Rows of seated people facing the stage during a CRAVE session.

The Evidence

Wisdom is where knowledge and experience meet.

Everything CRAVE teaches is grounded in science and developed through lived experience. Research gives us the foundation. Practice turns knowledge into something we can use.

  1. Knowledge + Experience
  2. Wisdom

This page separates what the research supports, what the people we have trained report, and what we are measuring next.

Hear their storiesExplore the research

Tier two · What participants report

Impact becomes visible in what people do next.

A meaningful experience during training matters. The deeper evidence appears when people carry what they learned into their work, their teams, and their lives.

We look for change in the moments that follow.

  • Recognition

    People identify pressure, resistance, emotion, and patterns before those forces determine their response.

  • Preparation

    People anticipate difficult moments and intentionally prepare the skills and responses they want to bring into them.

  • Application

    People use the tools and practices in real conversations, decisions, setbacks, and leadership moments.

  • Reliability

    People reflect, refine, and repeat until they trust themselves to call on the skill again.

The value of training is revealed in the moments when people choose how they will show up.

Tier two · What participants report

The clearest evidence of growth appears in real life. It appears in the conversations people begin, the pressure they learn to navigate, and the choices they become prepared to make.

“We brought CRAVE into our organization just after winning a major deal. We needed to hire quickly, move leaders into new roles, reorganize parts of our workforce, and create new processes, all while continuing to execute our growth strategy.

We already had a plan, but that plan required a great deal from our people: understanding, communication, leadership, and the ability to navigate difficult moments.

CRAVE helped us identify where the plan would challenge us, recognize when pressure was shaping our responses, and prepare for moments we knew were coming. Most importantly, it helped us respond with intention instead of reacting under pressure.

The impact was almost immediate. We are still successfully executing that growth strategy, and a significant part of that success comes from the CRAVE training we experienced as a team.”

Andrew Sievers
Founder and President, Profishant

The strategy gave them direction. Gap Training helped their people carry it forward.

In Their Words

Different rooms. Different moments. Skills people continue to use.

“We brought CRAVE into our New Leader Training Week. The presentation and half day seminar were rated the most impactful part of the entire program.

Understanding the Gap and recognizing that every leader can strengthen the skills they already possess through intentional practice left all of us excited to grow.

Since the training, we have seen our new leaders use these skills in the moments that matter. We will continue making CRAVE part of every new leader class we offer.”

Jake
Owner, Advanced Communications

“We invited Mike to speak with our teachers during a professional development day. Wow. It exceeded our expectations.

CRAVE is essential training for every teacher. The human interactions at the heart of teaching call on each of these skills and give us countless opportunities to practice them.

Thank you, Mike, for showing us how to practice these skills and helping us understand the value that intentional practice brings to our classrooms.”

Dr. Jones
Principal

Practice becomes visible in the moments that used to stop us.

Different Moment. Practiced Response. New Result.

Tier one · What the science supports

Human skills can be developed through intentional practice.

CRAVE draws on established research in self-efficacy, skill development, planning, feedback, mental rehearsal, and resilience.

No single study proves the CRAVE framework. These are the principles the framework is built from, and we link each one so you can read it yourself. Where the research is mixed, we say so.

Belief is built from experience

Across workplace studies, people’s confidence in their own ability to perform a task is meaningfully related to how well they perform it. Confidence of that kind grows as people accumulate direct experience of doing the task, which is the principle CRAVE builds practice around.

How it appears in CRAVE

Repeated practice gives people evidence of their own capability, so the skill is available when the moment arrives.

Self-efficacy and work-related performance: A meta-analysis (Psychological Bulletin, 1998. Opens in a new tab)

Naming the moment in advance changes the response

Deciding ahead of time when, where, and how you will act on an intention produces substantially higher goal attainment than holding the intention alone.

How it appears in CRAVE

This is Recognize and Prepare. Participants identify the moments coming toward them and rehearse the response they want to make.

Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes (Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 2006. Opens in a new tab)

Deliberate practice explains far less in professions than it does in games or music

The best-known meta-analysis on deliberate practice found it accounted for 26% of the variance in performance in games, 21% in music, 18% in sports, 4% in education, and less than 1% in professions. We take two things from that: practice has to be specific, and practice alone is rarely enough.

How it appears in CRAVE

Guided exercises focus practice on a specific skill and a specific moment, and every repetition is paired with feedback.

Deliberate practice and performance in music, games, sports, education, and professions: a meta-analysis (Psychological Science, 2014. Opens in a new tab)

Corrigendum: Deliberate practice and performance in music, games, sports, education, and professions: a meta-analysis (Psychological Science, 2018. Opens in a new tab)

Feedback strengthens refinement

In simulation-based training, feedback is one of the strongest features determining whether a skill improves. The research base here is procedural and clinical rather than interpersonal.

How it appears in CRAVE

Participants return with real experiences, examine what happened, and refine the response before practicing again.

Feedback for simulation-based procedural skills training: a meta-analysis and critical narrative synthesis (Advances in Health Sciences Education, 2014. Opens in a new tab)

Rehearsal prepares performance

Mental rehearsal improves athletic performance. This meta-analysis pooled 86 randomized controlled trials with 3,593 athletes, so the evidence base here is athletic, and it does not tell us how far the effect carries into other settings.

How it appears in CRAVE

This is Visualization. Participants rehearse the moment before the moment arrives.

The Effects of Imagery Practice on Athletes’ Performance: A Multilevel Meta-Analysis with Systematic Review (Behavioral Sciences, 2025. Opens in a new tab)

Resilience responds to training

Resilience training programmes produce measurable improvement in resilience and related outcomes, with a pooled effect size of 0.44 and the largest effects from programmes that combine cognitive behavioural and mindfulness techniques. Eighty percent of the trials reviewed were delivered face to face, which describes the studies rather than comparing formats, and the review names online delivery as an open question.

How it appears in CRAVE

This is Resilience. It is trained across weeks rather than introduced in a session.

Road to resilience: a systematic review and meta-analysis of resilience training programmes and interventions (BMJ Open, 2018. Opens in a new tab)

And what we have seen

Research describes what is possible. Delivery shows what happens. Across keynotes, workshops, and multi-week programs, the clearest evidence of growth appears in real life: in the conversations people begin, the pressure they learn to navigate, and the choices they become prepared to make.

How it appears in CRAVE

This is the experience half of the equation. It is the reason the framework keeps changing, and the reason we keep measuring.

Read what participants report (further down this page)

Science gives us principles. Experience gives those principles context. Intentional practice brings them together.

Tier three · What we are measuring next

Every training gives us more to learn.

CRAVE is built around a cycle of practice, feedback, refinement, and application. We hold the program to that same standard, and we are building the measurement to match.

As CRAVE grows, we will continue gathering evidence from the people and organizations doing the work. We want to understand what connects, what gets used, what changes, and where the training can become stronger.

  • Participant experience

    Gather meaningful feedback about the training, its relevance, and the tools people expect to carry forward.

  • Real world application

    Follow how participants use CRAVE in conversations, decisions, setbacks, leadership challenges, and other moments that matter.

  • Organizational outcomes

    Work with organizations to identify the goals and human skills that matter to them, then determine how progress can be observed responsibly.

  • Continued refinement

    Use research, participant feedback, facilitator experience, and real world application to strengthen the training over time.

Evidence is part of the practice: learn, apply, examine, refine, and continue.

What practice makes possible

What could become possible through practice?

The research describes what is possible. The people we have trained describe what happened. The next moment belongs to you.

Bring us the goal. Together, we will find the moments and build the training around them.

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