Abstract
Learning and development, in its many forms, including one-off training seminars, multisession learning academies, and coaching, continues to be a priority for organizations in all industries. The forms that leadership development takes vary nearly as much as the needs and skill areas of the leaders themselves. Our argument in this article is that although there are myriad ways to do leadership development, some are more effective than others. This article reviews a variety of common approaches to leadership development, progressing from “good” to “better” to “best” practices. Then we present what we term a “breakthrough” approach to leadership development through an in-depth, illustrative case study showcasing how one Fortune 500 company is scaling coaching across the company.
Introduction
According to the Association for Talent Development’s (ATD) 2025 State of the Industry Report, organizations spend roughly $1,254 per employee per year on learning and development (2025). Expenditures include internal learning and development (about 53% of annual budgets), which include training and development staff and live, in-person, instructor-led training as the most popular method of training employees. External services make up around 29% of organizations’ annual budgets and include bringing in external consultants, facilitators, and coaches, as well as licenses and assessments. All told, regardless of the form and shape that learning and development takes, the ongoing expenditures organizations in all industries are willing to incur point to a desire for a well-trained, well-developed workforce.
Business speaker and consultant Zig Ziglar is known for saying, “The only thing worse than training employees and losing them is to not train them and keep them.” If we think more specifically about leadership and leadership communication, Ziglar’s comments are even more profound and applicable. That is, as the large body of leadership communication research attests, leaders play a vital role not only in transactional elements of work (e.g., task completion) but in creating meaning and promoting shared dialogue (see Fairhurst & Sarr, 1996; Fairhurst et al., 2024; Jian, 2022). Thus, it is imperative that organizations invest in meaningful and impactful ways to develop their leaders to be not only better at their jobs, but to communicate effectively, signal their openness to development, and build trust with their people. Yet the forms that leadership development takes vary nearly as much as the needs and skill areas of the leaders themselves. Our argument in this article is that although there are myriad ways to do leadership development, simply put, some are more effective than others.
We begin in our literature review by outlining two common models that guide much of the work in the training and development and leadership development spaces—ADDIE and the Kirkpatrick model for assessment. Following that review, we highlight several common approaches to leadership development, progressing from good to better to best practices. After our literature review, we present what we term a “breakthrough” approach to leadership through an in-depth, illustrative case study of the approach in a Fortune 500 company. We close with a brief nod to the implications of this case study for research and practice.
Literature Review
To help map the terrain and set up our in-depth case study of breakthrough leadership development, in this section, we review the literature on contexts and formats for leadership development. We begin our review by briefly highlighting two training and development frameworks, ADDIE and Kirkpatrick’s model, which cover training design and delivery, and assessment, respectively. We build on these models in the case study section, but for now, these brief reviews serve to provide context. Following those two models, our structure begins with arguably the most popular and least effective and ends with what we demonstrate is the least common but most effective—breakthrough leadership development via coaching.
ADDIE
We begin this review with one of the most popular and effective learning-design methods ever developed—ADDIE. Later, we use ADDIE to organize our case study to show the efficacy of a breakthrough leadership development through coaching model with a brief review to set the stage. The ADDIE framework for instructional design has roots that can be traced back to the 1950s when learning designers such as Robert Gagné and Robert Glaser applied systems thinking to learning design (see Dick et al., 2004). ADDIE emphasizes five comprehensive steps for planning, designing, executing, and assessing training, as follows:
One would be hard-pressed to find a more widely applicable, and indeed widely applied, framework for instructional design than ADDIE. Its recent applications include designing a module for more effectively teaching polymer chemistry (Lee & Daud, 2024), enhancing gamification in flipped classroom education for vocabulary students (Permata et al., 2025), and creating a gamified self-management application for patients with inflammatory bowel diseases (Norouzkhani et al., 2025). Although this is a brief scan of its applications, it is representative of the heavy volume of work applying ADDIE to education environments in a variety of areas.
For our purposes, we are most interested in ADDIE’s applicability in the corporate training and leadership development spaces. There, ADDIE is used to ensure training, in all its forms, many of which we review below, meet their desired outcomes in line with company goals and objectives. Leadership development in the form of training tends to favor “the course” or some experience (e.g., a workshop or seminar), with ADDIE providing the comprehensive steps needed to plan and evaluate (Pollock et al., 2015). However, one of our goals in this article is to show how ADDIE can be used and applied to a more robust and ultimately more effective path to breakthrough learning beyond any particular event or episode.
