When your team is not following through or modeling the culture you want, rolling out more policies is rarely the fix. Working norms, not policies, are what create genuine accountability and buy-in because they invite people in rather than threatening consequences. This episode is most useful for founders, owners, and team leads who are tempted to codify every behavioral expectation as a formal rule.
This episode is part of the Team Operations, Systems & SOPs series. Browse all episodes →
Mic drop moments
“…when people feel like their company is investing in them, they invest right back. That builds so much loyalty and engagement, and even a sense of purpose and meaning.”
“…the conversation to have with your team is about the cost of doing nothing.”
“If you are muted, if you are camera off, if you step out to take a phone call, it models. You don’t really think this is that valuable.”
“…they’re asking for it, but they aren’t going to show up even if they ask for it, if they don’t feel like it’s worth it.”
Episode highlights
The birthday party no one came to
You built something great. Interactive content, guest speakers, maybe even a team-building event tacked on at the end. You knew people would love it because they had been asking for exactly this. Then the start time came and went and nobody showed up. Lia opens with this gut-punch scenario because it is not rare. It is one of the most demoralizing things a leader can experience, and it keeps a lot of owners and team leads from ever investing in development again.
The good news: there are concrete, fixable reasons this keeps happening.
Pitfall 1: Your team literally does not have space for it
The most common reason people skip training is not that they do not care. It is that they are so burned out and overloaded they cannot imagine going offline for even an hour. Lia shares a real example from an engineering team where every request was a flaming emergency and managers were sitting in every single meeting their direct reports attended. The thought of stepping away felt irresponsible, even though the training was specifically designed to help them delegate and prioritize better.
The fix is a two-part move. First, have an honest conversation about the cost of doing nothing. Help your team see that the hour spent in training saves 10 hours of spinning on the wrong priorities. Second, actually load-balance their calendar before the training date so they are not penalized for attending. If someone steps away for the training and comes back to a crisis, they will never come back to the next one.
Pitfall 2: Leaders are not showing up, so neither is anyone else
When senior leaders sit in the back of the room on their laptops or step out to take calls, the message is clear: this is not actually important. Team members mirror exactly what they see. Lia is direct here. If you are a business owner or team lead, be present, camera on, engaged. If you are a middle manager running a program, ask a VP or director to open the session and set the tone. That endorsement signals the value in a way no calendar invite ever will.
Pitfall 3: The content has not earned their trust yet
If a previous training was tedious or packed with 10 hours of content for 20 minutes of real value, your team has already told each other not to bother. When you are selecting a facilitator or building content yourself, the question to ask is not “does this cover the topic” but “will people leave with something they can use immediately.” Strong facilitation moves people from stuck and frustrated to clear and ready to act. That is the bar. Anything less and word of mouth works against you before the next session even launches.
The Gen Z paradox that makes this urgent
Gen Z consistently ranks professional development as one of the top reasons they stay at a company. And yet the same people filling out surveys asking for training are the ones not showing up. Lia saw this firsthand at Google, where demand for leadership development programs was high but attendance fell apart the moment deadlines got tight. The desire is real. The burnout and overwhelm are also real. Both things are true at the same time, and it is on leaders to design around that tension, not be surprised by it.
Run through this list before your next training
Before you build anything or book anyone, check these three things. Can your team actually step away without consequence? Have you modeled that this is worth their time? And is the content genuinely engaging, not just complete? When all three are true, attendance follows. And when people do show up and walk away with real tools, that investment pays back in skills, engagement, and loyalty that compounds over time.
As Lia puts it, people will still blame the company when they do not grow. So give them content worth showing up for, and make sure they actually can.
Related episodes in this cluster
- Ep 230: Why your team problems are actually systems problems (and what to fix first). When your team feels chaotic, unclear, or constantly dependent on you, the culprit is almost never the people. It is the absence of simple, repeatable systems that tell everyone how to operate. Lia walks through the real cost of missing systems, two client stories with immediate results, and how to roll out new processes so your team gets bought in from day one. This episode is essential for any owner who says they hate process but secretly hates the chaos more.
