When the Room Claps, Nothing Changes

There’s a truth most people in L&D won’t admit out loud:

The session that gets the loudest applause usually creates the least behaviour change.

I learned this the long way, from land to Maldives, across the stillness of the Inner Alaska Passage, through the mental-health fog of Covid, and back to ships again.

The Maldives taught me that learning doesn’t happen in the classroom.

It happens when a butler keeps his composure with a difficult guest at 11 pm.

It happens when a new steward tries a script for the third time because the first two sounded forced.

Alaska taught me something even sharper.

During a leadership session, two department heads locked horns so fiercely the room fell silent. The workshop ended anyway. The real shift happened four days later when they returned, with a joint plan.

Not because of my facilitation.

Because friction, reflection and discomfort did their job.

And then Covid arrived.

Those months were the darkest chapter of my career, not because of work pressure, but because of the silent emotional exhaustion nobody knew how to name.

Supporting EAP training during that time opened my eyes in a way no leadership model ever did.

It taught me how to listen beneath the surface.

How to spot the person who is functioning perfectly on the outside but collapsing quietly on the inside.

How learning sometimes means holding a space where people can finally breathe.

Coming back to ships after Covid forced one conclusion:

Training events are temporary.

Learning journeys are permanent.

Every transformation I’ve witnessed—on land, in Maldives, in Alaska, through Covid has followed the same brutal truth:

Clarity comes in the session.

Change comes after it.

And culture comes only when people repeat the right behaviour long after no one is watching.

What actually works is painfully simple:

Shadowing over slides.

Daily huddles over annual workshops.

Real guest interactions over role-plays.

Honest conversations over motivational speeches.

Empathy over everything else.

We don’t need more grand training events.

We need disciplined sequences that force people to try, fail, adjust, and grow.

If there’s one line that sums up my entire journey, it is this:

Measure training by the silence after the session, the choices people make when the applause is gone.

That silence never lies.

#LearningAndDevelopment #LeadershipDevelopment #PeopleDevelopment #HospitalityTraining #BehaviourChange #CultureBuilding #EAPTraining #MentalHealthAwareness #kketanwaghmare