When “Can’t” Meets “Won’t”

By – Dr Srabani Basu

Associate Professor, Department of Literature and Languages , SRM University AP, Amaravati.

There is a sentence heard in almost every workplace, classroom, training room and performance review: “They need more training.” It is wonderfully convenient. Someone is underperforming? Train them. Someone misses deadlines? Train them. Someone refuses to collaborate? Perhaps a workshop on teamwork. Someone has attended three workshops on teamwork and still refuses to collaborate? Clearly, what we need is an advanced workshop on teamwork. Somewhere along the way, training has become the organisational equivalent of paracetamol—administered generously, often without diagnosing what is actually causing the pain.

Yet performance problems do not always begin with a lack of competence. Sometimes people do not know how to do something. Sometimes they know perfectly well how to do it but do not particularly want to. The first is largely a skill issue. The second is largely a will issue. The distinction sounds simple until we enter the wonderfully complicated territory called human behaviour, where “I can’t” may mean “I don’t know how,” “I don’t see why,” “I am afraid to try,” “I tried before and failed,” “Nobody notices anyway,” “I disagree with this,” or even the quietly rebellious, “I could, but why should I?”

This is where leadership becomes less about instruction and more about diagnosis.

Consider two employees who consistently avoid making presentations. Employee A is terrified because she genuinely does not know how to structure a presentation, handle questions or use visual aids effectively. Employee B is an excellent communicator who has presented successfully many times but has recently stopped volunteering because every idea she presents is dismissed by her manager. Their visible behaviour is identical: both avoid presentations. Their internal realities are entirely different. Send both to presentation-skills training and Employee A may improve dramatically. Employee B may return with a beautifully designed PowerPoint and exactly the same reluctance to present it.

The problem with visible behaviour is that it seduces us into believing that we understand its cause.

Skill asks, “Can this person do it?” Will asks, “Does this person want to do it?” But perhaps leadership needs a third question: “What is happening around this person that makes this behaviour meaningful?” Because performance does not occur in a vacuum. It emerges from an interaction among capability, motivation, meaning, environment, relationships, consequences and identity.

A skill gap is usually easier to address because it lends itself to visible intervention. Knowledge can be provided. Processes can be demonstrated. Practice can be designed. Feedback can be given. Coaching can improve technique. If someone does not know how to use a spreadsheet function, conduct an interview, write a report or operate a piece of equipment, the developmental path is reasonably clear: teach, practise, observe, correct and reinforce.

Will is more elusive.

You cannot PowerPoint someone into caring.

You cannot issue a circular instructing people to become enthusiastic from Monday morning.

And motivation cannot always be manufactured by adding another motivational speaker, preferably one who climbs mountains before breakfast.

When people possess the necessary skill but consistently do not use it, the interesting question is not, “What is wrong with them?” but “What makes not doing it more meaningful, safer or rewarding than doing it?” Human beings rarely resist without some internal logic. That logic may not be visible to the organisation, and it may not even be fully conscious to the individual, but behaviour usually makes sense within the person’s map of reality.

An employee may appear “unmotivated” because initiative has repeatedly been punished. A student may appear “lazy” because repeated failure has taught him that effort ends in humiliation. A team member may seem “resistant to change” because the last three organisational transformations produced uncertainty without improvement. A manager may appear unwilling to delegate because her identity has become entangled with being indispensable. What looks like unwillingness may therefore contain fear, mistrust, learned helplessness, resentment, conflicting values, lack of psychological safety or simply the belief that effort will make no meaningful difference.

This is why the word attitude should be handled carefully. “Attitude problem” is often a label applied precisely at the point where curiosity stops.

Once I decide that someone “has a bad attitude,” I no longer need to investigate the system, the relationship, the history or my own contribution to the problem. The label explains everything while revealing almost nothing.

There is another complication. Will and skill are not two sealed compartments. They influence each other continuously. Low skill can gradually destroy will. Imagine repeatedly attempting something and failing. Eventually “I don’t know how” can become “I am not good at this,” and finally “I don’t want to do this.” A capability problem has migrated into identity and motivation. The reverse can happen too. Strong will can accelerate skill. A beginner who is deeply curious, willing to experiment and unafraid of looking foolish may learn faster than a technically competent person who has stopped caring.

