The Advanced Communication Training Scam: Why Your £3,000 Course Won't Fix What's Really Broken

Related Reading:

• Managing Difficult Conversations
• Emotional Intelligence for Managers

The woman sitting across from me had just spent three days in an "Advanced Communication Masterclass" that cost her company more than most people earn in a month. She was describing her latest workplace disaster with the enthusiasm of someone who'd discovered fire.

"I used all the active listening techniques," she said, nodding earnestly. "I mirrored his body language, asked open-ended questions, and paraphrased everything back to him. Just like they taught us."

"And?"

"He told me to stop being so bloody weird and just give him a straight answer."

That conversation happened last month in my Melbourne office, but I could've had the same exchange in Brisbane, Perth, or any capital city across Australia. Because here's what nobody in the advanced communication training industry wants to admit: 94% of these programmes are solving problems that don't actually exist.

I've been watching businesses flush money down this particular drain for nearly two decades now. Started as a workplace trainer myself back in 2007, convinced I could teach anyone to communicate like Tony Robbins having a good day.

Boy, was I wrong.

The £50 Million Misunderstanding

The advanced communication training market in Australia is worth roughly $50 million annually. That's a lot of role-playing exercises and flipchart paper. But here's the thing that should make every CEO's blood run cold: companies that invest heavily in communication training show barely any improvement in actual workplace communication metrics.

Don't believe me? Ask any HR director privately about their last communication training initiative. Watch their face. You'll see the same expression people get when discussing their divorce settlements.

The problem isn't that communication training doesn't work. It's that most of it is teaching solutions to imaginary problems whilst completely ignoring the real ones.

Take active listening. Please. Take it far, far away.

I've sat through more active listening modules than I care to count, and every single one misses the bleeding obvious: the reason most people are bad listeners has nothing to do with technique. They're distracted, overwhelmed, or simply don't care what the other person is saying. Teaching them to nod more enthusiastically isn't going to fix that.

What They Don't Teach You in Expensive Courses

Real communication problems in Australian workplaces fall into three categories that no training programme wants to tackle:

Category One: The Structural Problems Most communication breakdowns happen because organisations are badly designed. When you've got seven layers of management between a frontline worker and decision-making authority, no amount of "clarity in messaging" training is going to help. The system is broken, not the people.

I worked with a mining company in Western Australia that spent $40,000 on communication workshops while their shift handover process was still based on scribbled notes stuck to a noticeboard. They could've solved 80% of their communication issues with a $500 digital handover system and saved themselves weeks of training theatre.

But fixing systems doesn't generate recurring revenue for training companies.

Category Two: The Cultural Problems Some workplaces have communication problems because the culture actively discourages honest communication. I've been in organisations where telling the truth about project delays is career suicide, where questioning senior decisions is seen as insubordination, and where admitting you don't understand something marks you as incompetent.

All the assertiveness training in the world won't help someone communicate better in an environment where better communication is effectively punished.

Category Three: The People Problems Sometimes—and this is the bit that makes HR departments uncomfortable—the problem is just that some people are arseholes.

You know the type. They interrupt constantly, ignore input that doesn't match their preconceptions, and use every conversation as an opportunity to demonstrate their own brilliance. These people don't have communication skills deficits. They have personality disorders or ego problems that no workshop is going to fix.

But suggesting that maybe Dave from accounting needs therapy rather than training doesn't fit the corporate development model.

The Real Communication Skills Nobody Teaches

After fifteen years of watching communication training fail spectacularly, I've identified the skills that actually matter in modern Australian workplaces. None of them involve mirroring body language or asking how someone's weekend went.

Skill One: Strategic Silence The most powerful communication tool is knowing when to shut up. In a culture obsessed with "having conversations" and "opening dialogue," this feels revolutionary. But watch truly effective communicators in action. They talk less, not more.

I learned this the hard way during a project review meeting in Sydney three years ago. Instead of jumping in with my usual helpful commentary, I stayed quiet and let the client talk through their concerns. Twenty minutes later, they'd solved their own problem and thanked me for my "insightful guidance."

All I did was resist the urge to fill silence with noise.

Skill Two: Uncomfortable Honesty Proper business communication often requires saying things people don't want to hear. This isn't about being brutally honest or "telling it like it is" in some toxic masculinity sense. It's about being able to deliver difficult messages without softening them into meaninglessness.

Most communication training teaches you to wrap bad news in positive language until it sounds like good news. This is idiotic. If the project is behind schedule and over budget, saying "we're experiencing some timeline challenges and exploring creative resource solutions" helps nobody.

Try: "We're three weeks late and 20% over budget. Here's why, and here's how we fix it."

Skill Three: Reading the Room (Actually) Real advanced communication means understanding the unspoken dynamics in any situation. Who actually makes decisions? What are people's real motivations? What information are they not sharing?

This isn't about watching for crossed arms or checking if someone's pupils are dilated. It's about understanding human behaviour in organisational contexts.

When the CFO says budget is tight but approves expensive office renovations, they're communicating something important about priorities. When your manager asks for your "honest opinion" about the new policy, they're probably not actually looking for honesty.

Learning to read these signals takes years of experience, not a two-day workshop.

Skill Four: Digital Communication Fluency Here's something that drives me absolutely mental: advanced communication courses that still focus primarily on face-to-face interaction.

Newsflash: 73% of workplace communication now happens digitally. Yet most training programmes spend maybe half an hour on email etiquette and call it digital literacy.

The real skill is knowing which medium suits which message. When to use Slack versus email versus picking up the phone. How to convey tone in text. When a quick call prevents seventeen back-and-forth messages.

I've seen projects derail because someone sent a two-paragraph email that should've been a five-minute conversation. I've also seen meetings scheduled that could've been resolved with a single well-crafted message.

The Companies Getting It Right

Not everyone is trapped in communication training hell. Some organisations have figured out that better communication comes from better systems, not better workshops.

Atlassian has built their entire culture around asynchronous communication. Instead of teaching people to have better meetings, they've created systems that make most meetings unnecessary.

Canva focuses on written communication skills—not because they don't value verbal communication, but because they understand that clear writing leads to clear thinking.

These companies invest in communication tools and processes, not personality makeovers.

I'm not saying communication skills don't matter. They absolutely do. But the skills that matter aren't the ones being taught in most advanced programmes.

What Actually Works

If you're genuinely committed to improving workplace communication, here's what I've seen work in practice:

Start with systems, not people. Fix your information architecture before you fix anyone's listening skills. Make sure people have access to the information they need when they need it.

Address cultural issues directly. If people are afraid to speak up, no amount of assertiveness training will help. Create psychological safety first, communication skills second.

Focus on written communication. In the digital age, clear writing is more valuable than charismatic speaking. People who can write clear, concise emails and documents are worth their weight in gold.

Stop trying to fix personality problems with training. Some communication issues require performance management, not professional development.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Most advanced communication training exists to make organisations feel like they're addressing communication problems without actually addressing them. It's expensive, it feels productive, and it allows leaders to blame future communication failures on individuals rather than systems.

But here's what I've learned after watching hundreds of these initiatives: the companies with the best communication rarely invest heavily in communication training. They invest in clear processes, good technology, and hiring people who can already communicate effectively.

The rest is just expensive theatre.

Look, if your team genuinely needs help with basic presentation skills or hasn't figured out how to structure a coherent email, by all means, get them some training. But if you're hoping advanced communication workshops will solve deeper organisational problems, you're going to be disappointed.

Save your money. Fix your systems instead.

Our Favourite Blogs:

• Brand Local Advice - Practical workplace insights
• Statement Coach Posts - Real-world training experiences