Retention Is Not the Goal

A Structural View on Leadership Development

Abstract

Leadership training is often treated as a cost factor—and frequently blamed for employee turnover. This article challenges that assumption.

Drawing on structural reasoning, interdisciplinary insights into human development, and a three-year leadership development case, it argues that retention is not a goal to be managed. It is an emergent effect of functional organizational order.

I. The Dominant Assumption

In many organizations, leadership training—especially in-person programs—is primarily perceived as a cost factor.

Not occasionally. Systematically.

The equation is simple and widely accepted:

Presence-based training consumes time.

Time away from operations produces opportunity costs.

Opportunity costs are visible, immediate, and measurable.

Add to this the direct financial investment—trainers, logistics, travel—and training quickly appears as a necessary evil rather than a strategic instrument.

This perception is reinforced by a second, more consequential assumption: that training increases individual market value.

If employees become more competent, more reflective, more articulate, they become more attractive to the labor market. From this perspective, training appears as a paradoxical investment: either it has no real effect, or—if it does—it accelerates employee turnover.

The dilemma is familiar:

Either we do not invest, and people remain underdeveloped. Or we invest, and the best ones leave.

In both cases, training is treated as a loss.

This assumption is remarkably stable. It persists across industries, geographies, and organizational cultures. It also survives repeated counterexamples.

That stability should raise suspicion.

Because assumptions that remain unchallenged despite contradictory experience are usually not empirical conclusions.

They are theoretical defaults.

The dominant assumption about training is not wrong because it is cynical.

It is wrong because it is reductive.

II. Why This Assumption Is Wrong

The analytical weakness of the dominant view lies in its underlying model of human behavior.

It treats employees primarily as market actors: rational, mobile, opportunity-maximizing individuals whose primary orientation is external value realization.

Within that model, training can only have two effects: it fails, or it increases exit probability.

What this model systematically ignores are the very factors that actually govern human commitment inside organizations.

Human behavior at work is not driven exclusively—or even primarily—by market logic. It is shaped by social embedding, identity formation, status recognition, and developmental context.

People do not simply have skills.

They become someone through the environments in which those skills are developed.

Training, therefore, does not merely transmit knowledge.It positions individuals within a social and organizational order.

By reducing training to a transaction—time exchanged for competence—the dominant assumption overlooks four decisive dimensions:

• Social embeddedness: development always occurs in relation to others. Learning in isolation does not create commitment; learning within a visible group does.

• Identity: people attach themselves to roles they can inhabit with competence and recognition. Training can stabilize or destabilize identity, depending on context.

• Status: being selected, invested in, and challenged publicly signals value. Status is not conferred by content, but by decision.

• Developmental context: growth requires a frame that makes effort meaningful. Without such a frame, learning becomes consumption rather than transformation.

By ignoring these dimensions, organizations misinterpret the effects of training. They see increased competence and infer increased mobility, while overlooking increased attachment to the structure that enabled that competence.

To understand why training sometimes fails—and sometimes binds powerfully—we need a different lens.

Not a softer one.

A more accurate one.

III. A Different Lens: How Humans Actually Develop and Commit

If the dominant assumption about training is theoretically weak, the relevant question is not whether training works, but under which conditions it can work at all.

Answering this requires stepping outside a purely economic model of behavior.

Human development is fundamentally social.

We do not become competent or autonomous in isolation. We develop through interaction, guidance, comparison, and feedback.

This does not disappear in adulthood.

People continue to develop competence, confidence, and identity in relation to others, not apart from them.

Training, seen through this lens, is not primarily a learning environment.

It is a social space in which development becomes visible, guided, and evaluated.

Whether such spaces create commitment or indifference depends less on content than on context.

Meaning does not emerge from communication alone.

It emerges from decision.

What an organization protects, prioritizes, and takes seriously under pressure reveals how development is positioned within its order.

This is where training either remains a measure —or becomes structure and culture.

IV. Training as Organizational Structure – Not a Measure

Most organizations treat leadership training as a measure.

Measures are optional.

They are scheduled, optimized, postponed, or cancelled when pressure rises.

Structure is different.

Structure is binding.

It reveals priorities.

It stabilizes expectations.

Training does not work as a measure.

It works only when embedded in organizational structure —and in the culture that structure produces.

When training is structurally embedded, it becomes a decision-making space.

Who is invited.

Who is challenged.

Who is observed.

Who is taken seriously.

These are not pedagogical questions.

They are organizational ones. These are questions about actual share of power.

Culture does not emerge from values statements or communication campaigns.

It emerges from repeated decisions.

What is protected when resources are scarce.

What is prioritized when trade-offs appear.

What is sustained when it becomes inconvenient.

Training is one of the few organizational contexts where these decisions become highly visible.

When training is protected against short-term opportunity costs, it signals relevance.

