# Why Your Company's Communication Training is Theoretical: A Brutal Reality Check from Someone Who's Seen It All **Related Reading:** [More insights here](https://coachingwise.bigcartel.com/blog) | [Other recommendations](https://ethiofarmers.com/the-position-of-professional-development-courses-in-a-changing-job-market) | [Further reading](https://managementwise.bigcartel.com/blog) Here's something that'll make you spit out your flat white: I've watched more than 200 companies waste millions on communication training that teaches people how to communicate about as effectively as a brick teaches swimming. And I'm absolutely sick of pretending otherwise. Let me tell you about Sarah from a Brisbane manufacturing firm. Brilliant engineer, terrible communicator. Her company sent her on a three-day intensive communication course that cost them $4,500. The trainer was fantastic—PowerPoints were slick, role-plays were engaging, everyone left feeling inspired. Six months later, Sarah's still sending emails that read like technical manuals written by robots having existential crises. This isn't Sarah's fault. It's ours. ## The Theatre of Corporate Communication Training Most communication training is pure theatre. Beautiful, expensive, utterly useless theatre. We've created an industry that teaches people to communicate in conference rooms with flip charts instead of teaching them to communicate in the messy, chaotic reality of actual workplaces. I should know. I've delivered enough of this theoretical nonsense myself over the years. Standing there with my laminated activity cards, teaching "active listening techniques" to people who'll go back to open-plan offices where they can't hear themselves think. Teaching "assertiveness skills" to people whose bosses will steamroll them the moment they try to implement what they've learned. The training industry has convinced us that communication is a skill you can learn like Excel formulas. Follow these five steps. Use this framework. Remember these acronyms. LISTEN—which apparently stands for Look, Inquire, Summarise, Take action, Empathise, and Notice. Because that's exactly how natural communication works, right? People definitely stop mid-conversation to remember acronyms. *Bollocks.* ## What We Get Wrong (And Why It Matters) Here's what drives me mental: we teach communication as if it's separate from everything else that happens in organisations. As if the bloke who's been micromanaged for three years will suddenly start speaking up because he learned about "I statements" in a workshop. Real communication happens in context. It's influenced by power dynamics, company culture, personal history, stress levels, deadlines, office politics, and whether someone's had their morning coffee. Yet we persist in teaching it like it's a sterile skill that exists in a vacuum. I once worked with a mining company where the safety manager completed an "effective communication" course and came back excited to implement new feedback techniques. Within a week, he'd given up. Not because the techniques were wrong, but because the company culture punished anyone who spoke up about problems. [Personal recommendations here](https://www.alkhazana.net/2025/07/16/why-firms-ought-to-invest-in-professional-development-courses-for-employees/) for organisations serious about changing this pattern. The training taught him what to say. It didn't teach him how to navigate a culture where saying it could cost him his job. ## The Real Problem: We're Teaching Scripts, Not Skills Walk into any communication training session and you'll hear phrases like: "When giving feedback, always start with something positive..." "Use the SBI model: Situation, Behaviour, Impact..." "Remember to paraphrase what you've heard..." These aren't communication skills. They're scripts. And people can smell scripts from across the office. Nothing kills authentic communication faster than someone clearly following a formula they learned in training. Effective communication isn't about following scripts. It's about reading the room. Understanding context. Adapting your approach based on who you're talking to, what's happening around you, and what outcome you're trying to achieve. I learned this the hard way early in my career. Fresh out of university, armed with textbook knowledge about "professional communication," I completely misread a situation with a major client in Perth. I followed all the "rules" I'd been taught about formal business communication. The client thought I was pompous and condescending. Nearly lost the account. An older colleague pulled me aside afterwards: "Mate, you were talking to a tradesman who's built a multimillion-dollar business with his hands and his brain. He doesn't need you to explain things like he's in kindergarten." That's when I realised communication training that doesn't account for real people in real situations is worse than useless—it's actively harmful. ## Why Context Is Everything (And Training Usually Ignores It) Here's something most trainers won't tell you: the same communication technique that works brilliantly in one situation can be disastrous in another. Yet we teach these techniques as if they're universally applicable magic formulas. Take "active listening." Sounds great in theory. In practice? I've seen people so focused on demonstrating active listening techniques that they completely missed what the other person was actually trying to communicate. They were so busy nodding and paraphrasing that they forgot to actually understand. Communication isn't about performing techniques. It's about connection. And connection happens when people feel genuinely heard and understood, not when they feel like they're talking to someone who's clearly following a checklist. The best communicators I know didn't learn from training courses. They learned from experience, from feedback, from paying attention to what worked and what didn't in real situations with real consequences. ## The Australian Reality Check Let's be honest about something else: most communication training is designed for generic international audiences. It doesn't account for Australian workplace culture, where being too formal can mark you as an outsider, but being too casual can undermine your credibility. We have our own communication rhythms here. Our own unspoken rules about directness, humour, and relationship-building. [More information here](https://spaceleave.com/what-to-anticipate-from-a-communication-skills-training-course/) about understanding cultural communication patterns. Yet we import training programs designed for American