The Kirkpatrick Model
What ADDIE is to instructional design, Kirkpatrick is to evaluation (i.e., the E in ADDIE). One of the most challenging parts of any leadership development undertaking is evaluating whether learners, in fact, learned. While learning is one thing, being able to take that learning back to where it matters—on the job—is another thing entirely. Kirkpatrick’s model is the most widely used framework, incorporating four levels (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016):
Level 1—Reaction: how trainees felt about the experience in terms of engagement, relevance, and other affective elements.
Level 2—Learning: whether trainees acquired the knowledge and skills they need.
Level 3—Behavior: whether trainees can and will apply what they learned on the job.
Level 4—Results: the impact the training had on the desired outcomes (e.g., higher sales, increased customer satisfaction, sharper presentation skills).
There are a variety of methods used to measure training at the four levels, with the most common being post-training surveys. The fact is that most surveys, however, are best suited at Level 1 of assessment: reaction. Indeed, surveys typically capture the affective domain of learning (e.g., “I found this training to be valuable/helpful”) while cognitive and behavioral are more challenging. In our case study, we use Kirkpatrick’s model to showcase a robust and comprehensive way to evaluate at levels two-four via elements such as coaching inquiry, artificial intelligence, and long-term indicators (e.g., retention).
“Good” Leadership Development
Next, we continue our review by highlighting several approaches to leadership development found in organizations of all types. We begin with the most common approach to leadership development: skills-based training. Training typically takes the form of one-and-done seminars or workshops designed to train an audience on a specific or general skill set. We tag training as a “good” approach to leadership development, which is to say, for the most part, something is better than nothing. If the goal is to help teach employees skills, training is, at least, a good start.
Training takes various forms and occurs through a host of different modalities including traditional, in-person seminars and workshops, online, synchronous offerings (e.g., webinars), and online, asynchronous methods (e.g., LinkedIn Learning). Typically, training aims to impact knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) at individual, team, and/or organization levels (Aguinis & Kraiger, 2009). For example, an organization might decide to design a training program or host a seminar on a topic of crucial concern or need to a particular team or business unit (e.g., emotional intelligence, building accountability). Organizations might also build training offerings based on their core values and attendant competency frameworks that outline the KSAs required or desired to best perform (e.g., Korn-Ferry or Lominger competency frameworks).
Broadly speaking, there are two types of training commonly found in organizations: push and pull. Learning and development professional JD Dillon offers arguably the best and most concise breakdown of push versus pull learning: required completion. Push training is training that is required and is added to an employee’s path to complete by a deadline. Pull training is offered as a “come and get it” offering (Dillon, 2022). Push training is more compliance based, whereas pull training typically involves more self-directed learning. This distinction applies whether it is traditional classroom or virtual learning. For example, employees may be required to attend a series of trainings on active listening or watch a number of eLearning modules. By contrast, they can be provided a library of courses and resources that they pick and choose from on their own, based either on interest or professional aspirations.
A familiar framework that is often applied in a training context is the 70-20-10 model for learning, which is concerned with how much learning takes place in various contexts of work. According to this breakdown, 70% of what we learn comes from on-the-job, direct experience. Twenty percent comes from informal learning, for example, collaboration and relationships with others. Finally, 10% comes through formal learning programs (what we are referring to as “training”). The upshot, of course, is that only a small portion of what we learn and therefore will actually apply (i.e., Level 3 in Kirkpatrick’s model) comes from training. Although that “insight” might sound obvious, it is common for organizations of all types and sizes to ask training to do too much. That is, they design programs for people and expect that to be their primary leadership development catalyst. Oftentimes, the primary focus in training is content—a keynote speaker on a topic, a course through LinkedIn Learning, a facilitator who leads a workshop on a topic, and so on. Content is not necessarily bad, but we argue it is limited in its impact on actual learning, development, transformation, and ultimately, business results. This fact underscores why we label training as a “good” approach to leadership development.
As we shift from “good” to “better,” we identify and agree with Dillon (2022) who notes, “[Learning and development] can put people in classrooms and push content to their screens, but we can’t force them to learn” (p. 72).
