Whole Person Learning—Planning for Change

What drives workplace behavior? Too often, learning professionals focus only on individual capability, overlooking the broader factors that influence whether people actually apply what they’ve learned. Whole Person Learning is a model that organizes all the forces shaping workplace behavior into three key categories: Brain – Does the person have the knowledge and cognitive capability to perform the task? Body – Do they have the tools, resources, and physical ability to execute the behavior? Backdrop – Does their social and organizational environment support or discourage the behavior?

This session introduces the Whole Person Learning model as a framework for understanding, analyzing, and predicting behavior change. You’ll gain a deeper appreciation for why training alone often fails to drive lasting change—and why capability, resources, and environment must align for learning to translate into action. Whether you work in training, leadership, or organizational development, this session will reshape how you think about what it really takes to change behavior.

Your people will learn how to:

• Explain the Whole Person Learning model, including its three core components—Brain, Body, and Backdrop—and how they influence workplace behavior.
• Recognize why knowledge and skill alone are not enough to drive behavior change, and why resources and social/environmental factors must also align.
• Differentiate between capability-based, resource-based, and environment-based barriers to behavior change, providing a clearer lens for diagnosing performance issues.
• Analyze how workplace behaviors are shaped by external influences, such as peer norms, leadership support, and reward structures.
• Describe how the Whole Person Learning model can be used to better understand learning transfer, helping organizations move beyond training as the default solution.
• Develop a foundational understanding of how to assess behavior change challenges, using the model as a framework for identifying what truly needs to change.