By Rebecca Kwong – 17th January 2022

I was recently thinking about the unavoidable fact that some people resist any initiative labelled ‘training’ or ‘learning’…indeed, some people seem to be actively anti anything to do with training/learning.

We can debate the possible reasons for this (e.g. terrible experiences in school, thinking they know it all already, not seeing capability development as a priority, people who ‘don’t like being told what to do’, etc) but the harsh reality is that there will always be some people (sometimes many people) who just react negatively to anything with the words ‘training’ or ‘learning’ (or similar) in them.

Now, there’s a lot we can do to overcome such objections (a well developed, relevant, and well delivered suite of learning initiatives will often win most people over for example) but I wonder if something as simple as a name change might help in some circumstances?

By way of example, take a Learning Management System. I wonder if members of the workforce would more positively engage/use such a resource if it were, instead, simply called a ‘Knowledge Base’ and was presented (quite correctly) as somewhere staff can find out how to do, what they need to do, when they need to do it (a kind of company YouTube/Wikipedia if you like)?

In a similar vein, my overwhelming experience has been that a series of short courses, delivered as separate workshops, are not nearly as valued (and well attended) as when delivered under the banner of one single program, an ‘ABC Limited Future Leaders Program’ or ‘XYZ Inc Leadership Acceleration Program’ for example.

This may seem too simplistic, and that may be the case but, as Shakespeare once wrote, “What’s in a name?”.

I would be very interested in your thoughts/comments, especially if you’ve implemented such an idea and can share the results.

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