Handing over the gavel
What a Coaching Scenario is
Not quiz style. This is judgement practice — you're put inside a real situation from human-services work and asked what you would actually do. It draws on the knowledge you use on the job, not the kind you can look up.
Every choice changes what happens next, and every choice gets a coaching beat straight after it: what drew you toward that option, and how it played out. What's held back is the verdict on your path, so you stay with what you'd genuinely do rather than working out what you're supposed to say.
- 4 decisions
- Each one shaped by the one before it. No two paths through are the same.
- Coaching as you go
- A beat after every decision, naming the pull behind your choice and where it led.
- A full debrief
- Your whole path replayed at the end, with the reasoning behind each decision you made.
- Evidence you can keep
- A completed scenario is recorded in your PracticeLab and appears in your downloadable ProofKit.
Scenarios are made to be talked about. Most people finish one still turning it over, which makes them a ready-made prompt for supervision, a team meeting or a conversation with a colleague — everyone walks the same situation, and comparing where you each landed is often where the real learning happens.
This one ends with
When you're next handing something over — a role, a project, a relationship — notice whether your input is serving the person taking over or serving your own need for continuity.
The situation
You've been Chair of a mid-sized community health organisation for four years. The board elected Nicole as Chair-elect eight months ago, and she takes over at the AGM in six weeks. By most measures the transition is going well — Nicole is respected, the CEO relationship is solid, and the board has been briefed on the changeover.
This morning Nicole sends you a document titled 'Board Meeting Refresh — Proposed Changes for Year One.' She wants to drop the standing Chair's report from the agenda, restructure the order of business so strategic items come first rather than last, and replace the verbal conflicts-of-interest declaration round at the start of each meeting with an online register that members update between meetings.
Some of these ideas are genuinely interesting. A couple make you uneasy — particularly the COI change, which you suspect may not be as robust as what you currently have. You also notice a flicker of something harder to name: you built these rhythms, and watching them get redesigned before you've even left feels strange.
You have a scheduled one-on-one with Nicole tomorrow afternoon. The question isn't whether she has the right to change things — she does. The question is what your role is now, and how you use the time you have left.
What you're practising
Before you start, notice
Real-world decisions in scenarios like this are shaped as much by feeling as by reasoning. People often notice one of these pulls — naming what you feel before you decide is half the skill.
- Proprietorial attachment — the pull to protect what you built, framed to yourself as 'quality concern'
- Anticipatory irrelevance — the discomfort of watching your successor prepare to move on without you
- Genuine duty-of-care — the real responsibility to flag risks before you leave, which can get tangled up with the above
- The urge to be liked on the way out — softening a concern so the handover stays warm
Policies this draws on
- Your organisation's constitution or rules
- Your organisation's conflicts of interest policy
- Your organisation's board charter or terms of reference
- Charities Act 2005 (NZ) / relevant state Associations Incorporation Act (AU)
- Your own organisation's policies take precedence — check them where they apply.
Heads up — coaching scenarios work differently. You'll make a sequence of decisions as the situation unfolds, and after each one you'll get a coaching beat: what drew you toward that choice, and how it played out. The one thing held back is the verdict on the path you took — that lands in the debrief at the end, with your whole walk replayed alongside it.
New to Good Practice Hub? Coaching Scenarios come with PracticeLab Pro, or browse the practice library to see what else is there.
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