There is a version of this story I hear often. A CEO or executive director tells me their organization supports professional development. They have a learning management system, a training budget, maybe a standing lunch-and-learn series. Leadership genuinely believes it. The investment is real.
And then I ask a different question: who is actually accessing it?
That question tends to land differently.
I was recently part of a conversation on the Women Talking About Learning podcast (listen here) — a thoughtful discussion alongside two colleagues from the UK who work in forensic science and law enforcement. Very different industries than mine, but the same truth surfaced across all three of us: the gap between what organizations say they provide and what employees actually experience can be significant. And when you're the leader, you may be the last person to know it exists.
What Your Training Culture Looks Like From the Inside
In my research on workplace learning, I studied the experiences of women in a specific industry. I won't identify the industry here, but the pattern was consistent. These women told me their organizations actively promoted learning opportunities. On a policy level, the organizations meant it.
But when we went deeper, a different picture emerged.
One woman shared that to participate in a self-directed learning experience, she needed to be recommended by an in-house mentor. Her male colleagues had mentors. She didn't — not because she wasn't capable, but because no one had ever thought to extend that to her. Another woman was blocked from accessing opportunities she was qualified for because of how her job was classified. She was doing the work. She just didn't have the title that granted her entry.
Neither of these situations looked like discrimination from the outside. They looked like policy. But the effect was the same: the people who most needed access to development didn't have it.
According to McKinsey, organizations that invest in employee skill-building are significantly more likely to meet performance targets and navigate periods of change successfully. SHRM research has consistently shown that employees who feel their professional development is supported are more likely to stay — and more likely to perform at a higher level. The investment is worth making. But if the access is uneven, so are the returns.
The Quality Question Leaders Often Skip
Even when access isn't a structural barrier, there's a second question worth asking: is the learning actually useful to the people doing the work?
A lunch-and-learn is not inherently a bad idea. But I am always curious about the details. Who chose the topic? Does it connect to what your employees are actually trying to develop? Is it structured in a way that supports real retention and application — or is it information delivered and forgotten by the end of the week?
One of the things I have learned in 28 years of working in healthcare, academia, and organizational consulting is that adult learners do not process information the same way students do. Adults bring years of lived experience into every learning situation, and that experience is not a distraction — it's the foundation. Effective workplace learning builds on what people already know, connects new information to real problems they're solving, and gives them space to apply it in a way that sticks.
When learning is designed without that in mind, it doesn't matter how frequently you offer it. People will sit through it. They will not change how they work.
The Holistic Reality No Single Team Can Solve Alone
Here is what I told the podcast, and I believe it completely: the responsibility for equitable, effective workplace learning cannot sit entirely with the organization, entirely with leadership, or entirely with the individual employee. It requires all three.
From a leadership development standpoint, this means asking whether your executives and managers have a working understanding of how learning access is distributed inside your organization. Is that even part of what they're evaluated on? If not, it may be invisible to them — not because they don't care, but because no one has ever named it as part of their responsibility.
From an organizational standpoint, it means looking honestly at your systems. Who gets nominated for stretch assignments? Who is invited into leadership development cohorts? Who finds out about learning opportunities through informal channels — and who never hears about them at all?
And from an individual standpoint, especially for women and underrepresented professionals, part of the work is knowing your own goals clearly enough to advocate for the learning that supports them. I gave this advice on the podcast and I'll repeat it here: before you join an organization, or before you make your next move, know what matters to your own growth. Then look for environments that actually support it — not just ones that say they do.
What This Means for You as a Leader
If you lead a small to mid-size organization, you have an advantage that larger enterprises often don't: you can actually see what's happening. You can ask. You can notice patterns. You don't need a task force to find out whether your people feel supported in their development.
A few things worth considering:
- When you think about who is growing in your organization, is that growth distributed broadly, or concentrated among people who already have proximity to leadership?
- Are your training investments tied to real performance outcomes, or are they primarily serving as a retention benefit on paper?
- Do your managers understand how to develop the people below them — or have they been promoted into leadership without ever receiving that training themselves?
That last one is more common than most leaders want to admit. A skilled individual contributor becomes a manager, receives very little guidance on what it actually means to develop a team, and defaults to what was modeled for them. If that model was limited, the cycle continues.
The training problem inside most organizations is rarely a motivation problem. It's a systems problem. The people want to grow. The structures just haven't been designed to support that growth for everyone.
Start With Clarity
The organizations I work with that make the most meaningful progress on this are not the ones that launch the most initiatives. They're the ones that get honest about what's actually happening first.
If you've been wondering whether your training investment is working the way you intend — whether your people are developing in ways that connect to your organizational goals — that clarity is worth pursuing. Not because something is broken, but because a well-designed learning strategy pays dividends across retention, performance, and culture in ways that a loosely assembled collection of programs simply cannot.
The learning might already be there. The question is whether it's designed to reach the right people, in the right way, at the right level of quality.
That's where the real work begins.
Want to know where your organization's training strategy actually stands? Start with the free Training Assessment Quiz at drcarriegraham.com. You'll get a score-based report with practical recommendations — no fluff, no generic advice.
Subscribe to get training and development insights that connect to real business outcomes—not just completion rates.https://mailchi.mp/learningandsolutions/subscribe-via-blog-posts-on-website
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