The 70-20-10 Learning Model: What It Is and What to Do with It
In the early 1980s, researchers at the Center for Creative Leadership studied how executives developed their leadership capabilities. Morgan McCall, Michael Lombardo, and Robert Eichinger found a consistent pattern: roughly 70% of development came from challenging on-the-job experiences, 20% from relationships and feedback, and 10% from formal courses and training programs.
The 70-20-10 model was born.
Forty years later, it's one of the most cited frameworks in L&D — and one of the most misapplied. Here's what it actually says and what to do with it.
#The three components
70% — Experiential learning Learning that happens through doing the work itself: tackling a new challenge, making a mistake and recovering from it, running a difficult project, stepping into a new responsibility. This type of learning is deeply embedded because it's tied to real outcomes and real consequences.
20% — Social learning Learning from others: feedback from a manager, watching how a skilled colleague handles a situation, mentoring, peer coaching, or simply being part of a team where knowledge is shared informally. Relationships are a powerful learning accelerator.
10% — Formal learning Courses, workshops, e-learning, certifications, and structured training programs. This is what most L&D departments spend most of their time and budget on.
The 70-20-10 numbers are not a scientific formula derived from controlled research. They're a description of a pattern that showed up in self-report data from one specific group of executives. The value is in the insight, not the precision of the percentages.
#The most common misuse
The model gets misused in two ways:
Misuse #1: Treating it as a prescription. "We should spend exactly 70% of learning time on the job, 20% with peers, and 10% in formal training." That's not what the research says. It describes what already happens — it doesn't recommend an allocation.
Misuse #2: Using it to argue against formal training. "See, training only accounts for 10% of learning, so it's not that important." This logic is backwards. The 10% of formal learning often unlocks the 70% — it provides frameworks, mental models, and vocabulary that make on-the-job experience more productive.
Someone who has never learned a conceptual model for giving feedback will muddle through performance conversations by instinct. Someone who spent two hours learning a framework and practiced it in a role play has better tools for the real thing.
The formal 10% matters. It just can't do everything on its own.
#What it actually means for L&D
The real insight from 70-20-10 is that most learning doesn't happen in training. It happens in the work itself. That has three practical implications:
1. Design formal training to activate the other 90% A course is most effective when it gives people tools they can immediately apply on the job. That means realistic scenarios, job aids, action planning, and follow-up. Training that ends at the classroom door loses most of its potential.
2. Make the 20% visible and intentional Mentoring, peer coaching, shadowing, and shared debriefs don't happen by accident in most organizations. They require deliberate design: structured feedback systems, communities of practice, manager coaching programs, or simply protected time for knowledge sharing.
3. Stop treating formal training as the only lever If a skill isn't developing despite training, ask whether the 70% environment supports it. Are employees getting opportunities to practice? Does the manager reinforce the learning or undermine it? Is the culture safe enough to try new behaviors? These factors often matter more than course quality.
One practical application: end every training program with a 30-day on-the-job challenge. Assign a specific task or situation where the learner applies what they covered. Follow up with a short reflection or check-in. This bridges the 10% and the 70% deliberately.
#How to use it in practice
For onboarding: Most onboarding relies too heavily on formal training. The 70-20-10 model suggests that assigning new hires structured stretch tasks early, pairing them with a buddy, and creating regular feedback loops matters as much as the orientation content.
For leadership development: Leadership skills live almost entirely in the 70% and 20%. Formal leadership programs work best when they're woven around real leadership challenges — not run as standalone experiences.
For compliance training: The 10% matters most here, and the model helps explain why compliance that's purely formal often doesn't change behavior. If the team's actual work environment doesn't reinforce the compliance behaviors, the training won't hold.
For skills development: Identify the 70% first. What on-the-job situations would develop this skill? Design the training to prepare people for those situations, then make sure those situations exist.
#The takeaway
The 70-20-10 model doesn't say formal training is unimportant. It says formal training is one part of a learning ecosystem — and L&D teams that design for all three components get better outcomes than those that design for the 10% alone.
A good LMS supports this by helping you track formal training, surface learning resources at the moment of need (supporting the 70%), and enable feedback and reflection workflows (supporting the 20%). It's not just a course delivery platform — it's infrastructure for the full picture.