Why Are Organisations Quietly Pulling Back on Training - And What Are We Missing?

While I’m fully booked for the first half of the year, I’m seeing a worrying trend across some organisations.

Access to public speaking and presentation skills training has quietly dropped.

Not because leaders don’t want to improve.
But because learning how to communicate better has become harder to ask for, harder to justify, and harder to fit into already overloaded days.

I’m fortunate to work with organisations that do make space for public speaking training in Sydney. They see the return quickly - clearer thinking, stronger influence, more confident leaders and better outcomes. And because they see the impact, they keep investing.

The contrast is what concerns me.

“We’re presenting online now — does it matter as much?”

One explanation I often hear is that because more people are presenting online, leaders assume the art of presenting matters less.

It doesn’t.

If anything, online presenting demands more skill, not less.

When attention is fragile and distractions are everywhere, weak structure, unclear messaging and nervous delivery are exposed instantly. There’s nowhere to hide.

That’s why public speaking training remains critical, whether leaders are presenting in a boardroom, on Zoom or to a room full of stakeholders.
The medium has changed. The need for clarity has not.

The workload problem

Another explanation is workload.

People are working harder than ever. Calendars are full. Teams are lean. And public speaking training that genuinely lifts skill takes time — time that feels impossible to find without doing “real work” late at night.

So presentation skills training gets postponed.
Or shortened.
Or reframed as optional.

That’s where the real problem begins.

Because communication isn’t optional.

Leaders are expected to influence, persuade, explain decisions, manage resistance and represent their organisation - often under pressure. Yet we quietly remove the very training that helps them do that well.

The hidden risk of not asking

Social researcher and keynote speaker Ashley Fell has been clear: Gen Z need access to learning and development opportunities - not as a perk - as a signal they’re valued and expected to grow.

I agree. And I’d add this: so does everyone else!

I love learning. So do my Gen X peers.
The desire to get better at public speaking doesn’t disappear with experience - if anything, it increases as the stakes get higher and the nerves increase!

So perhaps you need to be asking your leadership: “What have we created that makes asking for training feel risky?”

Right now, many team members don’t feel brave enough to ask for training. They worry it signals weakness, lack of confidence, or that they’re not coping.

And even when public speaking training is approved, there’s a second barrier: time.

People are expected to attend training and still deliver the same output. The unspoken message becomes: “Learn - but don’t let it affect productivity.”

That’s not skill development.
That’s exhaustion.

What needs to change

If organisations genuinely want confident, influential leaders, they need to rethink how they approach corporate public speaking training.

That means giving L&D teams both permission and budget to do their job properly.

In practice, that looks like:

• funding fewer, higher-quality public speaking programs
• allowing real time to practise and embed skills in the training and then back on the job
• investing in presentation skills training that changes behaviour - not just ticking a cheap ineffective course where they’ll tick an attendance box.

In competitive environments like the ones global organisations operate in, clarity, confidence and influence are not “nice to haves”.

They are core leadership capabilities.

A call to action for leaders

If you lead a team, fund learning, or influence budget decisions, now is the moment to pause and ask:

• Are we equipping our people to speak clearly and influence effectively - or hoping they’ll just “pick it up”?
• Are we measuring public speaking training by attendance - or by impact?
• Are we expecting people to communicate better without giving them the space to learn how?

Because when public speaking training disappears, confidence disappears with it.
And when confidence drops, influence, decision-making and trust follow.

That cost is far higher than any training budget.

Who is Michelle Bowden? 

Hi! I'm Michelle Bowden - I've been teaching advanced presentation skills for nearly 30 years. I've actually delivered my Persuasive Presentation Skills Masterclass over 1060 times for more than 13,500 people over the past 26 years and my best seller is called How to Present: the ultimate guide to presenting live and online (Wiley). I'm excited to say that my name is a synonym for presentation skills in this country: people don't say, I'm going to presentation skills", they say, 'I'm going to Michelle Bowden!" Let's chat about transforming your team too! Visit www.michellebowden.com.au

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