When Training Backfires
Organizations invest billions in training that often fails—not because content lacks value, but because delivery methods clash with learners’ core values. Understanding what doesn’t work for each type is just as important as knowing what does. Here’s what to avoid when training each core value type.
What Fails for Builders: Decide and Do People
Builders learn by doing. They take action, observe results, and take another action, course-correcting as they go. Their high spontaneity is stifled, and they become extremely frustrated in rote learning or highly structured settings that prohibit free-flow activity.
Methods That Don’t Work:
- Making them sit and listen: If you force Decide and Do people to sit through lectures, they will not only stop listening—they probably won’t remain seated. These people are action-oriented. Give them physical things to do or decisions to make.
- Deep one-on-one work: Don’t expect much from paired exercises at a personal level unless they focus on specific decisions that lead to concrete action and measurable results.
- Data analysis or complex problems: Do not ask them to analyze data or solve complex problems. Don’t give them more information than they ask for—make them ask for it.
- Artistic exercises: Don’t ask them to draw pretty pictures. Back-of-the-napkin strategy sessions directly related to decisive action are acceptable.
- Solitary or extended sessions: Don’t ask them to do solitary research or participate in long brainstorming or lecture sessions lasting more than 15 minutes. Promise them a chance to take action soon, before every short session.
The key is urgency and action. Builders lose engagement when they can’t see immediate application of what they’re learning.
What Fails for Merchants: Talk and Listen People
Talk and Listen people are not patient with data and information sessions. They’re bored and frustrated by research and other solitary assignments. Books and literature shouldn’t be academic or highly literal. Listening to long lectures without interaction kills their attention.
Methods That Don’t Work:
- Data-heavy presentations: Pure information sessions without human connection or discussion fall flat. Merchants need to process ideas through conversation.
- Solitary assignments: Research and individual work without collaboration frustrates Merchants who gain energy from others.
- Academic or literal materials: Dry, technical content without stories or human context fails to engage their imagination.
- Long lectures without interaction: Extended presentations where they can’t speak or participate destroy their focus.
- No conversation time: If classroom sessions don’t allow extended conversations, Socratic discussions, and small team interactions, you cannot engage these people.
Merchants think and make decisions as they talk. They work out problems through discussions. They enjoy supporting each other in the process. Learning happens when these elements are pervasive in the environment.
What Fails for Innovators: Observe and Solve People
The most critical failure with Innovators is giving them problems that aren’t challenging enough. Their self-respect is significantly based on the size, importance, and difficulty of problems they solve. Boring problems create disengaged Innovators.
Methods That Don’t Work:
- Easy problems: Don’t give Observe and Solve people easy problems to solve. They need complex challenges that engage their wisdom.
- Rushed conclusions: Don’t require them to settle on solutions too rapidly. Innovators need time to assess all angles.
- Dismissing their ideas: Casually dismissing their ideas without understanding full intent triggers their negative cycle.
- No assessment opportunities: Innovators must be asked to make individual assessments, developing their own intellectual powers.
- No brainstorming time: They must be allowed to share observations, brainstorm, and derive solutions. Shutting down this process shuts down learning.
Innovators thrive on interactive “storm and solve” sessions where they can be competitive with ideas and have solutions accepted and put into practice. They remain compassionate with people, so discussions can be confrontational without being combative—if the challenge is worthy.
What Fails for Bankers: Read and Analyze People
Read and Analyze people are highly visual and methodical. They need concrete information they can examine, verify, and reorganize. Anything that makes them appear ignorant or unprepared destroys their confidence and engagement.
Methods That Don’t Work:
- Spontaneous activities: It’s not effective to ask Read and Analyze people to be highly spontaneous, do role playing, or make off-the-cuff presentations. They like to be perfect and right.
- Situations exposing ignorance: Don’t put them in situations where they may be made to look ignorant or foolish. This triggers their deepest fear.
- Verbal-only information: Don’t give them a lot of verbal information. Put things in writing.
- Information beneath their level: Don’t offer information they can’t use or that’s beneath their developmental level.
- Passive receiving: Don’t just hand information to them. Make them work to find data and analyze and reconstruct it into analytical form.
- Snap decisions: Don’t ask them to make snap decisions. They need time to analyze.
- Deep personal work: Don’t expect paired exercises to work at a personal or relationship level. Their focus is on content, not connection.
- Abstract complex problems: Don’t ask for solutions to complex abstract problems. These people like to be concrete and linear in their thinking.
Give Bankers games to play and too much free time, and they’ll freeze up and refuse to participate. They learn by analyzing data from visual sources or formal presentations—not through unstructured exploration.
Designing Training That Works for Everyone
Effective training acknowledges that no single approach works for all learners. By understanding what fails for each core value type, trainers can:
- Segment activities to engage different learning styles
- Provide multiple pathways to the same learning objectives
- Allow learners to gravitate toward their preferred modes
- Challenge each type appropriately—urgency for Builders, connection for Merchants, complexity for Innovators, structure for Bankers
The goal isn’t to coddle preferences but to create entry points for engagement that lead to genuine learning and growth.
Understand Your Learning Type
Knowing your Core Values Nature helps you advocate for the learning environments that work best for you—and understand why some training has failed in the past. Take the CVI to discover your optimal learning approach.