If you spend any time in the hospitality field right now, you can feel that training is shifting.
More and more, that responsibility is landing on district managers, general managers, and field leaders. On paper, that makes a lot of sense. Training should live closer to the business. Closer to the shift. Closer to where performance actually happens.
But here’s the disconnect I see every day: we’re moving training to the field, without moving the systems with it.
Field leaders are now being asked to own onboarding, reinforce skills, and lead performance conversations – all while protecting the day-to-day operation. The intent is right. I don’t think anyone would argue that. But the support often stops at, “Here’s the program – go run it.”
And that’s where things start to break down.
When everything matters, nothing really does. So under pressure, leaders default to what helps them get through the shift, not necessarily what moves the metric. That’s not a capability issue, it’s a clarity issue.
We’re really good in L&D at handing off materials. We build the guides, the decks, the modules. But we’re less consistent in handing off what actually matters: what decisions need to be made, what success looks like, and how someone will know if it’s working.
Take something simple like rolling out a new limited-time offer. We send the materials and expect the field to cascade the training. But what we often don’t define is the behavior we’re looking for, the timeline that matters, or the metrics that signal success. Without that, we’re not enabling, we’re just distributing information.
And information alone doesn’t drive performance. That’s why I think the real shift isn’t from training to the field – it’s from training to enablement.
To me, training is a component of enablement, not a replacement for it. Training teaches the “what.” Enablement supports the “how, why, and when.” And that difference shows up in how leaders engage with their teams.
When enablement is working, leaders stop asking, “Did you complete the training?” and start asking, “What part of this is hardest to apply during your shift?” That’s a completely different conversation, and it’s the one that actually moves behavior.
If we want field-led training to work, we have to get more intentional about what we’re asking of our leaders. At a minimum, they need to know three things: what they’re accountable for, what “great” looks like in their market, and how they’ll know if it’s working. Without those anchors, training becomes optional the moment pressure hits. And the pressure always hits!
The opportunity in front of us isn’t to push more content. It’s to build better systems. Systems that connect training directly to operations, that create shared ownership, and that don’t stop at delivery but carry through to performance.
Because in my experience, training doesn’t fail because people don’t care. It fails when it’s disconnected from how the business actually runs.
But when it is connected, when it clearly moves the metrics leaders already care about, everything changes. Engagement goes up. Consistency improves. And suddenly, training isn’t “one more thing.” It’s just how the business gets better.
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