ProfessionalDevelopment
By John Honingford
If you work in learning and development (L&D), you’ve probably felt the frustration of knowing your team can drive impact yet is still being seen as a support function rather than a strategic partner.
Despite the tremendous talent in L&D teams, their insights are often overlooked. Why? Because many L&D professionals haven’t been taught how to speak the language of the business. They haven’t built the skills that would give them a seat at the table.
This article is not a criticism — it’s a call to action. To earn a strategic seat, L&D must build business fluency. That means going beyond instructional design and facilitation.
And it’s especially important now, in a time when CEOs and leaders are making tough calls and saying, “We’re only doing what’s necessary.” If you want to be considered essential, L&D has to act like it.
It means developing real capability in four key areas.
Too often, L&D teams are disconnected from the broader business strategy. There is a tendency to focus on learning needs but a failure to connect them to the goals that matter most to executives.
To build organizational perspective:
Spend time outside of HR. Shadow colleagues in research and development, commercial, market access or medical affairs.
Read internal strategy decks and investor reports to understand where the company is headed.
Sit in on all-company meetings. Note not just what’s said, but who is saying it. What’s being prioritized? Who’s asking questions and what are they asking?
Study your own function: What are the priorities of HR right now? How do they align with where the business is trying to go?
When you’re curious and constantly listening, you gather insights that help you translate and align your work to what truly matters. That’s what creates real influence.
We often ask leaders to define return on investment on training — but how often do we understand the financial or operational performance indicators they’re accountable for?
To build business acumen:
Read the book “Financial Intelligence” for a primer on income statements, balance sheets and cash flow.
Ask business partners to walk you through their dashboard.
Learn the vocabulary: Profit and loss, net revenue, market share, time to peak, etc.
Follow your industry’s investor calls and read quarterly reports to understand what’s being prioritized by your leadership.
The more fluent you are, the easier it becomes to position L&D solutions in terms leaders understand.
Even the best-designed programs fall flat when leaders don’t see the connection to their goals. To sharpen your strategic framing:
Start every program pitch by answering: “What problem are we solving for the business?”
Build simple logic maps that link business objectives to capability gaps to learning solutions.
Use terms like acceleration, efficiency and readiness — not just development or engagement.
The goal is to stop making the business case for L&D in HR terms. Instead, frame it through the lens of what matters to leaders. For example, when a merger or acquisition takes place, L&D can accelerate integration by aligning people to new processes, systems and cultural expectations.
It’s not just what you know — it’s how you show up. To build better consulting skills:
Learn how to ask better questions. (“What outcome would make this training a success?” “What behaviors would you need to see?”)
Practice saying no to ineffective requests and offering alternatives.
Study Peter Block’s Flawless Consulting or download organizational development toolkits.
Role-play conversations with peers to get more confident in stakeholder discussions.
Strong consultants don’t just deliver solutions—they shape them.
If you lead an L&D team, try this:
Choose one of the above skills to focus on each quarter.
Create stretch projects that require your team to partner with unfamiliar parts of the business.
Invite a cross-functional leader to do a lunch-and-learn on how they define value.
Build an internal L&D capability model with behavioral examples.
Ask leaders in other functions to review your program proposals or roadmaps.
Remember: You don’t have to know everything about the business. But you do have to be curious, learn to ask smart questions connected to business priorities and translate what you hear into meaningful solutions.
These are actions you can take to stop being seen as the “training department” and start being recognized as strategic partners.
John Honingford is the founder of Provoke Leadership. Email John at john.honingford@gmail.com or connect through linkedin.com/in/johnhoningford.
