From “Aha!” to Always: Turning Training into Lasting Change

We’ve all been there.

You attend (or sponsor) a powerful workshop. The room buzzes with ideas. People nod, take notes, and declare they’re going to “do things differently” starting Monday.

But by Friday, the emails have piled up, the urgent has replaced the important, and the changes fade into the background.

The problem isn’t that the training wasn’t good, it’s that new behaviors don’t automatically stick.

The brain has to unlearn comfortable patterns before it can consistently apply new ones. And that unlearning can feel risky, especially if the workplace culture doesn’t encourage experimentation.

The Missing Ingredients: Psychological Safety & Unlearning

• Psychological safety means people believe they can try something new, speak up, or make a mistake without being punished or humiliated. Without it, the cost of experimenting feels too high.
• Unlearning is the active process of letting go of old mindsets, habits, and assumptions that no longer serve the team’s goals. It’s not just about adding knowledge, it’s about creating space for it to take root.

When these two ingredients are missing, the “aha!” moment stays trapped in the training room.

Why It Matters for Leaders

If you’re investing in learning and development, you want that investment to translate into better decision-making, improved collaboration, and measurable results. But that only happens if your team feels safe to practice the new skills and intentionally replace old habits.

As a leader, you set the tone for whether that happens.

Four Ways to Make Learning Stick

• Go first. If you want your team to take risks, show them it’s safe by sharing your own attempts to apply new learning, especially the messy parts.
• Bake in reflection. Create a standing agenda item for team meetings where people share one thing they’ve tried from recent training, what happened, and what they learned.
• Pair for progress. Assign accountability partners who check in weekly to encourage follow-through and troubleshoot challenges together.
• Refresh often. Training isn’t a one-and-done. Bring back key ideas in short bursts, through stories, quick exercises, or simple reminders.

From Workshop High to Workplace Habit

The real measure of great training isn’t the applause at the end, it’s whether the new thinking becomes a natural part of how your team operates months later.

When you combine psychological safety with a deliberate process of unlearning, you create the conditions for lasting change. That “aha!” moment becomes an always moment.

So next time you send your team to training, ask yourself:

“How will I help them keep practicing when they get back?”

The answer to that question might be the most important leadership move you make this year.