Poorly Designed Intellectual Theatre: Why Online Workshop Trainings Suck
If you have ever sat through an online “interactive” workshop, smiling at a camera you forgot was on, listening to a facilitator say :“Let’s make this fun,” you already know the sinking feeling. The kind of boredom that is not about content but about insult. You signed up to think. Instead, you are watching a play in which everyone pretends to be learning.
Welcome to the age of poorly designed intellectual theatre.
These are the sessions that promise engagement but deliver performance. They are the digital equivalent of group trust falls, powered by slides, scripts, and self-congratulation. The intention may be noble - upskilling, inclusion, psychological safety - but the execution drains life out of both the subject and the participants.
The Rise of Virtual Pretend-Learning
When the pandemic forced all professional development online, organizations rushed to digitize everything: leadership training, innovation sessions, resilience workshops. What began as a survival tactic hardened into habit. The assumption became that if something could be streamed, it should be.
Hardly anyone consulted organizations that had already been doing it successfully for decades (The Open University, UK – I’m looking at you!).
By 2024, global spending on corporate online training exceeded $400 billion, according to Statista. Yet engagement metrics tell a different story. A Harvard Business Review survey found that only 25 percent of employees who attend online workshops finish them feeling more competent or connected. Most leave slightly irritated, mentally drained, or suspicious that their time was wasted.
The cause is not Zoom fatigue. It is design fatigue.
The Choreography of Pretend
Most online workshops follow the same choreography. A warm-up poll. An icebreaker. A slide deck filled with quotes. Then the classic “breakout room” where five strangers discuss a pre-framed question for seven minutes while one person dominates, two speak politely, and two go silent with cameras off.
The facilitator returns, thanks everyone for “great insights,” and proceeds to summarize what was already on slide 14. The chat floods with half-hearted “thank yous.” Cameras flicker off. Everyone disappears.
The workshop was interactive, technically. Yet nothing real occurred. No new thinking, no shared discovery, no emotional shift. It was theatre.
The Psychology Behind the Pain
Organizational psychology explains why these sessions feel so hollow. Humans read authenticity through micro-cues: tone, pacing, gesture, spontaneity. Digital space erases most of them. What remains is scripted energy and pixelated sincerity. Participants sense the dissonance immediately.
But that’s not even the main thing.
Adult learning theory adds another layer. Adults learn best through relevance, autonomy, and challenge. Poorly designed online trainings remove all three. They are generalized, compulsory, and simplified. Instead of trusting the intelligence of participants, they choreograph every move, treating thinking adults like restless students who must be kept busy.
That triggers what psychologists call reactance: a motivational pushback against being controlled. People resist not because they dislike learning, but because they dislike being managed into learning.
The Corporate Need for Applause
Why do organizations keep commissioning such theatre? Because it looks good. Workshops with slick visuals and breakout data points make HR dashboards glow. Engagement can be measured in clicks and attendance, not depth or transformation. The performance becomes the product.
Executives love outcomes that can be shown on slides. “We trained 500 managers in inclusive leadership” sounds better than: “We held ten deep, messy, uncomfortable conversations about bias.” Real learning is nonlinear and unpredictable. Theatre is safe, measurable, and easily billed.
The metrics matter. Sometimes only the metrics matter.
There is also social signaling at play. Attending an online workshop has become a badge of participation, proof of modernity. Nobody wants to appear disengaged or cynical, so everyone smiles through the charade. The chat fills with clapping emojis, and another hour of collective pretense concludes.
The Quality Problem
For people with a high sensitivity to intellectual quality, this environment feels unbearable. They pick up on scripted facilitation, borrowed frameworks, and recycled language within minutes. They crave rigor, debate, and emotional honesty - none of which fit comfortably into a webinar template.
These individuals often withdraw or become quietly resistant, not out of arrogance but out of respect for their own cognition. They cannot pretend enthusiasm for mediocrity.
Ironically, they are the very minds organizations need most
during change and innovation cycles.
There’s Hope: What Real Learning Looks Like
Contrast this with environments that work. The best online learning experiences are small, unpolished, and unscripted. They feel less like presentations and more like shared inquiry. Participants talk to each other, not through a facilitator. Silence is allowed. Ideas collide.
When a session is well designed, people forget the format. The technology fades into the background because the conversation has gravity. It demands attention. Research from Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab shows that psychological presence - feeling “there” with others - depends less on high production quality than on emotional authenticity and mutual focus.
Real learning, whether online or offline, requires three ingredients:
trust, friction, and relevance.
Without trust, people perform.
Without friction, nothing changes.
Without relevance, attention dies.
How to Fix the Format
Shrink the room. Limit group size to a level where genuine dialogue is possible. Ten people learning together beats a hundred staring at slides.
Ditch the choreography. Replace icebreakers with meaningful questions. Instead of “What’s your favorite leadership quote?” ask, “What’s the hardest truth you’ve learned about leading people?”
Invite dissent. Encourage disagreement as data. Authentic dialogue needs tension.
Use facilitators who think, not just host. A true facilitator listens deeply, adapts in real time, and values silence over filler.
Measure depth, not attendance. Ask participants what changed in their thinking a week later, not how “fun” the session was.
The Role of the Executive
Executives have the power to break the cycle of intellectual theatre. They can ask harder questions before approving training budgets. What is the real behavioral objective? Who designed the session, and how are participants involved in shaping it? What evidence supports the approach?
They can also model vulnerability by showing up as learners, not figureheads. When senior leaders participate authentically - asking, challenging, reflecting - they grant everyone else permission to drop the performance.
Most importantly, they can reward reflection, not attendance. Learning cultures are built not by quantity of training hours but by quality of conversation.
The Cultural Cost of Pretend
Poorly designed online workshops do more than waste time. They corrode curiosity and kill both culture and innovation with one fell swoop. They teach employees that professional development is a compliance exercise rather than a chance to evolve. Over time, this dulls the collective intelligence of the organization. People stop expecting to be surprised or moved.
The real tragedy is that virtual space could be extraordinary. It could connect diverse thinkers, democratize access, and allow deep reflection without travel or hierarchy. But that potential will remain untapped as long as organizations mistake participation for progress.
The Future of Learning is Smaller and Truer
The cure for intellectual theatre is not better slides or more polished delivery. It is honesty. Admit what works, what doesn’t, and what people actually need. Create fewer workshops but make them matter.
Technology will keep changing how we gather, but the psychology of learning will not. Humans still crave meaning, recognition, and challenge. When those are missing, we rebel in subtle ways - by tuning out, multitasking, or silently mocking the facilitator.
Perhaps that quiet rebellion is not cynicism at all.
Perhaps it is intelligence refusing to be choreographed.
About the Author
Anna is an organizational psychologist and executive coach, with a special interest in all things technology. We’re part of the team at Garleff Coaching and Consulting Group. If this article has struck a chord, please let us know.
Anna Garleff Cell: +1 587 224 3793 / anna@garleffcoaching.com
www.garleffcoaching.com