- Ep 215: Why your team seems entitled (and what is really causing it). When your team feels entitled, the root cause is almost never attitude. It is a clarity gap, and the fix starts with you asking what role you played in creating the dynamic. Lia walks through two questions every owner and leader should ask before writing off a team member, and explains how operational clarity through an Ops Playbook prevents these friction points from forming in the first place. This episode is most useful for founders, small business owners, and managers who feel like they are constantly negotiating with their teams.
- Ep 177: How to stop waking up at 3am worried about your team (and what to do instead). The reason you lie awake worrying about your team is not that you need a more elaborate task-tracking system. Lia introduces the Snippets Template, a lightweight weekly update tool that gives leaders a bird’s-eye view of priorities, wins, and blockers without micromanaging. This episode is especially useful for remote team leaders, small business owners, and anyone who feels perpetually out of the loop on what their team is actually doing.
- Ep 124: Policies vs. working norms: which one actually changes team behavior?. When your team is not following through or modeling the culture you want, rolling out more policies is rarely the fix. Working norms, not policies, are what create genuine accountability and buy-in because they invite people in rather than threatening consequences. This episode is most useful for founders, owners, and team leads who are tempted to codify every behavioral expectation as a formal rule.
Want to go deeper?
The Ops Playbook. Systems and SOPs for teams that need to scale without breaking.
Full transcript (click to expand)
You put together the perfect training. I mean, this is good. It’s got interactivity. It’s got jokes. You’ve got guest speakers. You have so much stuff, even an awesome team building event at the end. And you know, it’s going to be awesome. And then no one in your team shows up. And it takes you back way back to like being in third grade and planning the perfect birthday party and staying up all night panicking that nobody’s going to show up.
But in your case, in the birthday party, folks showed up. As a manager, nobody showed up to your training. Now this is after everybody had been asking for development and for opportunities to be connecting as a team and all this stuff. And you’re thinking, wow, not only am I completely addressing this, this need and this request for my team, I nailed it. I nailed it on the execution. They’re going to love it. And then they don’t come and you’re just hit with this sinking feeling and the pit of your stomach.
Like, why do I even bother? What am I even doing here? So if this sounds even at all vaguely familiar or something that would honestly send you into a panic, then you are not going to want to miss this one. Because today we’re going to talk about how to create trainings that people actually show up at. Cause that’s my expertise. That is my specialty. I’m Leah Garvin and this is the new manager playbook where I am on a mission to make managing your team the easiest part of your job.
Because as we say, dealing with people, well, it’s hard enough. It is hard enough to get people excited about work, to get people excited about cutting trainings, only to put something together and no one comes to it. Now this is something though I’ve had to get really good at because as a professional speaker, workshop facilitator, trainer, you know, I have to make sure when I put something together that it runs through these three things. And so I’m sharing this because, you know, I think one reason sometimes we don’t invest in our teams in development is because we don’t want to be in that scenario.
We don’t want to put all this time and energy and investment and budget and then into something and nobody shows up because what’s happening right now. And I’m seeing this, I’ve actually seen it for a number of years, but I’m seeing it more and more today. Folks are saying they’re burned out. They’re saying they need support. They’re saying they need help. They’re saying they want coaching. They’re saying they want training. And then when you provide them with a solution, it’s crickets.
They literally aren’t there. And you’re thinking, gosh, again, why am I bothering? Now, if you’re a business owner, you are investing money out of your own pocket for this. And that’s not okay. Right? So you’re thinking never again, no way. This money could have been redirected to reinvesting in the business, to your own team members, bonuses or salaries or progression, or frankly, your own pocket, your own profit margin. So this really, really is upsetting. And if you’re a corporate leader, you’re thinking, well, I may be advocated for this training.
Or if you’re an HR leader or an L and D leader, you’ve advocated for this. You’ve gotten stakeholder buy-in. You got budget secured for it. You went through a number of hoops and now no one goes to it. It’s like, it’s embarrassing, right? It is literally like you planned that birthday party and nobody showed up. So let’s talk about why this happens, because there’s actually some really concrete reasons. This happens that I think we don’t always think about.
