The Demand

This week, you have at least one uncomfortable development conversation you have been avoiding by calling it training instead. If you keep transferring information without ever caring enough about the gap between where someone is and where they could be, you are training bodies who leave the moment someone offers to develop them properly instead.

The Work

  1. Identify one cast member whose growth you have not personally invested attention in recently — you have trained them, not developed them.
  2. Name the specific gap between where they are and where they could be. Be concrete: a skill, a read, a level of ownership they have not reached yet.
  3. Have the uncomfortable conversation this week. Tell them the gap directly and what you are willing to do to help close it.
  4. Replace at least one instance of direction-only feedback this week — “do this, don’t do that” — with a coaching conversation that treats a mistake as a chance to build understanding.
  5. Give one piece of formal, positive reinforcement this week to a cast member who is doing something right. Make sure it actually happens, not just gets planned.
  6. If you are using a purchased, generic service training program, identify one place it does not fit your specific Guest, your specific cast, or your specific standard, and build the local version yourself this week instead of relying on the shelf version.

By the end of this week, you have had one direct development conversation and delivered one piece of genuine positive reinforcement — not just training completed.