Karie Willyerd is the Chief Learning Officer in Residence at Uplimit. She has more than two decades of experience leading learning and development functions, including serving as Chief Learning Officer at Visa, and has co-authored two books on the future of HR and careers. She is also the founder and CEO of social learning software company Jambok, which was sold to SuccessFactors/SAP and is now SAP Jam. Karie joined Uplimit to help solve age-old challenges in corporate education—including the challenge of engaging leaders at all levels in meaningful, ongoing learning experiences.
More than 20 years ago, when I first started working in leadership development, I jotted down a maxim titled “Rick’s Law.” I have no idea who the original Rick is, so you’ll have to trust my note taking on this one. Rick’s Law reads as follows:
Corollary A: Leaders will sign up for training.
Corollary B: They won’t show up.
Decades later, many of us are still struggling to get leaders to show up to training, but this isn’t a criticism of leaders. As the first CLO of Visa, I saw how often busy leaders are asked to attend trainings. To ensure follow through, we need to capture leaders’ attention and provide truly impactful development opportunities.
I’ve found these five strategies effective in getting leaders to sign up and show up for training:
1. Pique their interest. Leaders have a ton of noise in their daily work. They’re flooded with urgent issues that make it hard to carve out bandwidth for learning, which is have a longer-term investment As learning and development professionals, we have to design our communication to cut through that noise.
One tactic is to tie learning programs to the specific challenges leaders are facing today. For example, a course titled “Creating an AI strategy for your organization” will be more compelling than one titled “Leadership in the 21st century.” It also helps to emphasize interactive elements so leaders know they will leave the course with tangible skills.
2. Remind them, five times. In addition to ensuring leaders don’t forget about training commitments, reminders can generate excitement and create a stronger sense of accountability. Send a confirmation right after signup, and then a reminder one week before, the day before, the day of, and each day for multi-day courses and events. Copy their manager on reminders, if possible. Consider sending reminders through multiple channels (e.g., an email and a text message); at Uplimit, we also use calendar integrations to automatically add course sessions and deadlines to learners’ calendars.
3. Nurture learning cohorts. Leaders want to learn from each other and build their networks. Learning in a cohort also helps with motivation and accountability, since it’s harder to skip a course session when your peers expect you to be there. Self-paced learning is much less effective for leadership training, and with platforms like Uplimit making cohort-based course management easier than ever, it’s rarely necessary. Build cohorts to intentionally bring together leaders with similar goals and complementary experience, and incorporate group projects, open-ended discussions, and social events to foster connection within a cohort.
4. Provide regular nudges to keep leaders engaged. Leaders are people, and people are easily distracted! Well-timed nudges bring them back to what they need to do, why they want to do it, and how to get help if they’re stuck. A nudge is more than a reminder—it’s an encouraging and informative message delivered at a key moment, such as the day before a project deadline.
Here’s one example of an effective Uplimit nudge:
Hey {{first name}}! It was so great seeing you in our action learning project kickoff today! How did it feel for you?
You can now access and work on the week 1 project here (link). The project will be due at the end of the day Sunday. You'll earn your certificate for submitting both course projects!
Feel free to reply to this message if you have any questions!
5. Celebrate success. There’s nothing more motivating than being told you’re doing a great job. Recognize leaders for every milestone from enrolling in training, to showing up and participating, to submitting work. Recognition can take the form of private praise or a public shout-out. Upon completing a program, leaders should receive something tangible to showcase their accomplishment, such as a link to a capstone project or course certificate. Uplimit learners receive a digital certificate to add to their LinkedIn profile, along with a congratulatory email from the course instructor.
Full attendance at any leadership training is a lofty goal, but these strategies can get you closer to it. They’ll also increase the value of training for those who do show up—whether that’s ten percent of your registration list, or a hundred percent. If you are interested in joining a future discussion with me about leadership training, fill out this form.
And if the original Rick is out there, please lay claim to your law!