Designing Learning for Behavior Change: Beyond Knowledge Transfer
- Irina Ketkin
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Some time ago I shared a simple message on LinkedIn that got more traction than I expected: “Training isn’t learning.”
The post was short, almost blunt, and yet it traveled across LinkedIn and the L&D community because it gave voice to a truth we all know but rarely say out loud: training can put new ideas into people’s heads, but it cannot make those ideas live inside their work.
Most learning interventions are still designed for knowledge transfer. People are informed, shown, told, instructed. They attend a workshop, click through an eLearning module, or take notes in a classroom. At the end, someone asks, “Did they learn?” The answer is often yes. But the real question lingers: “Do they do anything differently now after the training has passed?” And that answer is often no. Let’s dig into it.
Table of Contents:
Knowledge, Skill, Behavior
To understand where learning breaks down, we need to go back to basics and make a simple distinction:
Knowledge means knowing what to do.
Skill means being able to do it when asked.
Behavior means actually doing it, consistently, under real conditions.
Behavior is where organizations place their bets, because behavior shapes performance, performance shapes outcomes, and outcomes justify budgets. Companies don’t invest in learning to create more knowledgeable employees; they invest to create better-performing organizations.
Why Behavior Change Matters
Consider a workforce that completes a Feedback training. They leave the room nodding, enthusiastic about models, psychological safety, and coaching language. They know what good feedback looks like. A week later, performance reviews begin and the familiar dance resumes: vague praise, softened criticism, and conflict avoidance.
Nothing changed. Not because the training was bad, but because people’s real-world behavior remained intact. And behavior tends to remain intact unless something disrupts it.
L&D’s job is not just to deliver information, but to design conditions in which new behaviors become possible, desirable, and sustainable.
The Barriers to Learning
L&D doesn’t operate in a vacuum. There are many forces at play when it comes to behavioral change. Put simply, behavior has gravity. It clings to:
Habit
Norms
Workload
Systems
Incentives
Fear
Ambiguity
Lack of reinforcement
A single workshop cannot overcome habits that have been reinforced over years by tools, culture, peers, expectations, and reward systems. In many cases, the barrier to performance is not a lack of knowledge but a lack of permission, time, or safety.
Principles for Designing Learning that Changes Behavior
You don’t need extravagant programs or complex technology to have an impact on behavior. It requires us, as L&D, to work differently — with longer time horizons, more realistic environments, and more practice than presentation.
A few principles matter more than most:
Contextual relevance. People must recognize themselves, their customers, their tools, their dilemmas.
Practice. Not discussion about doing the thing (though these can be super helpful!), but actually doing the thing.
Reflection. A pause to notice what worked, what didn’t, and why. (This is where the abovementioned discussions can play a crutial role)
Social learning. Humans rehearse and make sence of behaviors with and through other humans.
Spacing. Learning must unfold over time, not in one saturated burst.
Application. Learners need to have tasks, projects, and assignments that require them to try new behaviors where and when they matter.
Feedback. Coaching, mentoring, critique, and reinforcement help refine behaviors as they happen.
Nudges. Prompts and cues embedded in the workflow keep the new behavior alive amid competing priorities.
When these principles are absent, behavior returns to its baseline.
Useful Models That Inform Behavior Change
Several models can help L&D practitioners think beyond the classroom:
70:20:10 Model
Learning through experience, social interaction, and structured education.
Learn more here: https://www.702010institute.com/702010-model/
Fogg Behavior Model
Behavior as an intersection of motivation, ability, and triggers.
Learn more here: https://www.behaviormodel.org/
COM-B Model
Capability, opportunity, and motivation as prerequisites for behavior.
Learn more here: https://thedecisionlab.com/reference-guide/organizational-behavior/the-com-b-model-for-behavior-change
LTEM (Learning Transfer Evaluation Model)
A hierarchy that separates awareness from actual transfer.
Learn more here: https://www.worklearning.com/ltem/
Gagné’s Conditions of Learning
A framework for structuring learning in a way that supports performance.
Learn more here: https://www.simplypsychology.org/conditions-of-learning-gagne.html
Kirkpatrick Level 3 (Behavior)
Measuring whether learning has become workplace performance.
Learn more here: https://www.thelndacademy.com/post/how-to-use-the-kirkpatrick-4-levels-of-evaluation
These models differ in origins and emphasis, but they converge on one truth: behavior requires more than exposure to ideas.
Methods and Formats That Enable Behavior Change
Behavior does not grow from a single soil. It emerges across multiple layers of experience. Effective programs combine several modalities:
Formal learning: workshops, cohort-based programs, leadership labs, coaching, mentoring, blended learning
Informal and social learning: peer groups, practice communities, knowledge-sharing, collaborative problem solving
On-the-job learning: stretch assignments, rotational programs, apprenticeships, job shadowing, real projects
Workflow support: job aids, templates, nudges, system prompts, checklists, embedded feedback loops
This ecosystem makes it possible for the new behavior to emerge repeatedly, not just once.
A Short Case Example
Imagine you’re running a Time Management course. Employees learn prioritization frameworks, calendar blocking, batching, and “saying no” techniques. Their knowledge improves. Their intent improves. Their confidence improves.
Back at work, their managers flood them with urgent requests. Meetings are scheduled without rhythm or purpose. Deadlines are unpredictable. Systems hide visibility. The culture prizes responsiveness over planning.
And the inevitable happens – the behavior never changes. Not because employees didn’t learn, but because the environment punished the new behavior and rewarded the old one.
Behavior lives in the environment, not in the classroom.
Practical Tips for L&D Practitioners
If your goal is behavior change rather than mere understanding:
Design for practice, not presentation.
Extend the learning beyond the event.
Build social learning into the experience.
Expect transfer barriers and plan for them.
Measure change where it actually happens — in the work.
Behavior is the currency organizations care about. Our role is not to provide knowledge, but to create the conditions where new behaviors can take root and survive.
