LTEN 2025: Building Training That Sticks in a Changing Industry
You could feel the energy the moment you walked into the LTEN 2025 conference in Aurora, Colorado.
For four days in late July, training professionals from across life sciences—pharma, medical devices, biotech, research, and healthcare—connected, networked, and gathered with a shared objective: building learning programs that inspire action, develop lasting skills, and deliver measurable results.
Between sessions on everything from negotiation skills to brain science, one thing became crystal clear: effective training must do more than deliver knowledge. To be truly effective, it needs to be memorable, usable, and reinforced long after the workshop ends.
Who Was in the Room
The attendee mix told the whole story of where the industry stands, as well as LTEN’s reach and influence:
- 34% Training Managers/Supervisors/Leads
- 29% Directors, VPs, or Heads of Training
- 22% Trainers/Educators/Learning Professionals
- 5% Field Trainers
- 6% Training Suppliers/Consultants
However, what really stood out was the global pull. Leaders flew in from Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom—representing 142 different companies. And all shared a common excitement around evolving training approaches to keep pace with changing learner needs and industry demands.
Starting with Purpose
One session that had people furiously taking notes was Ignite Selling’s “Three Simple Steps to Measuring the Impact of Your Training.”
The big lightbulb moment? Stop starting with “what” training you want to deliver and start with “why” you’re doing it in the first place.
The framework was refreshingly straightforward:
- Define 3–5 clear KPIs for the next 12 months.
- Identify the strategies needed to achieve them.
- Pinpoint the on-the-job behaviors that will bring those strategies to life.
Suddenly, with this approach, everyone’s training programs can have a direct line to business outcomes instead of just hoping for the best.
Negotiating with Purpose
SNI’s Jeff Cochran led a session on “Negotiating with Purpose: Getting to the Real Why Behind Stakeholder Requests,” which struck another nerve. His core message was simple: understanding true motivations gets you to better agreements faster.
The key moves:
- Probe beyond surface-level requests to uncover fundamental drivers.
- Ask the right questions to build trust.
- Align solutions with actual stakeholder interests.
People were especially drawn to developing probing skills—getting past the initial “no” to understand what’s really driving pushback—and building that cross-functional mindset that considers perspectives from payers to clinicians.
The Brain Science Advantage
If you wanted to understand why some training sticks and other training doesn’t, Lauren Waldman’s keynote was your answer. The Learning Pirate Inc. founder made it crystal clear: retention is everything. If people can’t recall and apply what they learned months later, behavior change isn’t happening.
So she recommended focusing on doing the following:
- Storytelling: Hook emotions to create deeper content connections.
- Retrieval practice: Revisit concepts to strengthen memory.
- Spaced learning: Spread content over time so brains can process it better.
Her philosophy—”train the brain, not just the task”—especially hit home for anyone eager to make their programs more engaging and effective.
What Stood Out About SNI’s Approach
Throughout the event, people kept gravitating toward what made SNI’s work different. Three things kept surfacing in conversations:
- Customization: Every program gets custom-built around the client’s world.
- Probing Skills: Teaching teams to dig past surface objections and find what’s driving pushback.
- Perspective-Taking: Training people to completely shift gears depending on whether they’re talking to clinicians, institutions, or other stakeholders.
You could tell people were already thinking about how they could apply all of the above back home.
A Memorable Moment
Tuesday’s County Fair Night became the event everyone was still talking about on day four. Carnival games with the Rockies in the background, people letting their guard down, and honest conversations happening between Whack-a-mole and cotton candy.
Yet, the part that hit home most with people was writing encouraging cards for families staying at the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Denver. Nothing like a simple reminder that behind all our training programs and business objectives, our work matters and has a real human impact.
Final Thoughts: Key Takeaways for L&D Leaders
By Thursday morning, you could hear the same conversations happening at every coffee station and airport gate. People kept coming back to three big shifts they were ready to make:
- Anchor Learning in Purpose: Start with KPIs, strategies, and behaviors before you even think about content.
- Design for the Brain: Use storytelling, retrieval, and spaced learning to make skills stick.
- Reinforce Over Time: Make sure concepts get applied and coached long after the initial session ends.
LTEN 2025 was a rousing success and gave everyone what they came for. People were heading home with pages of notes, new contacts, and that rare feeling that they’d spent four days learning things they could use immediately. The kind of conference where the real work starts when you get back to the office.