“Better” Leadership Development
Although training might be the most ubiquitous, fortunately, it is not the only approach to leadership development found in the organizational and business landscape. There are approaches and methods that we label “better” because of a variety of features. Training typically follows a one-and-done, topic-based format. By contrast, what helps people learn and be ready to apply skills falls under the broad category of “reinforcement” methods (Dillon, 2022). Whereas training is highly content-centric, reinforcement leverages a more spread-out approach, for instance, a series of workshops over time taken by the same group of individuals in an organization. These participants could be from the same function or business unit, or they could be multidisciplinary and cross-functional in composition. The important thing here is that this “better” approach adds the all-important element of spacing between sessions.
Emerging neuroscience research points to why spacing is critical to learning and application of leadership development content. Put simply, people learn better when content is presented and repeated over time rather than in a single shot or, as commonly practiced, in a one-off event (Boller & Fletcher, 2020). Furthermore, spacing shows that people need time to receive the material (e.g., in a workshop), take it back with them where it matters (i.e., on the job), practice what they have learned, and then reflect on that practice. In other words, in the language of the 70-20-10 model, in an approach that incorporates spacing, the 10% of formal learning has a better chance at impacting the 70% of where learning takes place—on the job. Moreover, people learn better when things are spread out over time than when crammed into shorter stints (Sisti et al., 2007). Crucially, when we learn something new over time, our brains are subject to change (i.e., “neuroplasticity”; Collins, 2019), giving the material a much better chance at sticking and positively impacting practice.
Our experience with efforts at “better” leadership development formats such as what we describe here are that they go beyond simply providing content via a workshop or seminar, whether delivered in person or virtually. Instead, they stack content on top of content, with some space in between. For instance, an organization might decide to have all senior leaders from several sites across a region go through an “academy” over 2 months that includes four 2-hr sessions. These leaders could be introduced, for example, to topics such as building trust in Session 1, collaborating as a team in Session 2, managing difficult conversations in Session 3, and change leadership in Session 4. Leaders could be given prompts and calls to action at the end of each workshop with the intent that they will report back on their progress, wins, and challenges in the next session. This is a common practice, and one that we label as “better” because it gives them time to practice what they learn, as well as a common set of skills they learn together. Indeed, collaboration is another key to learning effectiveness, shown to us by neuroscience (Rock & Ringleb, 2013). Growing and developing is one thing, but doing so with others amplifies the effect. Where this stops short of a “best” practice to learning is the lack of direct accountability between sessions and guided practice. Adding those elements takes learning up a notch and gets us closer to breakthrough learning.
“Best” Leadership Development
Content can be helpful for learning; at the very least, it is a start. When you spread content out over time and give people space to practice, you increase your chance of success (i.e., retention, skills improvement, business results). However, the “best” way to achieve leadership development success is to add in direct accountability and guided feedback (Rock & Ringleb, 2013). First, accountability facilitates learning in leadership development in the same way that having a workout partner helps one stay accountable to fitness goals. Building off the example in the previous section, imagine if those senior leaders, between sessions, had an accountability partner they connected with outside the session to share wins and challenges based on their in-session learnings and on-the-job practice. In this approach, you have the collaboration afforded by the intact-cohort method (i.e., the same people going through the same trainings) combined with someone to keep you accountable to truly doing something with the content and skills learned in the workshops. In short, collaboration layered with accountability can put leaders on a path to successful development; hence, it is a “best” practice.
Another form and extension of accountability is feedback via performance coaching. Not only do leaders learn content and skills through workshops, but they are coached on their application of what they learn—in other words, are they growing, improving, and applying the content on the job where it matters (i.e., Kirkpatrick’s Level 3–Behavior). Unfortunately, performance coaching is not as common a practice for leaders. Whereas other leadership development approaches (e.g., training) offer a quicker method of learning, performance coaching takes more time, not only in the coaching itself, but in the reflective work it requires of the leader to be successful.
Moreover, leaders, in general, are not strong at accountability (Overfield & Kaiser, 2012) and are especially weak when following up and sustaining leadership development training. We label performance coaching as a “best” because it refocuses people on the learning and reengages them to continue their practice. People tend to leave leadership development training excited to change their behavior. Learning via performance coaching is simply time plus practice.
Unfortunately, building new behavioral habits is not natural to most human beings. By definition, we get engrained in our common ways of doing things and habit change is hard. James Clear’s (2018) popular book Atomic Habits offers a helpful perspective that sheds light on one reason habit change is hard. He notes that most people focus on goals, for example, to be a better listener, to be more assertive, or to lose weight. What really counts though are the systems they create to help them achieve their goals. Rather than focusing on one’s goals, the key is to consider—what are you practicing to be a better listener (e.g., turning off notifications on your phone), be more assertive (e.g., commit to speaking up at every meeting), or to lose weight (e.g., committing to taking a walk around the campus after each lunch)? In short, performance coaching offers a key system to help a leader develop (e.g., coaches asking questions, leaders doing reflection between meetings), hence making it a best practice.
