Field Series · Communication · Report
The Communication Training Trap
Why communication training so rarely survives the return to work — and what has to change around the people who attend it.
Request the full reportTest a diagnosisof what employees learn is still applied one year after training — down from 62% immediately after and 44% at six months.
The most-quoted transfer figure is an estimate, not a measurement. The field has repeated it for four decades.
Supervisor support predicts transfer at least as strongly as the trainee’s own motivation. The person is only half of the equation.
The evidence
What training loses, and what decides it
Four lenses
Why the trap holds
The report reads the failure through four lenses. None of them is about the trainee’s effort.
Communication is not a pipe
Most training assumes that ideas travel intact from sender to receiver. They do not: meaning is built between people, and ambiguity is a different problem from missing information.
The person returns to an unchanged system
Training changes what one person knows. The organization keeps processing communication by its own rules — and treats the new behaviour as noise until it fades.
From judgement to checklist
Scalable formats turn a relational skill into a script. The feedback sandwich is the classic case: it blurs the message it was meant to protect.
Measuring the symptom, missing the structure
Audits observe what people do. They rarely ask how the system makes that behaviour the only sensible option — which is where double binds and defensive routines live.
Try it
First-order or second-order diagnosis?
Choose a symptom. Read the usual diagnosis first — then reveal what a second-order look finds.
The trap in its purest form
Anatomy of an organizational double bind
First demand
Follow procedure, hold the budget, do not deviate.
Contradictory demand
Move fast, innovate, beat the competition.
The lock
Do not point out that one and two cannot both be met.
No assertiveness training resolves a paradox the structure forbids anyone to name. Bateson described the pattern; the fix lies in the design, not in the person.
What changes
Single-loop training, double-loop organizations
| Single loop | Double loop | |
|---|---|---|
| Question | How do we do this better? | Are we doing the right thing, on valid assumptions? |
| Reasoning | Defensive: control, avoid embarrassment | Productive: valid information, shared control |
| Communication | Mixed messages; the undiscussable stays hidden | Advocacy with inquiry; assumptions tested in the open |
| Training’s fate | Absorbed, then undone by the system | Given a structure in which it can survive |
After Argyris & Schön.
The full report
The Communication Training Trap
- The theoretical vacuum: conduit metaphor, media richness, CMM
- The systemic fractal: Luhmann, Weick, the Viable System Model
- The epistemological downgrade and relational dialectics
- Diagnostic collapse: second-order observation, double binds, defensive routines
- A systemic intervention architecture, with recommendations
Sources for the figures on this page.
Saks, A. M. & Belcourt, M. (2006). An investigation of training activities and transfer of training in organizations. Human Resource Management, 45(4).
Baldwin, T. T. & Ford, J. K. (1988). Transfer of training: A review and directions for future research. Personnel Psychology, 41(1) — citing Georgenson, D. L. (1982).
Blume, B. D., Ford, J. K., Baldwin, T. T. & Huang, J. L. (2010). Transfer of training: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Management, 36(4).