This creates four fascinating performance territories.

High skill and high will is the territory organisations celebrate: the capable and engaged performer. Low skill but high will is developmental gold—the person who says, “I don’t know yet, but show me.” Here, teaching and coaching can create rapid growth. High skill but low will is far more challenging. More training may actually insult the person because capability is not the issue. The conversation needs to explore meaning, motivation, trust, consequences, values or context. Low skill and low will is the most complex territory because neither training alone nor motivational speeches are likely to work. Before investing heavily in development, we may need to discover whether the person sees any reason to make the journey at all.

Yet even this four-box model should not become another convenient prison. Human beings move between these territories depending on context. Someone may display extraordinary will in one project and indifference in another. A student who seems disengaged in mathematics may spend six uninterrupted hours mastering the mechanics of a video game. An employee labelled “unmotivated” may organise an entire community event over the weekend with astonishing energy. The question then changes from “Does this person have motivation?” to “Where does their motivation appear, and what conditions make it possible?”

That is a much more intelligent question.

Perhaps the greatest leadership mistake is assuming that motivation is a personality trait residing permanently inside an individual. We describe people as motivated or unmotivated as casually as we describe them as tall or short. But motivation is often relational and contextual. People respond to autonomy, recognition, fairness, belonging, purpose, challenge, competence and the expectation that their actions matter. Change the environment and sometimes the supposedly difficult person changes with it.

This also means leaders must resist the temptation to outsource every performance problem to Learning and Development. Training departments are frequently asked to repair problems they did not create and cannot solve. A two-day programme cannot compensate for six months of contradictory leadership. A workshop on collaboration cannot repair a reward system that encourages internal competition. A session on innovation cannot create experimentation in a culture where mistakes are punished. A programme on ownership cannot manufacture ownership when every meaningful decision requires five signatures.

Sometimes the employee does not need training. The system does.

So what should a leader do when performance falls below expectation? Before prescribing an intervention, become curious. Does the person understand what is expected? Do they possess the knowledge and capability? Have they demonstrated the skill elsewhere? Do they receive useful feedback? Do they believe the goal matters? Do they have sufficient autonomy and resources? Is there fear attached to the task? Is good performance recognisedor merely rewarded with more work? What happens when they take initiative? What happens when they fail?

These questions move us from judgement to diagnosis.

And diagnosis matters because the wrong solution can worsen the original problem. Give training to someone who lacks motivation and you may create cynicism. Demand motivation from someone who lacks skill and you may create anxiety. Punish someone whose performance problem is caused by an impossible system and you create injustice. Rescue someone who simply needs practice and you create dependency.

The mature response therefore lies not in choosing between will and skill, but in understanding their relationship.

Perhaps performance can be thought of as a conversation between Can I?, Will I?, and Does this environment allow me to? Skill answers the first question. Motivation answers the second. Culture, leadership and systems answer the third. Sustainable performance requires us to listen to all three.

This has implications far beyond organisations. As teachers, parents, coaches and leaders, we are constantly interpreting behaviour. The child who “doesn’t concentrate,” the student who “doesn’t participate,” the employee who “lacks ownership,” the colleague who “resists change”each label carries an invisible assumption about cause. And every intervention built upon the wrong assumption risks treating the person instead of understanding the pattern.

Maybe the most powerful shift is a linguistic one. Replace “What is wrong with this person?” with “What is preventing the desired behaviour from becoming possible, meaningful or worthwhile?”

That single question opens an entirely different door.

Rarely skill can often be taught. Will can sometimes be awakened. Confidence can be rebuilt. Meaning can be rediscovered. Environments can be redesigned. And occasionally, we may discover that the person we were so determined to “fix” was responding quite rationally to a system nobody had bothered to question.

The next time someone says, “This person needs training,” therefore, perhaps we should resist reaching immediately for the training calendar.

Ask first: Is it a skill problem? A will problem? Or have we conveniently placed a system problem inside a person?

The answer may save an organisation another workshop.

And possibly a great many PowerPoint slides.