corporate cultures and wonder why they don't quite fit. I remember working with a team in Adelaide where the new manager—fresh from an expensive communication course—kept trying to implement "structured feedback conversations" with his tradies. The poor bloke couldn't understand why his team thought he was being weird and artificial. In their world, feedback happened naturally during the work, not in scheduled 15-minute meetings with predetermined frameworks. Different industries, different teams, different individuals—they all communicate differently. One-size-fits-all training ignores this reality. ## What Actually Works (Spoiler: It's Harder) Real communication development happens through practice in real situations with real stakes. It happens when people get immediate feedback on what worked and what didn't. It happens when they have safe spaces to experiment and fail and try again. The best communication "training" I've seen didn't look like training at all. It was coaching in the moment. Debriefing after actual conversations. Role-playing specific scenarios people were actually facing, not generic hypotheticals from training manuals. At one Melbourne tech company, instead of sending people to communication courses, they paired up employees for monthly "communication partnerships." Each person identified specific communication challenges they were facing, and their partner helped them practice and develop strategies. [Here is the source](https://submityourpr.com/why-companies-ought-to-invest-in-professional-development-courses-for-employees/) for more workplace development approaches. The results were infinitely better than any formal training program. Why? Because it was personalised, practical, and ongoing. It addressed real problems in real contexts. And because the practice happened in situations that actually mattered. ## The Uncomfortable Truth About Skills Transfer Here's what the training industry doesn't want to admit: most skills don't transfer from training rooms to workplaces. The research on this is devastating. Studies consistently show that 70-90% of what people learn in training sessions is never applied back on the job. That's not because people are lazy or forgetful. It's because the gap between artificial training environments and real workplace challenges is massive. In training, you practice difficult conversations with volunteer role-players who want you to succeed. At work, you have difficult conversations with your actual boss who's having a bad day and doesn't care about your newfound communication frameworks. In training, you have time to think through your approach and apply the models you've learned. At work, you have 30 seconds between meetings to address a brewing conflict that could explode if you handle it wrong. The environments are so different that the skills simply don't bridge across. ## Why Your Investment Is Being Wasted Let's talk money. Australian companies spend approximately $1.2 billion annually on communication training. If even half of that investment actually improved workplace communication, we'd be living in a golden age of organisational effectiveness. Instead, we have the same communication problems we've always had. Meetings that achieve nothing. Emails that create more confusion than clarity. Feedback that damages relationships instead of improving performance. Conflicts that escalate instead of resolving. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly while expecting different results. Yet here we are, year after year, buying the same theoretical communication training and wondering why nothing changes. ## A Different Approach: Learning in Context What would communication development look like if we designed it around how people actually learn and work? It would happen in small doses, regularly, in real workplace contexts. Instead of three-day intensives, people would get 15-minute coaching sessions before important conversations. Instead of generic scenarios, they'd practice the specific situations they're facing. It would be personalised. A software developer's communication challenges are different from a sales manager's, which are different from a project coordinator's. Generic training ignores these differences. It would be ongoing. Communication skills develop over months and years, not days and weeks. One-off training events can't create lasting behaviour change. Most importantly, it would be supported by the organisation's culture and systems. All the communication training in the world won't help if the workplace culture punishes honesty, rewards politics over performance, or creates environments where people can't hear themselves think. ## The Hard Reality Check Here's my controversial opinion: most organisations don't actually want better communication. They want the appearance of addressing communication problems without the hard work of actually changing the systems and cultures that create those problems. It's easier to send people to communication training than to examine why your organisation's culture makes honest communication dangerous. It's easier to teach individuals new skills than to restructure the power dynamics that prevent those skills from being used. Real communication improvement requires leadership to look in the mirror and ask uncomfortable questions about how their own behaviours and the systems they've created contribute to communication breakdowns. ## What You Can Do Instead If you're serious about improving communication in your organisation, start with context, not content. Look at why communication breaks down in your specific environment. What are the real barriers? What are the actual consequences people face for communicating honestly? Address those barriers first. Create psychological safety. Change the systems that punish good communication. Model the behaviours you want to see. Then, and only then, invest in skills development that's contextual, ongoing, and practical. [Further information here](https://www.foodrunner.de/why-professional-development-courses-are-essential-for-career-growth/) about creating workplace environments that support real learning. Your people already know how to communicate. They do it effectively in their personal lives, with their friends, with their families. The problem isn't that they lack communication skills. The problem is that your workplace makes it difficult or dangerous to use those skills. Fix that first. Everything else is just expensive theatre. And for the love of all that's holy, stop teaching people acronyms for conversation. It's insulting their intelligence and yours.