There are several roles that commonly provide performance coaching. The two most common are (a) the learner’s direct manager and (b) a professional performance coach. A direct manager can certainly hold their employees accountable for applying new learning but, again, leaders in general are not strong at accountability. Direct managers with coaching skills—listening, asking questions, accountability—can equip them to provide constructive feedback, address performance gaps, and create personalized development plans, leading to increased productivity and better results. A professional leadership coach, however, is highly trained to help leaders enhance their skills, improve performance, and achieve their goals. For example, professional leadership coaches are trained in the art of listening, emotional intelligence, and asking effective questions.
This addition of performance coaching takes learning up yet another notch and even closer to breakthrough learning. However, coaching for performance, on its own, is not going to drive the kind of transformational change that leads to a more independent, capable, and confident team (Bungay Stainer, 2024).
“Breakthrough” Leadership Development
If organizations provide follow-up coaching to drive performance, either with formal leadership coaches or teaching coaching skills to managers, it will typically be focused on “outer work”—driving performance through goal setting and action planning. As Hudson (1999) says, “Many coaches are trained in performance coaching and nothing else, which greatly limits the depth and staying power of their work” (p. 20). Outer work is the doing—setting goals, taking action, practicing a new skill. Again, performance coaching supports a learner to apply the content they are learning and does drive performance and results. We are not human doings, however. We are human beings. It is the being (the context) that is most powerful for long-lasting behavior change, not the doing (content).
Thus, one of the most powerful coaching methodologies for affecting change for individuals, teams, and organizations in ontological coaching. According to the Ontological Coaching Institute (n.d.), “[Ontological coaching] is highly effective because it is based on a new deeply grounded and practical understanding of language, moods and conversations for behavioral and cultural transformation” (para. 1). Performance coaching focuses on doing—what the learner will do differently. Ontological coaching focuses on being, in other words, our “way of being.” The Ontological Coaching Institute (n.d.) emphasizes the importance of being, noting: Our perceptions and attitudes, many of which may be deep seated and out of awareness exists in our Way of Being. Change in these perceptions and attitudes can result in the removal of significant barriers to learning, and the spontaneous development of more effective patterns of communication and behaviour. (para. 8)
It is this inner work that is the true accelerator that creates the staying power, leading to lasting change for the learner.
To illustrate the difference between performance and ontological coaching, we can take a common, concrete skill of listening. A professional performance coach will likely be certified by the International Coaching Federation (ICF). The ICF coach would typically emphasize, “active listening,” which can be demonstrated by using these skills: pay attention, suspend judgement, reflect, clarify, summarize and provide feedback (Team Simply.Coach, 2025). An ontological coach, by contrast, will listen at an even deeper level, self-aware of their and their coachee’s lens of their pre-existing expectations, beliefs, and past experiences beyond what is being said in the present moment. In doing so, an ontological coach will uncover how existing beliefs shape behavior. Zaffron and Logan (2009), in their book The Three Laws of Performance, point to two elements: how a situation occurs to someone and their performance. How a situation occurs is based on preexisting beliefs; behavior is thus matched with our beliefs. For example, if a manager believes young people are mostly lazy and unmotivated, her leadership will be shaped by that belief, for example, by micromanaging the lazy, unmotivated employee. Zaffron and Logan (2009) assert, “Almost without exception, people don’t notice that all they are aware of is how situations occur to them. They talk, and act, as if they see things as they really are” (p. 29).
In summary, we reviewed two training and development frameworks—ADDIE and Kirkpatrick. We also outlined different approaches to leadership development with examples we label that range from “Good” to “Breakthrough.” Next, we turn to a further exploration of breakthrough performance via an in-depth case study of how a major company is building a companywide coaching culture leading to breakthrough results.
Case Study
In this section, we highlight a case study of using ontological coaching to achieve breakthrough results at a large Fortune 500 company. The case study is drawn from the firsthand experience of one of the authors working in this Fortune 500 company as a member of the learning operations team within the larger supply chain team. The case study follows the ADDIE framework and highlights where Kirkpatrick’s method was used to evaluate effectiveness.
