Beyond Training: Coaching as the Next Step in the Learning Journey

Traditional learning is excellent at building knowledge. But as colleagues become more experienced, development requires more than transferring information. The challenge shifts from“What do you know?” to “How effectively can you apply, analyze, evaluate, and create from what you know?”

This is where coaching has an increasingly important role to play within Learning & Development. Coaching should not replace training. Instead, it can become part of an intentional learning continuum, providing experienced colleagues with opportunities to reflect, challenge assumptions, experiment with new approaches, and translate knowledge into action within the realities of their work.

Building learning paths, not simply courses

One framework I have used in my L&D and coaching work connects three components: Bloom’s Taxonomy, learner competency, and learning methodology.

The learners competency progresses through: Foundational → Proficient → Advanced

At the same time, the learning methodology progressively shifts: Training → Facilitation → Coaching

This model aligns the foundational level primarily with Remember and Understand, the proficient level with Apply and Analyze, and the advanced level with Evaluate and Create.

There is a strong theoretical foundation for designing learning according to cognitive complexity. Bloom and colleagues originally organized cognitive learning objectives from less to more complex forms of thinking (Bloom et al., 1956).

Anderson and Krathwohl's later revision reframed the cognitive-process categories as Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create, while also connecting cognitive processes with different kinds of knowledge (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001).

For L&D practitioners, that raises an important question:

As the cognitive expectations placed on a learner increase, should the learning methodology evolve as well?

I believe it should.

Moving from “tell” toward “ask”

At the foundational level, learners frequently need direction and structure. Training can establish concepts, introduce processes, develop common language, and build foundational knowledge. As proficiency grows, facilitation allows learners to become more active participants. Scenarios, discussion, practice, problem-solving, and reflection create opportunities to apply and analyze knowledge. At the advanced level, however, providing another answer may not be the most powerful developmental intervention.

The opportunity becomes helping experienced colleagues think more deeply about their own answers.

That is where coaching enters the learning journey.

My learning model describes this as a movement from directive toward reflective learning, or more simply: TELL → ASK

Coaching provides space to connect concepts with workplace experience through questioning, dialogue, reflection, experimentation, and application. The learner increasingly takes ownership of making meaning from the learning and determining how it applies to the challenges in front of them.

Why coaching becomes powerful for advanced learners

Consider an experienced leader navigating stakeholder resistance, ambiguity, competing priorities, or complex team dynamics. Another course or framework may provide additional knowledge. But knowledge alone cannot determine precisely what that leader should do in every situation.

Coaching offers something different.

Through purposeful questions and reflection, colleagues can examine assumptions, evaluate alternatives, connect prior experience with current challenges, and create approaches appropriate to their context.

That makes coaching particularly compatible with the higher cognitive processes of Evaluate and Create in the revised Bloom taxonomy. I would describe this as an L&D design application of Bloom's framework, rather than claim that Bloom's research itself prescribed coaching as the methodology. Anderson and Krathwohl provide the cognitive framework; the integration with coaching is the learning architecture proposed here.

What does the coaching research tell us?

There is meaningful research supporting coaching as an organizational development intervention. Theeboom, Beersma, and van Vianen's (2014) meta-analysis found significant positive coaching effects across performance and skills, well-being, coping, work attitudes, and goal-directed self-regulation.

Jones, Woods, and Guillaume (2016) specifically examined workplace coaching as an employee learning and development intervention. Their meta-analysis of 17 studies found positive effects on organizational outcomes overall, including skill-based and individual-level outcomes (Jones et al., 2016).

The broader training literature is also useful. Sitzmann and Weinhardt's Training Engagement Theory emphasizes that training effectiveness does not sit solely within the learning event. Their framework considers processes across levels and time and highlights goal establishment, prioritization, and persistence in explaining training effectiveness (Sitzmann & Weinhardt, 2018).

Together, this research supports a compelling L&D proposition: development is not simply about delivering more knowledge. We need learning experiences that help colleagues engage with knowledge, develop capability, and translate learning into performance.

Designing the pathway intentionally

Imagine a leadership learning journey. A colleague might first complete self-directed learning to remember and understand a leadership concept. Next, facilitated discussions, simulations, and scenarios allow the colleague to apply and analyze it. Finally, individual or group coaching creates opportunities to evaluate choices and create approaches for complex, real workplace situations.

The result is not three competing methodologies. It is one connected learning journey.

The opportunity for L&D Practicioners and Learners

As organizations focus increasingly on upskilling and capability development, I believe coaching deserves to be viewed as more than an executive-development intervention.

It can be intentionally incorporated into the learning architecture.

Training builds knowledge. Facilitation creates application. Coaching deepens reflection, adaptation, and ownership.

By aligning learner competency, Bloom’s Taxonomy, learning objectives, and learning methodology, we can create paths that progressively increase both cognitive challenge and learner ownership.

For advanced learners, the answer may not be more content. Sometimes the most powerful next step is knowing when to stop telling and start asking.

How is your organization incorporating coaching into learning journeys for experienced colleagues?

References

• Bloom, B. S., Engelhart, M. D., Furst, E. J., Hill, W. H., & Krathwohl, D. R. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals. Handbook I: Cognitive domain. David McKay Company.

• Anderson, L. W., & Krathwohl, D. R. (Eds.). (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives. Longman.

• Jones, R. J., Woods, S. A., & Guillaume, Y. R. F. (2016). The effectiveness of workplace coaching: A meta-analysis of learning and performance outcomes from coaching. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 89(2), 249–277. Sitzmann, T., & Weinhardt, J. M. (2018). Training engagement theory: A multilevel perspective on the effectiveness of work-related training. Journal of Management, 44(2), 732–756.

• Theeboom, T., Beersma, B., & van Vianen, A. E. M. (2014). Does coaching work? A meta-analysis on the effects of coaching on individual level outcomes in an organizational context. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 9(1), 1–18.