We put the training on the calendar and we think, okay, they’ve asked for it. You said you wanted this. So I’m doing this in that. And we think our team members just get it. And then when they don’t, we’re really disappointed. So we want to make sure that this doesn’t happen. So what are the three pitfalls that I see and how do we mitigate those? Well, number one is we people don’t actually have space for it.
They are spread too thin. They are burned out. They are fully tapped out. And although training and coaching actually would give them the skills to be able to prioritize better or manage their time or feel like they can come up for air. Although the reason you are investing in this training or coaching is to solve this, they literally cannot imagine stepping away for one hour. Now, this kind of thing is really frustrating. I’m going to tell you that firsthand.
I’ve done a lot of workshops and trainings with teams. I can think of one example, an engineering team, and the engineering managers were feeling so, so spread for time. They had no time. They had, you know, everything was a P zero and in engineering speak, that means a flaming emergency. So everything was a P zero. They had, you know, 10 different requests coming in every day. Their deadlines were hitting on them and they were worried. Like, you know, other teams were asking their engineers to be working on more stuff.
And they were just like, I’m spread so thin, I can’t do this. Meanwhile, and I share this in the new manager playbook. Meanwhile, a lot of these engineering managers were attending all of the meetings that their team members were in. So they’re totally fully booked. They can’t even step away to reallocate work. They can’t even step away to get more strategic. And actually like the training I was hosting was going to really give them a sense of how to re you know, kind of rethink delegation.
But the thought of stepping away, folks were really, really upset and they really didn’t know how to deal with that. Now I share this example because this is probably going to be the number one piece of pushback you get from your team. Or again, if you’re an HR L and D leader, the biggest pushback you’ll hear from your stakeholders is, Hey, people don’t even have time to sit down for even an hour or two and get training.
And the, the reality is is people can’t afford not to. If you are burned out, if you are attending all the same meetings as your team members, if you can’t even come up for air, if you are starting to really get behind in your own role because you don’t have the space to actually figure out what even to do first and how to prioritize it, how to set goals for the week, this hour, like it’s a non-negotiable.
This one hour, two hour, three hour, whatever the training is, it’s a non-negotiable because the amount of time that is lost in spitting and focusing on the wrong things and spiraling and not delegating, that’s 10 times the amount, at least in wasted effort. And so the conversation to have with your team is about the cost of doing nothing. It’s about saying, trust me, we’re going to, I’ve made this as short and as to the point as I can, it’s going to come away.
You’re going to come away with concrete tools, but trust me, I need you to give me that hour. Or if you’re kind of, you know, again, if you are deciding as a business owner, can I really afford to have my team offline for this hour? Yes, you can. Because what you are going to be able to get done if you have the right training is going to be able to free up all that time. So this challenge, this pitfall of like people don’t even have time is something that you as a leader actually have to both kind of get someone to trust you.
And then it’s to sit down with someone and say, okay, let’s reprioritize, let’s load balance so that you feel like you do have that hour to step away. Because if they go to that training and then they’re penalized for having missed something or not done this one thing for an hour, well, like, yeah, they’re not going to do it. So you have to create the space. And once you do that, you will start to see, okay, they’re a little bit more receptive.
Right? Now the second piece is you got to make it valuable, right? Like we don’t want to train something that’s boring. We don’t want to attend something that’s, you know, really tedious. We don’t want to attend something that, you know, is 10 hours and had like one, you know, one hour or 20 minutes of value in it. No, we have to model that there is value there. Right? And so the way that we model there’s value is we show up first.
We show up right as the leader, we attend this training. And this is something I always, always, always encourage you to do to kind of drive attendance is you, the leader, you know, you show up, you open up the day, you set the context, you show up for it. You’re there for part of the day, or you ask your higher ups. So if you’re a middle manager and you’re bringing in something, ask your VP, ask a director, ask a senior leader to show up and really set the tone.
