I love this quote by Henry David Thoreau & was reminded of it this week as I listened to a very interesting debate on the relative benefits of spending time with people who tell you what you want to hear as opposed to those who tell you what you need to hear.

Whilst the desire to be reassured is completely understandable, I know that my best learning comes from situations where someone has made me stop, think & question my actions or beliefs.

For me, what sets apart useful learning experiences from mere fluff is the intention of both parties; does the other person truly want to help me to do better & am I willing to listen and learn from the experience?

I am sure that you will recognise this & have plenty of examples of where training has made an enormous difference. Yet, as a self confessed 'Evaluation Geek', I find it fascinating that, as a profession, we do not consistently apply this knowledge to making sure that we are delivering real change.

It is a situation that is reinforced by our organisations & clients who feel that training finishes as the learner leaves the training room & all too infrequently challenge us to provide evidence of a return on investment. Often the reality only hits home in times of budget cuts and redundancies when we are suddenly faced with demands to justify our salaries in order to survive.

Why is it that for the vast majority of learning experiences the way that we check to see if it has worked is the ubiquitous 'happy sheet' that, if we are being honest, is only a way to find out if they liked their trainer?

Whilst reading nice comments at the end of the day is a lovely feeling, surely the real 'buzz' from being an L&D professional comes when we hear about what happens afterwards; what good things were achieved as a result of the learning experience?

So why, as a profession, are we not all telling our clients that we will not undertake training unless we are clear on what workplace behaviours are needed & that the learning will not be complete until we are confident that the learners now demonstrate those behaviours in their job.

It is only when we can do this can we truly understand how effective our training is, how we can improve and what we need to keep doing to be brilliant.

For that, we need to always be asking our learners 'what did you achieve as a result of the training?' The answers may not always be what we want to hear, but it will be what we need to hear & that is a precious gift indeed.