How Do You Know When to Retrain?

When leaders or training departments are asked to “retrain” team members, a flood of questions often follows:

• Were the team members not properly trained in the first place?

• Were there breakdowns in knowledge retention?

• Were all adult learning styles considered during the training design?

• Did we even hire the right person to begin with?

The truth? Any of those could be the reason. Or all of them. Or something entirely different. This is where Gapology steps in with clarity.

Rather than guessing or jumping straight to retraining as the solution, Gapology teaches us to identify the real root cause and then apply the correct Root Solution. Retraining may be part of the answer, but unless we’ve correctly diagnosed the actual gap, we risk applying the wrong solution to the wrong problem.

Avoid the Automatic Return to the Knowledge Gap

When performance dips, it’s tempting to blame a lack of knowledge. But we’ve seen repeatedly that the real issue often lies elsewhere.

If you’ve already used the Habit Ladder to deliver training correctly—ensuring it was repeated, reinforced, and validated—it’s likely that the knowledge was there. The breakdown may instead point to:

• A lack of teaching: Ongoing coaching and mentorship to convert knowledge into repeatable skills.

• A lack of importance: The team member may not understand why the behavior matters.

• A lack of action: Accountability, commitment, or culture are missing or misaligned.

Before retraining, walk the Gapology framework from left to right… Knowledge, then Importance, and then Action… Let the gaps reveal themselves.

Relentless Training and Continuous Development

That said, relentless training… focused, intentional, and ongoing…is always part of building a high-performance culture. Even when the Knowledge Gap is closed, the world changes. Products evolve. Expectations shift. New obstacles emerge.

Training isn’t an event in high-performing organizations—it’s a rhythm.

Daily improvement around the most critical skills must be embedded in your leadership cadence. Gaps must be spotted and addressed before they widen.

Bringing It to Life: Leadership Tips for Driving Performance Development

Here are practical steps to operationalize this mindset:

• Continuously analyze results to identify underperformance early.

• Observe behaviors regularly to catch consistency issues before they turn into habits.

• Look for patterns of missing knowledge or skills that may require a refresh or a different delivery method.

• Use the Habit Ladder as your roadmap for skill development. Identify the stage where breakdowns are happening. Is it communication, understanding, agreement, practice with feedback, or reinforcement of habits?

• Create proactive development strategies to close gaps not just for today’s team, but for future team members as well.

Leadership’s Role in Team Development

At the end of the day, developing people is the job. It's not HR’s job. It's not the training department’s job. It’s not someone else’s job.

It’s your job as a Winning Leader.

When team development is treated as a daily priority and not an afterthought or a reaction, you begin to build something extraordinary. You start producing hall-of-fame performance driven by a culture built to grow, adapt, and win.

And that starts with knowing what your team really needs… not just retraining, but winning leadership.