Your Chief Virtual Learning Architect

Learning to Performance

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Custom Design & Delivery

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Predictive Evaluation

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Enterprise Learning Strategy

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Dave Basarab Consulting has elevated the training experience, offering an end-to-end comprehensive approach that includes training strategy, instructional design, development, delivery , post program training transfer, and evaluation (via the unique Predictive Evaluation methodology). Virtual Chief Architect Dave Basarab has combined all of these individual training elements with his user-friendly, comprehensive Learning to Performance approach, which significantly increases companies' training ROI.

Why we are different

Innovation: Our primary focus is creating learning programs using a Learning to Performance approach.
Expertise: Dave offers the depth and breadth of his experience, including working internally at prestigious companies (Motorola, Ingersoll Rand and Pitney Bowes) as well as his knowledge and expertise as a highly-respected, sought-after consultant.
Partnership: Basarab collaborates with companies, serving as their own Chief Learning Officer whenever they need to plan, strategize, or implement training initiatives.

Training Services

Enterprise Learning Strategy

Enterprise Learning Strategy

At Dave Basarab Consulting, we're experts in creating Enterprise Learning Plans. We work with you to develop your company's learning strategy and direction.

Custom Design, Development, & Delivery

Custom Design, Development, & Delivery

Custom training is an effective way of developing the capability required to execute your strategy. We are a custom design house that creates programs specific to your business.

Learning Burst Development

Learning Burst Development

We can create and deliver your courses via our unique Learning Burst Method - keeping your employees at their jobs while receiving world-class training.

Predictive Evaluation

Predictive Evaluation

We predict the ROI for your courses and establish success gates. We then evaluate the course against the success gates to show value realized and continually improve results.

Leadership Development

Leadership Development

Turn-key virtual custom leadership development program that combines world-class leadership speakers/educators with post-event personalized coaching to provide you with a cadre of highly skilled leaders.

Predictive Evaluation

Building a Mentorship Model That Reinforces Formal Leadership Training

Formal leadership development rarely fails because the content is weak. It fails because new behaviours drift the moment learners walk back into their teams. In boardrooms from Sydney's CBD to the resource hubs of Perth, senior leaders routinely complain that expensive programs produce short-lived enthusiasm rather than durable capability. The remedy is rarely another workshop. It is a structured mentorship layer that carries the curriculum into everyday work.

The logic is straightforward. Classroom content delivers knowledge. Mentorship delivers practice, feedback and accountability in the messy context where leadership actually happens. Together, they turn the program from an event into a system.

The economic case has sharpened too. Skill shortages in mining, healthcare and advanced manufacturing mean organisations that cannot translate training into on-the-job behaviour pay twice for the same outcome.

Why Formal Programs Need Reinforcement Beyond the Classroom

A workshop, however well run, occupies a small slice of a leader's calendar. The rest of the week is where beliefs get stress-tested and habits get entrenched. Without deliberate reinforcement, even the best facilitator will see the Kirkpatrick ladder stall at Level 2.

Mentorship provides the bridge, offering a private space where a new manager can rehearse a difficult conversation or test a strategic idea. Mentors translate the content into the pressures, politics and personalities of the mentee's environment.

Core Components of a Mentorship Framework Aligned With Leadership Development

Mentoring relationships that sit alongside formal training should not be improvised. They need a clear architecture: defined goals, a structured rhythm of conversations, and explicit links back to the competencies the program is building. Three components matter most.

The first is role clarity. Mentors are not coaches, therapists or project managers. They are experienced operators who translate the formal curriculum into business realities. The second is a shared playbook that pairs each module of the leadership program with mentor-led actions, reflection prompts and on-the-job assignments. The third is a defined cadence, ideally structured learning bursts every two to four weeks.

Together, mentors know what is expected and mentees know what to prepare for. The formal program gains a longer tail of impact than its scheduled hours allow.

Matching Mentors With Emerging Leaders Across Distributed Teams

Australia's geography complicates matching. Organisations with offices in Melbourne, Brisbane and regional centres often rely on FIFO rotations and hybrid schedules that limit face-to-face contact. Pairing should consider time zones, travel patterns and local context. A mentee running a retail operation in Adelaide needs a mentor who understands the state's award structures, not someone parachuted in from another sector.

Matching also needs to account for seniority gaps. A common mistake is pairing first-time managers with senior executives who have little bandwidth for regular contact. A middle layer of high-potential senior managers often makes the most effective mentors for emerging leaders, because they remember the transition and have calendar room to commit.

Embedding Mentorship Conversations Into Day-to-Day Operations

The most successful programs treat mentorship as a working practice, not a meeting that gets postponed when deadlines hit. Mentors are given specific prompts tied to the formal curriculum, such as asking a mentee to apply a recently taught feedback model with a real team member before the next conversation. Documentation stays light.

The intent is to make the link between training and work visible, not to create another form to fill. Over time, the mentee stops seeing the formal program and the mentorship as two separate things and starts experiencing them as one continuous development journey.

Using Predictive Evaluation to Forecast Adoption and Impact

Measuring whether the combined program actually changes behaviour is where many initiatives stall. Traditional happy-sheet feedback tells leaders little about whether the mentorship layer is reinforcing the formal training. Predictive Evaluation offers a way to forecast adoption rates, likely behavioural change and projected return well before the program has run its full course.

When stakeholders push back on the value of the investment, this evidence base can be used to address stakeholder skepticism with credible numbers rather than rhetoric. It shifts the conversation from advocacy to evidence.

Navigating Australian Workplace Law and Cultural Norms

A mentorship model does not sit outside the regulatory environment. Under the Fair Work Act 2009, paid mentors may be covered by modern awards, particularly in healthcare, retail and manufacturing where shift work is common. Time spent mentoring counts as work time and should appear in performance plans. Privacy obligations under the Privacy Act 1988 also apply when mentors provide written feedback on mentees, especially where that feedback influences promotion or remuneration decisions.

Cultural norms matter too. Australian workplaces tend to value straight talk and humility over hierarchy, and mentors who lecture rather than ask questions are quickly tuned out, particularly in tech hubs around Eveleigh or Collingwood. Mentors should be briefed on these expectations of candour and mateship.

Comparing Standalone Training With a Mentorship-Enhanced Model

The differences change the rhythm of the program and the conversations between learning and line management. The following table shows where the two approaches diverge most sharply.

Dimension	Standalone Leadership Program	Program Plus Mentorship Layer
Time to first behaviour change	3 to 6 months	4 to 8 weeks
Manager reinforcement of content	Ad hoc	Structured and scheduled
Measurement of ROI	Lagging indicators, often anecdotal	Predictive and leading indicators
Adaptation to remote and FIFO teams	Limited	Built into pairing logic
Stakeholder confidence in investment	Variable	Supported by forecast data

Senior leaders who have run both approaches tend to notice the shift quickly, particularly in the speed at which new skills appear in front-line behaviour.

Start by auditing the existing curriculum and identifying two or three competencies where on-the-job application most often breaks down. Build the playbook around those priorities rather than mirroring every module. Pilot the model in a single business unit, gather predictive indicators early, then refine matching before scaling.

The real prize is not a certificate at the end of a course. It is a leadership culture where development is woven into the working week, senior people routinely invest in the growth of those coming through, and the organisation sees, with reasonable accuracy, the capability and value being created.

Learning to Performance

Learning to Performance, a complete training approach, gives companies world-class training to drive significant return. This approach includes upfront work (Impact Mapping, design), training (for staff and company executives), and post-training efforts to ensure training transfer. This unique recipe - the key for successful training and adoption - is changing the way companies implement training. This methodology could work with any content for organizations in any industry.