You Cannot Train Your Way Out of a Culture Problem

One of the most common mistakes organisations make is believing that culture issues can be fixed with training. A team is not collaborating, so they get communication skills. A department is avoiding accountability, so they get a workshop on ownership. Leaders are not inspiring confidence, so they attend a leadership programme.

People feel busy. L&D feels useful. Leaders feel like they have taken action.

And nothing changes.

Because culture is not created in classrooms. It is created in the thousands of daily behaviours, decisions, conversations, and signals that shape how people really work together. You cannot train your way out of a culture problem. You have to understand it, expose it, and change what drives it.

Training can only amplify what culture already allows.

Culture is built by behaviour, not by content

A culture of clarity is built when leaders communicate expectations simply and consistently.A culture of accountability is built when people see consequences for not doing what they agreed.A culture of collaboration is built when teams feel psychologically safe enough to challenge and support one another.A culture of performance is built when people have the tools, confidence, and feedback to do their best work.

None of these depend on the presence or absence of a workshop. They depend on the environment and the behaviour of leaders. If those do not change, learning cannot take root.

L&D is often asked to fix what leadership has created

This is the uncomfortable truth. L&D gets handed more and more learning requests as a substitute for addressing leadership behaviour, role clarity, or broken culture dynamics.

People ask for communication training when the real problem is that leaders avoid difficult conversations.They ask for accountability training when the organisation tolerates unclear expectations.They ask for motivation training when the culture drains energy faster than any workshop can restore it.

When L&D accepts these requests without questioning them, it becomes part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

Diagnosis before delivery

The strongest L&D teams know that culture challenges need consulting, not content. They slow the conversation down. They ask what is really going on. They explore what behaviours are rewarded, what behaviours are avoided, where clarity is missing, and what the environment makes easy or difficult.

They uncover truths that no amount of training could fix. They reveal the gaps leaders need to address, not the gaps learners need to be filled with.

This is consulting. This is influence. And this is what separates busy L&D teams from impactful ones.

Where the L&D Academy transforms the role

This is the core of the TwentyOne Leadership L&D Academy. We develop L&D professionals who can diagnose culture issues, not just deliver content. People who have the confidence and capability to say, “This is not a training problem.

This is a leadership problem. This is a clarity problem. This is a culture problem.”

The Academy equips L&D teams to partner with leaders, challenge assumptions, design learning that sticks, and create environments where behaviour change is possible.

Culture change starts with better questions

If your organisation is trying to fix culture with courses, it is starting in the wrong place. Culture does not change because people were trained. Culture changes because leaders behave differently, teams communicate differently, and expectations become clearer.

Learning supports that shift, but it cannot create it on its own.

If your organisation wants L&D to drive genuine culture and performance change, the TwentyOne Leadership L&D Academy is where that transformation begins. Email me matt@twentyoneleadership.com