Throughout their 25-year career at various companies, and most recently as a learning and development manager at this major company, the author has utilized the ADDIE framework to analyze, design, develop, implement, and evaluate training programs across a wide range of industries including nuclear research, academia, corrections, retail, healthcare, personal and professional development, and supply chain. The author received their Master of Education (EdM) and Master of Business Administration (MBA) in 2001. In 2006, the author began their training as an ontological coach and received their ICF certification in 2017. While designing and experiencing “Good,” “Better,” and “Best” programs in their corporate career, from 2006 through 2018, in parallel, they practiced ontological coaching on a volunteer basis in several noncorporate industries, mainly in correctional facilities. The author was seeing breakthrough results with personal, volunteer coaching and constantly looking for opportunities to apply the ontological methodology professionally. In 2021, the author found their opportunity with this major company that is the focus of our case study. Importantly, the ontological work the author was introduced to in 2006 fundamentally shifted their “Way of Being” (Ontological Coaching Institute, n.d.). Being these leadership concepts versus just doing them leads to breakthrough results. We share examples of those results as we walk through the case study.
Analysis (The “A” in ADDIE): Assess the audience and performance issues to identify areas for improvement
In 2021, the author joined the company’s supply chain team where leadership development followed the “Good” approach with a 5-day virtual orientation for leaders new to the company and a course catalog allowing leaders to “pull” learning. The virtual class required participants to be off the warehouse floor for an entire week, which did not fully support the company’s operations. Given the 5-day structure, the learning operations team could only offer the class once per month, and for the supply chain teams at this time, leaders were often required to wait 18 months for a seat to open in this program. An asynchronous course catalog was offered, but was being underutilized given the lack of structure it provided. Neither of these offerings provided spacing or follow-up to reinforce the learning, let alone an accountability structure to ensure learning was applied on the job. The company was committed to providing a scalable solution for all 1,200+ leaders to build leadership skills. That would require several structural elements, each of which we illustrate more in depth in the next section. They include:
A leadership-development
A performance-coaching
A transformation of
Design (The first “D” in ADDIE): Create a design plan based on the analysis
Again, based on our analysis, the above three structural elements (curriculum, team, culture) were essential if the company was going to achieve the breakthrough results that it was committed to. The remaining ADDIE sections below include these three elements to illustrate how they informed the team’s overall approach.
Curriculum
The learning operations team identified a curriculum from a third-party vendor, which offered 12 short, 1-hr courses (the 10% of 70-20-10) with sound instructional design utilizing inquiry (e.g., questions for self-reflection), learner interaction, and personal action plans to apply training on-the-job (the 70% of 70-20-10). The third-party’s curriculum focused on building 10 core leadership skills (e.g., accountability, change management, coaching and mentoring, empowerment, and teamwork) and could be offered in-person or virtually, allowing the company to scale breakthrough results across 38 facilities nationwide. Finally, the curriculum would also allow the learning operations team to space the skills and program out and apply a mentorship and coaching framework (the 20% of 70-20-10). Taken together, more than just training leaders on skills (“good” leadership development), the curriculum was designed to scale and therefore contribute to a culture of more effective communication via reflection and self-awareness. Crucially, the 10 leadership skills were introduced and reinforced through on-the-job reflection, application, support, and reinforcement, ensuring a more authentic leadership experience driven by self-awareness (see Avolio & Gardner, 2005). For instance, a leader could be introduced to communication skills for effective teamwork or change management, and then practice the deep reflective work afforded by ontological coaching.
Team
The company’s 38 nationwide facilities are divided into seven internal divisions. The learning operations team was designed with one learning operations manager (LOM) to support each division. The larger operations team not only supported the learning operations team’s design, they approved LOMs for 20 facilities to more robustly support the 38 facilities total. This, in and of itself, was the first breakthrough. The learning operations team began identifying strong LOMs who were committed to learning and development who sought deep, sustainable change. As they were onboarded, LOMs would be trained on a variation of neuroscience and leadership expert David Rock’s coaching models (see Rock, 2007), building their facilitation and coaching skills.
Culture
The learning operations team identified another third-party vendor who specialized in creating coaching cultures. Their work was aligned to the ontological framework and had a proven track record of creating breakthrough results with organizations throughout the world in various industries.
