Most training briefs are one line long. We need a management course for about twelve people, sometime in the autumn. And then everyone wonders why the training that arrives feels like it could have been delivered anywhere, to anyone.
The brief is where training succeeds or fails, long before anyone stands up in a room. A good one does not need to be a formal document, and you do not need all the answers before you speak to a provider. But the more of the following you bring to that first conversation, the better the programme you will get back. Here are the five things worth thinking through.
Start with the business problem, not the course title
A course title is a guess at the answer. The business problem is the real starting point. Instead of asking for a change management course, describe what is happening. We are restructuring two departments next year and our managers have never led people through anything like it. That single sentence tells us more than any course title, because it says who is affected, what is at stake and when it lands.
If you are not sure what the underlying problem is, say so. Naming the symptoms honestly is a perfectly good starting point, and drawing out the problem behind them is part of what a discovery conversation is for. The CIPD’s factsheet on learning needs analysis is a useful primer on how this thinking works at organisational, team and individual level.
Bring real scenarios
This is the single most valuable thing you can give a training designer. The specific, awkward, recurring situations your managers face. The team member whose performance dipped for no obvious reason. The long serving supervisor who resists every change. The grievance that could have been a conversation three months earlier.
Scenarios do two jobs. They shape content that your managers will recognise as their own working life, and they act as the acid test for everything in the programme. If a module cannot help with the scenarios you brought, it does not belong in your programme. You do not need names or identifying details, patterns are enough.
Describe what different looks like in six months
Success for a training day is easy, people turn up and rate it well. Success for a training programme is harder and far more useful. What would you see in six months if this worked? Fewer grievances reaching formal stages. Absence coming down. Engagement survey scores going up. Managers holding development conversations without being chased. A change programme landing without the usual quiet resistance.
Writing this down does something else too. It means we can agree upfront how we’ll measure what’s changed and what’s improved, which turns training from a cost into an investment you can evidence. 78% of employers who invest in ILM qualifications see a return on investment within one year, and the employers who can prove their return are the ones who defined success before they started. If you need to win the budget internally first, our guide to building the case for leadership development walks through exactly that, and the strategic side of the argument is in the ROI of tailored learning.
Be honest about who the learners are
Twelve managers is a headcount, not a description. How experienced are they? How did they become managers, were they promoted for being excellent at the job and left to work out the people part alone? How do they feel about training, keen, wary, or burnt by a previous course that wasted their time? What shifts do they work, and what cover do they need to attend?
None of this is a complication. It is design information. A programme for sceptical, time poor, operationally brilliant first time managers looks different from one for an established leadership team, and it should.
Share the values and language the programme must carry
If your organisation has values, a leadership framework, or even just phrases that carry weight internally, hand them over. Training that speaks your language reinforces everything else you are doing. Training that speaks a different language quietly undermines it. This is one of the clearest reasons organisations choose bespoke over off the shelf, and if you are weighing that decision, our guide to choosing between bespoke and off the shelf training sets out the framework.
A good provider will ask for all of this anyway
Here is the reassuring part. You do not need to arrive with a polished brief, because drawing one out of you is our job. Listening first is how we build the programme The Wolseley Hospitality Group described the course as “shaped around their goals and values”, and it is exactly what our discovery call is for. Nor does the brief stop there. After the discovery call comes course design, then a client review where you refine the programme until it is exactly right, then the launch, then a final review where we assess outcomes and impact together. The brief is not a one off document, it is a conversation that runs through the whole programme.
So, bring your half formed brief, your honest scenarios and your one line problem statement, and we will shape it together. That is how training ends up fitting exactly what your people need.
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*Our articles are accurate at the time of publication, but course details, funding and industry standards can change. They’re here to inform rather than to replace formal advice, so if you’re weighing up a decision, get in touch and we’ll help you find the right path.