That models the value that you see in it, right? That showing, Hey, I’m endorsing this. I’m vouching for this. If you are an HR leader or an L and D leader, and you’re bringing something in, this is a conversation that’s really helpful to have with your stakeholders around, Hey, how do we drive engagement? How do we show people that we value this? And a lot of that is getting senior leaders to join in. If you’re a business owner, same thing, show up, be there, have your camera on, be physically present.
If you are muted, if you are camera off, if you step out to take a phone call, it models. You don’t really think this is that valuable. It’s, it’s common sense, but I see it all the time. We have a big training and it’s all set up and we’ve put a ton of time and energy into it. And senior leaders are sitting in the back of the room on their phones, on their laptops, stepping in and out to take phone calls.
And slowly throughout the day, you start to see people from the like the kind of broader audience. They’re stepping out. They’re hopping on their laptops. They’re leaving early. They’re taking calls. They model the exact behavior that you are showing them. So we want to model the value and then our team members take it seriously. The third thing is we have to make it interesting and fun and enjoyable. Now this is my job, right? As the creator of trainings and workshops and talks and content, you know, this is the kind of thing that, that we think about.
Because if the training sucks, you know, those poor people that had to sit through the first one, you know, bless their hearts, but it’s not, you’re never going to be asked back to do it. And so as you are selecting content, as you are interviewing folks to put something together, as you are thinking about it, the question to ask yourself is, am I just doing this for compliance reasons or am I actually trying to find the right provider with the right energy, with the right content to actually make this interesting?
And I’m telling you, because this is literally like 80% and 90% of my job is thinking about that. How do I make sure this is engaging? And I’m not just tooting my own horn. This is what expert facilitators do. They think about, Hey, we, I’m not here to check a box. I’m not here to just make sure this thing got done. I want folks to come away with actionable, practical takeaways, things they can implement right away.
I want to be able to take them to, you know, from a place of feeling stuck or frustrated or unclear about something to somewhere on the other end where they have that clarity, they know how to move forward. This is the process of strong facilitation and it’s on you as that manager, leader, you know, HR person that’s finding something, business owner, whatever. It is on you to really ensure that the person that is putting on this training or the content itself is going to be engaging.
It is going to be valuable because that’s where you get the drop off the most, right? Especially if you are, you know, piloting a program and you’re going to have a training for a few folks, and then you’re going to spread it and broaden it. They’re going to say like, don’t go to that. That didn’t have any value. It wasn’t interesting. I didn’t like it. You know, then you’re going to run into that issue. Now why I’m talking about this all in all is a number of reasons.
First and foremost, Gen Z and younger folks in the workplace are saying that their number one, one of their number one priorities is that for a job, for a company, to stay there, to feel supported, to feel engaged, is a company or a team that offers professional development. So your people are asking for this, especially folks that are newer to the workforce. And so as, as Gen Z grows a presence in the workforce, this is going to be an expectation more and more, but we’re met with the paradox.
Okay. Gen Z says they want it and no one’s freaking showing up for the stuff that we’re creating. And that’s why I put this together. Not because of the stat that people say they want it because I’ve heard that for years, right? When I made trainings, I worked a lot on, you know, programs, leadership, development programs, manager trainings, all sorts of things back when I worked at Google. And it was because people asked for that specifically.
So we would put something together. And then because deadlines were so, so hectic and people were spread so thin, the same folks that filled out the survey and asked for the things, they wouldn’t show up. They’d say they didn’t have time. So I’ve run into that other issue that you’re experiencing, right? And I had to deal with this firsthand and I had to think about how are the very same people who are asking for these things?
Why aren’t they showing up? And it was because of these three challenges. One, they felt like they couldn’t step away. They didn’t have time. If they actually stepped away, they would get behind and that, and that would be worse for them. Two, the leaders didn’t model the value. They weren’t showing up and it felt like, Oh, like am I supposed to prioritize this? Maybe not. And three, they weren’t interesting, right? Or they were worried they wouldn’t be interesting.
