Money on the table
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 an opportunity arrives that feels like a lifeline, your first job as a board is to slow down just enough to ask whether this is actually your organisation's opportunity to take.
The situation
Waru chairs the board of a small but well-regarded community organisation that has delivered targeted support services to young people with disabilities for over fifteen years. The organisation's mission is tightly defined in its constitution: to support young people aged 10–25 with physical disabilities living in the local region to participate fully in community life. That focus has always been the organisation's point of difference — funders, staff, and the community know exactly what it stands for.
At tonight's board meeting, the CEO presents a funding opportunity that has landed without warning. A government agency is offering a two-year contract worth significantly more than the organisation's entire current annual budget. The catch: the contract is for wraparound support services for any family experiencing housing instability — a much broader, less specialised scope that overlaps only partially with the organisation's current work and client group.
The CEO is visibly excited and clearly under pressure. She points out that core funding hasn't increased in four years while costs have risen sharply. Without new revenue within the next twelve months, the organisation will face cuts to services — or worse. Several board members are already nodding; the funding feels like a lifeline. But Waru is aware that the board hasn't had time to think this through carefully, and that the energy in the room could easily run ahead of sound governance.
As chair, Waru must guide the board's next steps.
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.
- Relief — the funding feels like it solves everything, and the pull to just say yes is strong
- Fear of being the one who kills the opportunity by asking hard questions
- Overwhelm — the board lacks specific expertise and doesn't know where to start, which can make deference feel safer than leadership
- Loyalty to the CEO and the team, which can make scrutiny feel like a lack of trust
- The discomfort of not knowing the answer yet, and the urge to resolve that discomfort quickly
Policies this draws on
- Your organisation's constitution or rules
- Charities Act 2005 (NZ) / relevant state Associations Incorporation Act (AU)
- Your organisation's governance policy
- Charities Commission / ACNC guidelines on charitable purpose
- 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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