Culture Through Education Pt. II: Building the Platform

Turning Education into Structure

In the first part of this series, I wrote about how education sets the tone for culture. Every strong training department shares a common thread: a commitment to learning. But a culture of learning doesn’t happen by accident. It requires structure, consistency and an understanding of the people who bring that culture to life. 

Building an education platform isn’t just about creating workshops or setting up meetings. It’s about designing a system that reflects your team’s needs, supports your department’s goals and earns buy-in from leadership. It’s what turns education from a concept into an operating rhythm. 

Start with Your Team: Knowing Who You’re Building For 

Before designing anything, take the time to understand your team. What are their professional interests? What’s their educational background? Where do they see themselves contributing—as an educator, a facilitator or a student? 

The more involvement you can create, the better. When team members have a role in shaping the department’s education, they begin to take ownership of it. But that ownership also has to come with clarity. Understanding each person’s desired role ensures the structure remains consistent and the delivery stays aligned. 

Simple steps like a quick survey, one-on-one conversations or even a whiteboard brainstorming session can reveal a lot. You’ll find natural educators who love to share, facilitators who thrive on connection and learners who simply want direction. Each of them is essential to the ecosystem. 

Align Education with Department Goals 

Once you understand your team, connect your education plan to the larger goals of the department. This is where culture meets performance. 

Education for its own sake is valuable, but education that improves client outcomes and key performance indicators earns a permanent place in the budget. The most sustainable education programs are those that make a measurable impact on: 

• Conversion: New knowledge and coaching skills that improve comp-to-client rates. 

• Retention: Stronger programming and relationships that keep clients longer. 

• Frequency: Better engagement and service that increase session consistency. 

When leadership sees a clear link between learning and business outcomes, buy-in follows. Education stops being viewed as a “nice to have” and starts being recognized as a growth strategy. 

At Woodside, I’m fortunate to work for an organization—and alongside a leadership team—that not only values education but sees it as a defining trait of a successful training department. The support here is tangible, from budgeting and scheduling time for development to encouraging creativity and collaboration across teams. Having also worked for Equinox, another company that deeply values education and invests heavily in its people, I can say firsthand that when leadership prioritizes learning, everything improves—culture, performance and the client experience. 

Designing the Framework 

With alignment in place, structure becomes the key. A great education platform blends formal structure with organic collaboration. 

At Woodside, we’ve found success through a mix of: 

• Workshops: Scheduled, topic-specific sessions that provide hands-on learning. This is often the first initiative to roll out in a training environment but it’s far from the lowest barrier of entry. If you’re going to start here, be organized and over-prepared from the start. It’s crucial to nail the first workshop—it sets the tone for everything that follows. I’ve always thought it’s a great idea for team captains to lead the first session. Remember, the only good meeting is the one people want to come to. 

• Consistent Communication: Team updates, email briefs and shared digital spaces that reinforce learning themes. This one takes special care. It’s important for the team to understand that when sharing information, it may be open for discussion or debate. If your culture is built on trust and mutual respect, this can be a positive. However, if you’re still developing that foundation, you may need a system to vet what’s appropriate to share with the team. 

• Voluntary Collaboration: Our “Think Tank” sessions—open meetings where coaches exchange ideas and challenge each other’s thinking in a low-pressure environment. This is what I refer to as my “favorite hour of the week.” We cover current topics, programming theory and more. It’s typically a mix of senior staff and newer trainers who are in the early stages of building their business. It’s mandatory for that group but serves as an excellent way to integrate them into the learning environment. Everyone is encouraged to contribute, and there’s real beauty in the organic nature of these sessions. 

To maintain consistency and engagement, education can be organized into three simple pillars: 

1. Foundational Learning: Core technical and service-based skills. 

2. Applied Learning: Translating knowledge into coaching, communication and results. 

3. Creative Learning: Peer-led discussions, experimentation and innovation. 

This structure allows for flexibility without chaos—a blend of predictability and creativity that keeps the culture fresh and relevant. 

Building for Sustainability 

The real challenge isn’t starting an education program—it’s sustaining it. Consistency is what separates initiatives from institutions. Education needs to be visible in the schedule and supported in the budget. If it’s not planned for, it’s not a priority. Allocating funds for certifications, continuing education, guest educators or even small internal incentives reinforces the message that learning is part of the job—not an extra. 

Scheduling is just as critical. Whether it’s a monthly workshop, quarterly assessment or an ongoing communication cadence, the goal is to make learning a rhythm, not a reaction. Assigning roles—educators, facilitators and students—ensures accountability and keeps the process evolving. 

This isn’t as daunting as it might seem. One of my best practices is creating an education plan using the principles of program design. It puts planning in a context your educators and facilitators already understand, and it makes it relatable to the rest of the team. 

Begin with an educational macrocycle and use industry and club business trends as a guide for how intensive learning should be at different times of the year. It’s best not to schedule your heaviest learning during October, March or June, which tend to be high-usage months. Think summer for this phase—when many clients travel—to keep your team engaged. Then break learning down into mesocycles using the same business planning approach. It may help to build these cycles around pillars such as movement, nutrition and recovery. 

For example, you might design a six-week learning cycle focused on recovery interventions. Within that, you’d create microcycles on topics like sleep coaching, understanding wearables and HRV. Lastly, think of “training days” as opportunities for spontaneous sharing—journal articles, podcasts (used selectively) or online lecture recommendations. 

Building a Culture That Teaches Itself 

When done right, an education platform doesn’t just build better professionals—it builds better teams. Over time, you’ll start to see the culture sustain itself. Coaches share what they’ve learned. Peers teach peers. Ideas move organically through the department. You’ll see it when you walk the floor and observe consistent high-level coaching, hear it in breakroom conversations between sessions and recognize it in the story behind improving KPIs. 

When education becomes embedded in the daily rhythm—not as a perk but as a process—your team moves from learning skills to learning culture. That’s when real growth happens: when learning becomes the language of the department. 

Looking Ahead

Next up in Part Three I’ll explore how to measure the success of your education platform—from cultural impact to quantifiable KPIs—and how to evolve it as your team grows.