Questions this post answers
- Can I name in one sentence the knowledge this leader is missing — or do they just keep doing the thing I’ve told them not to?
- Am I buying training because it fixes the problem, or because it’s easy to purchase?
- Is this a knowledge gap or a behavior gap?
You have a leader who isn’t working out, and you’ve decided to take action.
So you start looking at programs. There’s a leadership series, a two-day intensive, and a certificate program your HR director likes. You pick one, write the check, and feel better on the drive home.
I want to slow that decision down by one question because I think most of us buy training to solve problems it cannot fix.
Here’s the test. Can you, in one sentence, say what this person doesn’t know?
Sometimes you can. They’ve never built a budget. They don’t understand the margin structure in their division. They’ve never run a hiring process and are about to. That’s a knowledge gap, and a class is exactly what a knowledge gap is for. Go buy the class.
But often, when I ask a CEO that question, the answer comes back in a different form, sounding more like: they keep doing the thing I’ve told them not to do.
That is, they go around people rather than through them. They become defensive when challenged in front of peers. They cancel their one-on-ones when the quarter gets tight — precisely when their team needs them. They know what they’re supposed to do. You’ve told them. They may have told you they agree.
That’s not a knowledge gap. That’s a behavior gap, and no curriculum has ever closed it.
Think about why. Behavior changes when someone sees themselves clearly and then has to answer to someone for what they do about it. Reflection plus accountability, repeated over months. A two-day course delivers neither. It delivers information to a person whose problem was never information.
So we buy the class anyway. I understand the pull because training has qualities the real fix doesn’t. It’s purchasable. It’s schedulable. It has a price, a date, and a certificate at the end, and it lets you tell yourself you addressed the situation. Coaching is slower, harder to justify to a board, and it doesn’t produce a receipt that feels like progress.
I should say plainly that I have a stake in this. I run CEO peer groups — reflection and accountability are my focus. You should weigh what follows accordingly. I’d make the same argument if I sold training, because the diagnostic doesn’t care who’s delivering it.
And the diagnostic is the whole point. Before you buy anything, write one sentence naming what this leader doesn’t know. If the sentence comes easily, send them to the class. If you find yourself describing what they keep doing instead, you have a different problem, and buying a course will cost you a year to find that out.
Let’s talk.