Leadership Development · Week 2
Use these scenarios for team coaching sessions, 1:1 debriefs, or certification preparation
Scenario 1
Situation
You have just promoted Maria, your strongest individual contributor, into a team lead role. Three weeks in, she is still doing most of the technical work herself, staying late, and her team is sitting idle waiting for direction. She tells you, "It is just faster if I do it myself."
Your Task
Coach Maria through the shift from doing the work to managing the work.
Step-by-Step Guidance
Acknowledge the instinct: "When you were an IC, doing it yourself was exactly the right move. The job has changed — now your output is the team's output."
Reframe the four functions of management — Planning, Organizing, Leading, Controlling — and ask which one she is spending the least time on.
Identify one task this week she can fully delegate, including the decision rights, not just the steps.
Set up a simple check-in cadence so she can let go without losing visibility.
Define what "good" looks like for the delegated task so the team member is set up to succeed.
Agree on a 30-day goal: shift from 70% doing / 30% managing to the inverse.
Facilitator Debrief
The most common failure point for new managers is failing to let go of the work that earned them the promotion. Management is a different job, not a senior version of the old one. The manager's job is to multiply output through others, not to be the highest-output person on the team.
Key Principle
Your job is no longer to have the best answer — it is to build a team that produces great answers without you.
Scenario 2
Situation
Your team is drowning. Everyone is busy, deadlines are slipping, and two people have privately told you they are burning out. When you look closely, there is no clear prioritization — everything is treated as urgent and important.
Your Task
Apply the core management functions to bring order and reduce overload.
Step-by-Step Guidance
Resist the urge to just "work harder." Diagnose first: is this a planning problem, an organizing problem, or a controlling problem?
Run a prioritization session — map every active workstream against impact and urgency.
Cut or defer the bottom tier publicly so the team sees you protecting their capacity.
Clarify ownership for what remains — one accountable owner per workstream, no ambiguity.
Establish a weekly review (the "controlling" function) to catch slippage early instead of at the deadline.
Check back with the two burnout-risk employees individually within the week.
Facilitator Debrief
Overwhelm is usually a symptom of weak planning and organizing, not a lack of effort. When everything is a priority, nothing is. A manager's most valuable act is often deciding what the team will NOT do.
Key Principle
Clarity is kindness: a clearly prioritized team is a calmer, more productive team.