When it is publicly supported, it signals expectation.

When it is repeated and institutionalized, it signals continuity.

Under these conditions, training stops being an intervention.

It becomes a structural element of the organization.

And where leadership development is embedded in organizational structure and carried by visible management commitment, it does not merely develop individuals.

It stabilizes interpretation frameworks.

It aligns decision-making.

It carries culture across roles and over time.

Only then does the following statement hold:

Retention is not a goal. It is the effect of functional order.

Graduation 5th Cohort Baobab Nigeria Middle Management Training Program, Dec 2025

V. The Empirical Case: Baobab Nigeria

The argument so far is structural, not anecdotal.

Still, it requires empirical grounding.

The case of Baobab Nigeria is relevant precisely because the leadership development program was not designed as a retention initiative and not framed as a cultural intervention. It was implemented under real operational constraints and competing priorities.

Over a period of three years, more than 110 middle managers participated in a leadership development program.

The program was deliberately demanding.

It required extended presence.

It involved significant time away from daily operations.

It created real opportunity costs.

The format combined reflection with exposure.

Participants were expected to articulate positions publicly, engage in structured debate, present under observation, reflect on behavior and decision-making, and withstand comparison with peers.

This was not comfort-oriented training.

It involved friction, evaluation, and intellectual strain.

What made the program effective was not its methodological richness.

The decisive factor was the organizational frame.

From the outset, the program was aligned with explicit business and leadership objectives. It was agreed upon with relevant stakeholders and publicly supported by senior management.

More importantly, when conflicts arose between training requirements and short-term operational demands, the decision was consistently made in favor of training.

No quiet deprioritization.

No symbolic endorsement paired with practical erosion.

No relativization under pressure.

Training was not treated as an add-on.

It was treated as part of the organization’s operating logic.

Under these conditions, participation acquired a meaning beyond learning.

Presence became visible.

Absence required explanation.

Engagement was noticed.

Training shifted from obligation to access.

This shift was not communicated as a message.

It emerged as a consequence of repeated decisions.

The case does not suggest that training automatically produces retention.

It demonstrates something more precise:

When leadership development is embedded in organizational structure and protected against short-term trade-offs, it reshapes how people locate themselves within the organization.

Retention, in this context, was not engineered.

It followed.

VI. The Social Tipping Point

At a certain point, a qualitative shift occurs.

Not because training becomes more engaging.

Not because content improves.

Not because participation is incentivized.

The shift happens when training changes its social meaning.

As long as leadership development is perceived as an obligation, it competes with daily operations.

Time spent in training is experienced as time lost elsewhere.

Once training is structurally protected, publicly supported, and consistently prioritized, this perception changes.

Participation is no longer interpreted as compliance.

It becomes access and status.

Not everyone is invited.

Not everyone is visible.

Presence matters.

Training begins to function as a signal:

A signal of relevance.

A signal of trust.

A signal of expected responsibility.

This shift is rarely announced.

It is observed.

People notice who is invested in.

They notice which commitments are upheld under pressure.

They notice what the organization is willing to protect when trade-offs arise.

Gradually, the dominant internal narrative changes.

From: I lose time.

To: I am part.

At this point, training no longer needs to justify itself against operational demands.

It becomes part of how those demands are understood and managed.

What emerges is not enthusiasm, but alignment.

Not motivation, but orientation.

And it is precisely this shift—subtle, cumulative, and structural—that prepares the ground for the outcome most organizations seek directly, and rarely achieve.

VII. Retention as an Emergent Effect

What follows from this shift is often described as retention.

But retention, in this context, is a misleading term.

People do not stay because they are retained.

They stay because they can act.

They stay because:

• their development is embedded in a larger order,

• expectations are clear and consistent,

• contribution is visible,

• and belonging is experienced rather than proclaimed.

No additional incentives are required.

No loyalty programs.

No moral appeals.

Over a three-year period, fewer than five out of more than 110 participating middle managers left the organization.

This corresponds to a retention rate of approximately 96 percent.

Retention was never defined as a target.

It was not managed through measures, contracts, or benefits.

It followed.

Not as an outcome to be optimized,

but as a consequence of structure.

Closing Thought

Organizations struggling with attrition often look for solutions in motivation, incentives, or employer branding.

The problem usually lies elsewhere.

Not in commitment.

Not in loyalty.

But in how development is positioned inside the organization.

Where leadership development is treated as an intervention, it remains optional.

Where it is embedded in organizational structure and carried by visible management commitment, it becomes formative.

In such contexts, training is no longer perceived as a cost or a favor.

It is understood as a signal.

A signal that people matter.

That responsibility is expected.

That development is taken seriously—not rhetorically, but practically.

Culture, then, is not declared.

It is enacted.

And people do not need to be retained.

They remain because they are respected as contributors to something that holds.