If L&D Wants Influence, It Has to Stop Being Helpful

Why Helpfulness Is Holding L&D Back

I have worked with L&D teams for many years, and one pattern shows up again and again. L&D is exceptionally helpful. It responds quickly. It delivers what is asked for. It bends over backwards to support the business.

And yet, many of these teams still struggle for influence.

Helpfulness keeps L&D busy, but it rarely makes it strategic. When L&D immediately delivers what is requested, it reinforces the idea that learning exists to support activity rather than shape performance.

How L&D Accidentally Weakens Its Own Impact

When a leader asks for communication training, L&D builds it. When a team requests resilience, a workshop is scheduled. When engagement drops, learning is expected to step in fast.

Everyone feels productive, but very little changes.

Most of the issues L&D is asked to fix are not learning problems. They are clarity problems. Leadership problems. Culture problems. System problems. When L&D responds helpfully to the symptom, it unintentionally protects the real cause from being explored.

Over time, this erodes L&D’s credibility. Not because the learning was poor, but because the problem was never learning in the first place.

Influence Comes From Diagnosis, Not Delivery

The L&D teams I see creating the greatest impact are not the fastest to respond. They are the most curious. They slow the conversation down and ask better questions before committing to a solution.

They explore what outcome the business is really trying to achieve. They clarify what behaviour needs to change. They look at what is getting in the way. And only then do they decide whether learning is part of the answer.

Sometimes it is. Often it is not.

This is where L&D shifts from being helpful to being influential.

What I Built the L&D Academy to Do

This is exactly why I created the TwentyOne Leadership L&D Academy. I did not build it to help L&D teams run more workshops or produce better content. I built it to help them think differently about their role.

The Academy develops the consulting capability L&D teams need to diagnose properly, influence leaders with insight, and design learning that changes behaviour in the flow of work. It helps L&D professionals build the confidence to challenge requests, not reject them, and to partner with leaders rather than simply respond to them.

From Being Liked to Being Indispensable

Helpfulness makes L&D liked. Influence makes L&D indispensable.

If L&D wants a real seat at the table, it has to move beyond defaulting to yes. It has to earn trust by bringing clarity, not just solutions. It has to stop solving the wrong problems and start helping the organisation address what is actually blocking performance.

L&D does not need to do more. It needs to do less of the wrong thing and more of the right one.

If your L&D team is ready to make that shift, the TwentyOne Leadership L&D Academy is where it begins. Email me matt@twentyoneleadership.com