Development (The second “D” in ADDIE): Build content and draft the learning experience
Curriculum
The benefit of curating a curriculum from a vendor partner is time and attention can be spent on implementation rather than on the, often, iterative design process when building instruction in-house. The aforementioned curriculum third party had a strong, already proven “draft” for the learning operations team to test with their audience, which they called a “pilot.” Fortunately, this curriculum had been piloted and proven, with a small operations team in a single facility before the author joined the company.
Team
As each LOM joined the learning operations team, they were equipped with the third party’s curriculum along with internally certifying them as performance coaches. This is where the learning operations team also added mentorship to the curriculum. A leader’s direct manager (mentor) was asked to support their training participants while participants created and executed personal action plans. Mentors also joined their direct report’s coaching sessions. A mentor’s participation in coaching not only supported the participant but was a great environment to observe and build their coaching skills, with their LOM.
Culture
The coaching-culture work was piloted in several forms. Following the first pilot, in supply chain, the company saw a 10% year-over-year improvement in engagement as defined by its employee feedback survey. This was the team’s second breakthrough result. This result allowed the team to continue to refine their cultural transformation and strengthen their credibility with senior leadership.
Implementation (The “I” in ADDIE): Distribute the learning experience to the audience
Curriculum
As the learning operations team added members to their LOM team, they identified a need to standardize their approach to ensure all 1,200+ supply chain leaders were provided with an engaging experience. The learning operations team implemented “The Hybrid Experience,” 1 their internal program, based on the third party’s curriculum by incorporating it into virtual and in-person training methods, expanding their mentorship coaching framework and utilizing their artificial intelligence-powered learning platform to strengthen measurement and accountability. The variety of methods used to implement the standard coaching program together allowed the learning operations team and the LOMs to help create shared meaning around the why of the program and how it would best serve their needs, a crucial function of leadership communication (Fairhurst et al., 2024). That is, more than just rolling the program out, The Hybrid Experience created multiple touchpoints of engagement and opportunities to adjust to the new program, integrate it into their work, and practice core leadership communication skills.
Team
New LOMs continued to be internally certified in facilitating and coaching skills. The learning operations team provided the coaching team with ongoing support through supervised-coaching practice and mock-coaching experiences. They also expanded the team with three senior LOMs—another breakthrough result.
Culture
In parallel to implementing the hybrid experience to our 1,200+ leaders, the learning operations team proposed a coaching, performance, and culture program for eight supply chain facilities. The company’s senior leadership instead made the commitment and expanded the program to all facilities, which was another breakthrough result. This year-long, virtual program for middle to executive level leaders was implemented to enhance a culture that welcomes coaching, accountability, and high performance. Additionally, supply chain operations leadership and their human resources leadership counterparts, alongside the LOMs, participated in a virtual program where they took full responsibility and ownership for their results, declared what they will be authentically accountable for and welcomed and owned what the company expects of them. The third-party coaches provided consistent (sometimes as often as weekly) personalized, follow-up coaching.
Evaluation (The “E” in ADDIE): Test if the instructional materials meet the audience's needs
Curriculum
In the ADDIE model, it appears that evaluation is at process end. However, the learning operations team evaluated, using the Kirkpatrick Model, every step of the way. Level 1 reaction surveys widely praised the program for its engaging and supportive facilitators, a safe and enjoyable learning environment, and its strong emphasis on personal and professional growth through interactive, practical activities. Level 2, the learning platform, measured a 14% knowledge growth in core leadership skills. Sixty-five percent of participants were designated knowledge “experts” in the platform. Coaches were instrumental in measuring Level 3 behavior change, including following up on personal action plans ensuring learning is applied to the job. These Level 2 and 3 results confirmed the benefit of the robust approach to building a coaching program. At scale, a 14% knowledge growth in leadership skills for a Fortune 500 company is a significant result. Additionally, 65% of leaders developing proficiency in their knowledge combined with the coaches following up on personal action and application provided an encouraging step in the direction we were headed in promoting greater self-reflection and awareness toward building a culture of more effective communication. Finally, an independent consultant conducted Level 4 evaluation measurements using the performance and well-being of the leaders as reported by both the participants and their mentors. Participants showed measurable growth in performance and well-being. The consultant stated: “I’ve measured over twenty programs in seven years, as well as researched additional studies, and these are the highest scores I’ve ever seen on both scales—performance and well-being. Extraordinary!” (J. Jarosz, personal communication, April 9, 2025)
Team
The consultant also measured coaching effectiveness. Participants rated LOMs highly: coaching skills, coaching effectiveness, with top strengths in creating psychological safety and deep listening. At Level 1, participants consistently rated LOMs highly, especially in creating a supportive environment and listening with full attention. At Level 2, the team assessed growth and development ratings, plus items on how the coaching relationship helped set goals, overcome barriers, and leverage strengths. All showed clear evidence of skill and knowledge acquisition. For Level 3, mentors observed greater improvement than participants’ self-reported improvement, signaling visible behavior change from an external perspective. At Level 4, participants rated improvements in their role, leadership capabilities, and strategic execution. This directly reflects business-relevant outcomes, which reflect true, tangible breakthroughs.
