CASE STUDY - LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

Coaching skills for

new managers

ROLE

Instructional Designer

AUDIENCE

New & emerging leaders

TOOLS

Articulate Rise360, Vyond

THE PROBLEM

New managers are often promoted because they’re good at the work—then suddenly asked to lead people doing that work.

Most people understand what coaching is. The challenge comes in the moment: when someone brings them a problem, their instinct is to jump in, give advice, and solve it.

Knowing a coaching model wasn’t enough. New leaders needed a chance to practice making good decisions in the kinds of conversations they would actually face.

Launch the module

WHAT I FOUND

Working through the goal, I realized much of the original content wouldn’t actually come up in a real coaching conversation. Mapping learning to actions rather than topics helped me focus on four moments that matter: prepare, coach instead of solve, partner on next steps, and follow through.

THE SOLUTION

I designed a short, branching scenario built around a realistic 1:1 conversation. Learners practice four key decisions—preparing, coaching instead of solving, partnering on next steps, and following through—and see how each choice shapes the conversation.

A mentor provides brief guidance along the way without taking the decision away from the learner.

DESIGN DECISIONSDECISION: Let learners make the wrong choices and experience what happens next.

WHY: Being told “that’s not quite right” doesn’t teach much about coaching. Seeing how a well-intended response changes the conversation gives the learner something to notice, reflect on, and try differently.

TRADEOFF: Branching creates a longer experience and more content to build. I kept the wrong paths short and used the mentor to help learners notice what happened before giving them another chance to respond.

DECISION: Start the experience with four objects on the manager’s desk—a notebook, a laptop, a coffee mug, and a calendar—before the coaching conversation begins.

WHY: Good coaching starts before the conversation. The opening gives learners a chance to gather context and consider what Alex might need rather than jumping straight into what they want to say.

TRADEOFF: It adds time before the main conversation begins, but it establishes something important from the start: the learner’s choices drive what happens next.

My Process

MAPPING - ACTION MAP

Because this was a concept project, I used an expert-authored coaching resource as my primary content source rather than working with a dedicated SME. I started with the performance goal, then mapped the actions a new manager would actually need to take during a coaching conversation.

What it changed: Mapping the content to actions helped me separate what was helpful to know from what the learner actually needed to do. That narrowed the experience to four key moments: prepare, coach instead of solve, partner on next steps, and follow through.

MAPPING - BRANCHING STRUCTURE

I mapped the conversation before building, including learner choices, alternate paths, feedback, rewind points, and follow-through.

This excerpt shows one section of the larger map—how different responses change the conversation, how feedback is built into the wrong paths, and how learners are guided back to try again.

What it changed: Mapping the wrong choices was just as important as mapping the right ones. It helped me design feedback that explained why a response didn’t work and what changed in the conversation— rather than simply telling the learner they chose incorrectly.

STORYBORD

I mapped each screen with both the learner experience and the details needed to build it—voiceover, visuals, interactions, and transitions. The goal was a storyboard clear enough that someone else could pick it up and build from it.

EVALUATION

Because this is a concept project, the module hasn’t been deployed with learners, so outcome data isn’t available yet.

My evaluation plan would look beyond completion to what happens after the training: where learners struggle in the scenario, the choices they make at key decision points, whether managers demonstrate more questioning and less immediate solution-giving in observed 1:1s, manager self-report after 30 days, and most importantly, whether direct reports notice a difference in how their 1:1 conversations feel and function.

WHAT I'D DO DIFFERENTLY

I mapped the branching structure before writing all of the feedback, which meant reworking several paths once I understood what the mentor needed to say. Next time, I’d write the feedback for the wrong choices earlier to help shape each branch.