When you feel uncomfortable at the board meeting.
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 feel uncertain at a board table, that feeling is part of your governance role — notice it before the vote, not after.
The situation
You are Jarli, a relatively new board member at Mudgeeraba Community Trust, a small community organisation in a rural town. You've been on the board for eight months. The other four board members have known each other — and the manager, Leonie — for years. You were invited on because the board wanted fresh eyes and community connection, but you're still finding your feet.
Tonight's board meeting is running late. The main item is a proposal from Leonie to enter a three-year funding partnership with a national provider. The arrangement involves co-delivering some programmes and sharing client data under a new data-sharing agreement. Leonie is clearly across the detail — she's confident, well-prepared, and the other board members are nodding along. The chair says the funding window closes Friday.
Something is nagging at you. You've read the proposal twice but you can't pin down exactly what's bothering you — the data-sharing section feels thin, and the three-year commitment seems large for an organisation your size, but you don't know enough to be certain. Everyone else seems comfortable. The meeting has already run forty minutes over time.
You feel the pull to go along with the vote. But the unease won't quite leave you.
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.
- Imposter anxiety — the worry that your uncertainty means you're not across it, not that the proposal is unclear
- Social belonging — not wanting to disrupt the warmth and trust in a close-knit group
- Urgency as pressure — the sense that slowing things down makes you the problem
- The pull to stay quiet and catch up later — telling yourself it'll probably be fine
Policies this draws on
- Charities Act 2005 (NZ)
- Companies Act 1993 (NZ) — director duties by analogy
- Institute of Directors NZ: Four Pillars of Governance Best Practice
- Community Governance NZ: Board roles and responsibilities guidance
- 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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