually looks like: not perfect recall of content, but lasting awareness of behaviour and its impact on others.
Introducing the Steps Method: Behaviour First, Not Performance
Experiential learning is not about role play or “acting”. It is participant-led, scenario-based learning grounded in real workplace dynamics.
Participants observe and engage with carefully designed scenarios that reflect common leadership, communication, and inclusion challenges. These scenarios act as mirrors — showing behaviours as they appear in real life, not how people wish they behaved.
The power lies in what happens next:
Participants interpret what they see
They discuss impact, intention, and consequence
They recognise themselves — often unexpectedly
This process creates genuine “aha moments”. Not because someone told them what to think, but because they saw behaviour in action and felt its effect.
This is behaviour change training designed for reality — not theory.
Aha Moments, Reflection, and Long-Term Recall
One of the most consistent pieces of feedback from Steps participants is how vividly they remember specific moments from sessions long after they end.
That’s because insight is self-generated.
When people arrive at their own conclusions, learning becomes personal. Reflection deepens understanding. Dialogue builds perspective. Behaviour change becomes a choice rather than an instruction.
High-recall learning isn’t louder, more entertaining, or more complex. It’s more human.
This is especially critical for leadership development, where subtle behaviours — tone, body language, listening, decision-making — shape culture far more than policies ever could.
Why Behaviour Change Training Drives Employee Engagement
Employee engagement doesn’t improve because people are told to care more. It improves when people feel seen, heard, and understood — and when leaders change how they show up.
Training that focuses on real behaviours:
Builds trust through shared experience
Encourages honest conversation
Reduces defensiveness and blame
Strengthens psychological safety
Organisations that prioritise experiential learning create space for reflection rather than compliance. Over time, this leads to stronger engagement, better collaboration, and more inclusive cultures.
As SHRM emphasises, learning strategies that connect behaviour, culture, and lived experience are far more effective than traditional instructional models when it comes to sustained performance.
From Insight to Action: Making Learning Transfer Stick
Even the most powerful learning experience needs reinforcement. That’s why effective behaviour change training doesn’t end when the session does.
Sustainable impact comes from:
Post-session reflection tools
Ongoing dialogue within teams
Opportunities to practise new behaviours
Leadership modelling and reinforcement
When learning is designed with behaviour in mind from the start, transfer becomes a natural extension — not an afterthought.
The Real Question Organisations Should Be Asking
The question is no longer “Did people enjoy the training?”
It’s “What behaviour changed as a result?”
If training doesn’t alter how people listen, lead, challenge, include, or collaborate, it hasn’t done its job — no matter how polished it looked.
Behaviour change requires courage, reflection, and experience. And it requires learning designs that respect how humans actually learn.
Take the Next Step
If you want to experience experiential learning in action, attend a Steps Open Session and see how scenario-based, participant-led learning creates real behavioural insight.
Because real change doesn’t start with information — it starts with experience.