Culture
At Level 1, the training reaction surveys showed a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 96%, showing that people overwhelmingly and enthusiastically supported the efforts. Reaction surveys also often capture Level 2 impacts. For example, a participant from a coaching workshop reported, “It was probably the most impactful training class for two days I’ve ever sat through. It changed my mind completely around coaching; it told me I was doing it wrong for quite some time.” Level 3 measurement is inherent in follow-up coaching, which ensures behavior change. And again, the company saw a 10% year-over-year improvement in engagement as defined by its employee feedback survey, demonstrating Level 4 tangible business results.
Conclusion
As we initially stated, the forms of leadership development vary widely. To map out the terrain of options, we categorized various common approaches as “good,” “better,” and “best.” We believe there is another way that leads to what most would say they want in the first place—real, sustained leadership development change. It leads to breakthrough results. We used a firsthand account of breakthrough change achieved over about four years by a Fortune 500 retailer based in the United States. Using the ADDIE and Kirkpatrick models, the changes they achieved were systematic and measurable.
Our hope is that this in-depth case study provides interesting and useful implications for scholars and practitioners alike to learn from and frame their work. In the introduction, we pointed to the importance of a well-trained workforce and its impact on leaders and leadership communication more specifically. Centering coaching and developing a coaching culture at scale provides an interesting look at best (or “breakthrough”) practices for leadership communication and how leaders can be intentional in developing their skills in meaningful ways. For instance, authentic leadership (see Avolio & Gardner, 2005; George, 2004) has profound implications for leadership communication and leadership development because it links directly to self-awareness and reflectiveness (Fyke & Schmisseur, 2025). In our case study, we show how breakthrough results are possible through, for example, an ontological coaching framework that takes into consideration leaders’ and followers’ mindsets, predispositions, and internal sensemaking, thus promoting a relationship of transparency and trust between coaches and coachees and, therefore, leaders and followers. Furthermore, from a leadership development perspective, authenticity plays out in how leaders can learn to see themselves as a “work in progress” (Ibarra, 2017; Fyke, 2025) and lead by example to signal one’s openness to development and developing others.
Additionally, we see potential for further studies that explore coaching at scale. As we have detailed, training and coaching have been researched for decades, the latter being a more recent practice examined. What is lesser known, however, is how organizations can scale their coaching efforts—that is, not just incorporating coaching best practices, but coaching leaders to be coaches. As most practitioners know, designing and executing a new initiative (e.g., coaching best practices) is one thing. Scaling that initiative across a large company ecosystem is another thing entirely. Thus, we hope this case study offers a snapshot of how one large company has done it well and will therefore inspire further development in centering coaching into their leadership development spaces.
As our case study illustrates, creating a company-wide coaching culture provides an accountability structure for participants to apply learning on the job, drive behavior change, and achieve business results. The Fortune 500 company highlighted in this study took it even further, providing ontological coaching to produce cultural transformation, establishing a foundation for their curriculum and performance-coaching team to stand on. The results did come with a cost, which included a significant investment of time and money to build a team to implement and sustain this strategy.
So, why take this approach? If an organization is going to invest in the development of their employees, why not use an approach that not only achieves results but breakthrough results? To quote the independent consultant the company partnered with in their program: Coaching should always be transformational. If it isn’t, it risks becoming just transactional problem-solving, which may create short-term value but not real change. Transformational coaching shifts a person’s mindset, identity, and self-awareness—not just their skills. It’s when someone begins to think, feel, and act differently in a way that sustains beyond the engagement. Transformation shows up in how people relate to themselves, to others, and to their work. (J. Jarosz, personal communication, August 19, 2025)
A transformed person makes a significant difference in the world. Who knows the scale of the difference a transformed organization can make.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Morgan Bagus for her reviews of article drafts and insights along the way.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.