Train Like You Cook: Why Great Training Needs Great Quality

Each training experience should be treated like a great dish.

Let me cut straight to the chase.

What makes my training different than others? My secret ingredient?

It's quality.

Whether it's a live classroom training session I deliver personally, a learning notebook created by one of my past team members, or a custom-built digital learning path, the final trainee experience has to be good. Really good.

Naturally, your next questions might be:

• What is 'good quality'? James, isn't that so subjective?

• Who says your training is any good? What training metrics do you use?

• How do you scale quality with limited time and resources?

I hear you and great questions. And over time, I'll unpack each one across future posts- complete with examples, breakdowns, and how-tos. Think slide critiques, training program analysis, reviews of speakers/presenters. I’m going to lay out all of the ingredients and dishes one by one.

This is what I will fully address in detail in my training playbook. Because man oh man have I seen some god-awful training. Not just by trainers, but by some well-intentioned people who are unaware of what constitutes 'good training'.

For now, I want to tackle the big-picture ideas behind quality training, why it matters, basic metrics for quality, and why you should take my advice.

Question 1: What Is 'Good Quality'?

Answer:

You're right. It is subjective. I know the metrics, surveys, the buzzwords. But I keep it simple.

After a session, I ask a representative sample of trainees (key word being representative, not just from the good-two-shoes who love everything) three brutally simple questions - I call it the 3 Yes Framework.

• "Did you like the training?"

• "Did you find it helpful?"

• “Would you recommend it to others?"

If the answer is no to one or two, I dig: “Why?”

And usually, it's not mysterious. Their answers usually boil down to:

1. Who: Trainer was boring, unprepared, robotic, or worse… all of the above!

2. What: Content was irrelevant or overcomplicated.

3. When: Wrong moment in a learner's journey or inconvenient (think Friday 4pm).

4. Where: Inappropriate delivery method (Zoom vs classroom vs self-learning)

5. Why: No clear purpose and connection to learners’ goals.

6. How: Poorly designed training experience overall.

Do you have a representative sample of your total audience (10-20%) with enough yes’es? If you do, you’re good. If most say no, use the “5 W's and How” to diagnose and improve.

Look, you don't need perfection (after all, haters are going to hate), but if you're not getting at least a strong 'yes' vibe across the board, you're not hitting quality. Too often, I've seen folks in training obsess over strategy, training hours, and trendy terms: blended, gamified, microlearning, while the actual content is stale, irrelevant, or just bad. It's like ordering a gourmet meal and getting a soggy microwave meal.

Great sounding recipe. Bad-tasting dish.

If you want an example

"4-Part Leadership Program for New Managers with Blended Learning Paths"

Sounds impressive. This is just the condensed title with details removed to protect privacy. The real program had even more- all the buzzwords under the sun. I was pumped... until I attended. The classroom sessions were dry and flat. The materials? Basic stuff you could Google in five minutes.

Then came the satisfaction survey: 95 - 100% positive. But only three out of ~100 people filled it out. And you know those three either didn't want to offend anyone or are those eternal optimists who would rate anything 10 out of 5.

Worse, the trainers reported it to the regional leadership as a success story. Meanwhile, the participants were quietly raging and venting to each other, skipping sessions, and sharing tips on how to "attend" without actually attending. You know the move... join, mute, camera off, and go back to doing 'real work'.

This is what I call a Dark L&D Practice. Reporting fake wins helps no one.

So please- don't fake it. Ask the real, tough questions and get honest answers. It’s better to know your training needs fixing than live in a bubble of false praise. Long-term, the truth always comes out... usually in your program's attendance stats.

In summary (tldr): If your training strategy is the menu, the content is the actual dish. Make sure it tastes good. Without tasty food, you will have no returning customers.

Question 2: What Makes Me Qualified To Talk About Quality?

Answer:

Honestly, the humble side of me just wanted to quietly get on with my own work and life.

But I've been stewing for years and now the frustrated and exasperated side of me that's watched training tarnished or wasted for over twelve-plus years wants to shout: "People! We can do better! That was NOT a real training. Dude just read off a slide for one hour and labeled the Outlook invite ‘Training’. My computer’s text-to-speech function reading the same slide was more engaging.”

Ok, so beyond the '3 Yes Framework', here's what I bring:

• Over 1500 global survey data points with strong survey response rates of 20-50%. That's important because if it's really good, people fill it out. If it’s bad, they don't. By the way, I don't send any survey reminders to achieve those numbers.

• Consistently high recommendation scores: average of 90 - 95%, peaking at 99.5% for a global leadership program for 300+ regional managers. No, 99.5 is not a typo.

• Returning global clients who seek me out for more, and trainees who voluntarily come back for additional sessions. Coming back for seconds or thirds? In L&D, that's kind of a love language.

• I've had people cry during sessions...in the good way. They share deeply personal stories, career frustrations, private goals. That tells me the training impacted them, not just in the brain, but in the heart. And I think as trainers when we truly do that, we can inspire the behavior and knowledge shift change we hope to see.

So yes, I feel qualified. And I want to help. Please listen.

In summary (tldr): If I was a restaurant, I've got repeat customers, 5-star Yelp reviews, and some people even cried into their soup. I’m not claiming to know everything, but I know my way around the training kitchen and I want to show you how in my training cookbook.

Question 3: How Do You Scale Quality With Limited Resources?

Answer:

Ah, the classic quality vs quantity dilemma.

Obviously, it's ideal to have both... it depends the situation... balance is the answer to everything in life... yada yada yada. But, since this post is getting lengthy, I'll keep it short.

When I've had to choose, I pick quality. Every time. And you should too.

Even when it means only running one high-impact session a month for 1000+ employees (true story). Because that one session? People talked about it. They remembered it. They implemented it in their daily work. They told others, even wanted more.

And that's how real change and impact happens. That's better than pushing out 10 sessions no one cares about.

Choose quality, narrow your focus while beefing up your curated selection... or manage your stakeholders better.

In summary (tldr): Better to serve a few Michelin-star dishes than a buffet of bland. People don't come back for bland and it'll also hurt your internal training brand and influence long-term.

Final Word

Train like you cook. Good chefs taste their own food. If you wouldn't want to sit through your training, fix it. More on how to raise the bar in upcoming posts.

Hungrily,

James