So we’ve got to hook people in and those are the ways we do it. And so when you are thinking about, Oh gosh, I don’t want to put something together. And because of these three things, like because no one’s going to show up, run through that list. Make sure they feel they can step away. Make sure that you’ve modeled that value and make sure that you found something interesting and engaging. And then you will see that because when people do attend and they do stick through it and they do show up for these things, that’s where you see the exponential growth in skills, in, in capacities, in engagement and feeling bought in.
Because when people feel like their company is investing in them, they invest right back. That builds so much loyalty and engagement, and even a sense of purpose and meaning feeling like, Hey, I I’m really growing in my career. We can’t actually get that if we’re not attending things like training and development opportunities within our company. But like, I don’t think our team members honestly always realize like, Hey, I’m also choosing not to show up. So it’s kind of on me.
We know they kind of blame the company still like, right. They still blame the company. They think you should have just done a better job at it. So let’s do a better job. And I’m telling you, this is the list that I run through when I’m designing a program, when I’m designing a workshop, a keynote, a program, a training, whatever it is, because we’ve got to make sure if we are going to put the effort in, if we are going to invest the time, the money, ask people to step away from their jobs, even if it’s for an hour, we’ve got to make it worthwhile.
And it’s easy to do when someone has thought through these things. So I encourage you not to give up because we are in, you know, if you’re listening to this real time, we’re in the middle of September and we’ve got a decent amount of time in the end of the year. And a lot of times folks do start to put together trainings and kind of different development opportunities for folks because, you know, it’s a really great time to do that heading into the end of the year.
So let’s do them the right way. Let’s get folks engaged. Let’s give them content they are excited about that they can really relate to that they can do something with because they’re asking for it, but they aren’t going to show up even if they ask for it, if they don’t feel like it’s worth it. All right. And you know who to call to give you that content. That’s really going to hit on all of these things.
I work closely with both HR leaders, business owners, team leaders to really define what’s the messaging. How do we get folks to really see the value? How do we get razor, razor focus on what are the clear actions and takeaways and really, you know, implementation details that folks need to feel like, yes, this was worth my time. So if you need support there, of course, as always, hello at LeahGarver.com and we’ve got you covered. See you next time.
Questions this episode answers
Why do employees say they want training but then don't show up when you provide it?
There are three concrete reasons this happens. First, team members feel too burned out and spread thin to step away, even for an hour. Second, leaders don't model the value by showing up themselves, so the team assumes it isn't a real priority. Third, the training itself isn't engaging enough to feel worth their time. When you address all three of these, you stop the cycle of asking for development and then skipping it when it arrives.
How do I get my team to actually attend a training I've scheduled?
Start by creating real space in their schedule so attending doesn't mean falling behind. Then model the value yourself by showing up, having your camera on, and not stepping out to take calls. If you're a middle manager, ask a senior leader to open the session and set the tone. Finally, make sure the content is engaging and gives people concrete takeaways they can use right away. When all three of those conditions are met, attendance follows.
My team says they're too busy for training. How do I convince them to make time?
Have a conversation about the cost of doing nothing. If someone is burned out, attending every meeting their team attends, and unable to prioritize, the time lost to spinning and misdirected effort is far greater than one or two hours in a training. Frame it clearly: the training exists to give them tools that free up time, not take it away. Then actually load-balance their schedule so they can step away without being penalized for it.
What does leader behavior have to do with training attendance?
Everything. When senior leaders sit in the back of the room on their phones, step out to take calls, or skip the session entirely, team members read that as a signal that the training isn't really worth their time. They mirror what they see. If you want your team to show up and stay engaged, you have to be present, attentive, and genuinely participating. Your visible endorsement is one of the strongest drivers of attendance you have.
How do I choose a training or facilitator that people will actually find valuable?
Ask whether you're selecting this for compliance reasons or because you genuinely believe it will help your team. A strong facilitator focuses on taking people from a place of feeling stuck or unclear to a place of real clarity and concrete next steps. Look for someone who designs for engagement, not just delivery, and whose content gives attendees specific actions they can implement right away. If the first session doesn't deliver that, word spreads fast and future sessions will be even harder to fill.