Why So Many Public Speaking and Communication Trainings Fail

by

DISCLOSURE: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning when you click the links and make a purchase, we receive a commission.

Companies spend a lot of money on training. They often fail to get any lasting results from it.

As someone who has been involved in coaching and skills training for years now (both as a student and a coach), I know what works and what doesn’t.

There are two major things that are needed for any training to take root and actually change behavior: (1) it has to be comprehensive and (2) it has to give the student improvement over time.

When you train someone in a very narrow skill, you fail to address the totality of their issue.

Giving someone body language exercises for public speaking is inadequate if you don’t address the underlying nervousness that is making them slouch or avoid eye contact in the first place.

Anybody can force a behavior temporarily. What makes it permanent is a holistic, comprehensive approach that incorporates the physical, verbal and mental, together in concert.

But the vast majority of communication and speaking trainers are not aware of this fact, so they focus instead on the superficial “rules” of “what makes a public speaker effective.”

And second, the student has to be able to improve over time.

It can take anywhere from several weeks to almost a year to form a new habit.

How long it takes depends on the complexity of the task, and (to a significant degree) on the individual student themselves.

A person with severe, clinical social anxiety will take a lot longer to become an effective public speaker than someone who is fine in social situations but mildly shy in front of a large group.

But regardless, the program either has to include long-term training, or it has to give the student guidance on how to keep the practice going over weeks or months.

That is the only way they will make a permanent shift in their behavior.

Our communication style is simply a pattern that we have developed over years or decades. Therefore it will take time to undo that pattern and create a new one to replace it.

Justin Aquino
Latest posts by Justin Aquino (see all)