Head, Heart, Body, System – the secret to successful corporate training

If you’ve ever worked for an organisation that’s offered staff training, you’ll likely have seen colleagues leave the seminar room and discard everything they’ve learned within 30 minutes of being back at their desks.

They may have had the intention of implementing the learning while taking part in the workshop, but when it comes to putting it into practice, old habits too easily creep in. That person might even be you.

The fact is, without wholehearted support from the very top of an organisation, even the best corporate training will largely fail to achieve its goals. 

In 2016, Michael Beer, Magnus Finnström, and Derek Schrader published a piece in the Harvard Business Review titled Why Leadership Training Fails – and What to Do About It. They found that a huge barrier in the successful implementation of corporate training wasn’t the individual, but the company structure.

In one case study, they reported: “Managers thought little had changed as a result of the training, even though it had been inspiring at the time. They found it impossible to apply what they had learned about teamwork and collaboration, because of a number of managerial and organisational barriers.”

These barriers included a lack of strategic clarity and cross-functional conflict.  

For Actualize, the solution is simple: help corporate clients create an environment that enables the learning to be implemented at every level of the business.

“Our ethos of Head, Heart, Body & System encompasses all aspects of what we do: from how we put our programs together to how we ensure lasting success within a business,” says Sam Furness, Director.

The Head, he explains, represents the tools, models and frameworks Actualize uses to share the knowledge around the program being delivered.

“The Head is the content we’re sharing with the participants,” he says, adding: “But beyond the tools, models and frameworks, we feel it’s really important for people to connect emotionally to the content – and this is the Heart. How do we help people connect the Head and the Heart so they feel passionate about the learning we’re sharing with them?”

The Body, Sam adds, is the opportunity to practice what has been learned in the training room. Actualize brings professional corporate role players into many of its programs to allow participants to get a feel for their newfound knowledge before taking it to their clients.

Finally, the System is where lasting success comes into play: to ensure that the learning doesn’t simply remain in the training room, Actualize aligns with its clients’ leadership and key stakeholders so that all parties are agreed on the outcomes of the training. Sharing the content of the learning journey with business leaders guarantees ‘buy-in’ from stakeholders.

“Therefore, when participants return to their daily work life, they’re supported to enact the tools, models and frameworks that we’ve shared with them. This is a key success factor,” he says.

“We’ve found that when combining all four of those elements meaningfully and purposefully, it makes the most effective and lasting change for the people we work with.”