New Manager Training

The course turned a difficult interpersonal skill into a structured sequence of explanation, practice, feedback, and application.

I designed the learning strategy, course structure, scenarios, activities, and final Storyline experience. The course was part of a broader management-development series for new managers across the client’s U.S. locations.

Note: Due to client confidentiality, the visuals shown here are representative examples. I recreated the course content, structure, and interaction patterns in Articulate Rise; the final course was developed in Articulate Storyline.

Problem

The client, a global logistics and supply chain company, was preparing high-performing logistics leads to move into management roles for the first time. Operationally, they were experts, but most had never managed people before.

Giving constructive feedback requires managers to interpret a situation, decide what needed to be said, choose the right tone and timing, and navigate a conversation that can easily become uncomfortable or unclear.

The challenge was to turn an ambiguous interpersonal skill into something managers could actually practice.

Research → Design

The content needed to align with the decision points managers would face in a real conversation, not the order in which information was easiest to teach.

I organized the course around the progression from understanding feedback to using it:

• Why feedback matters
• The difference between coaching, feedback, and evaluation
• How structured feedback models work
• How tone, timing, and delivery affect the conversation
• How to respond in realistic situations
• How to prepare for a real feedback conversation

The goal was to give learners enough structure to reduce uncertainty without pretending difficult conversations could be reduced to a script.

Establishing design principles

I relied on three principles to guide course development and clarify content progression. These principles helped me decide where explanation was necessary and where practice would be more effective.

Teach the structure, then remove the support

Managers should first see how effective feedback is constructed, then practice making increasingly independent decisions.

Application should drive the experience

Learners should repeatedly evaluate, choose, revise, and apply, not simply recall definitions.

Make invisible judgment visible

Activities should expose the small decisions behind effective feedback: what to say, when to say it, how specific to be, and how to leave room for dialogue.

Design response: Provide a repeatable, transferable structure

Structured feedback models gave new managers a starting point when the conversation felt unpredictable.

I introduced frameworks such as SBI and COIN as practical tools rather than abstract communication models. Breaking feedback into observable components gave managers a way to organize what they wanted to say before entering a difficult conversation.

I used progressive disclosure to introduce each part of the model individually, keeping the initial cognitive load low before asking learners to apply the full structure.

Design response: Turn distinctions into decisions

Managers needed to recognize the difference between related behaviors before they could choose the right response.

Coaching, feedback, and evaluation can sound similar in a definition. In practice, they serve different purposes.

Instead of asking learners to memorize those distinctions, I designed activities that required them to interpret an example, choose a category, and receive immediate explanatory feedback.

The interaction made the distinction observable. Learners were not simply told what coaching looked like. They had to recognize it themselves.

Design response: Make practice transferable and progressively more realistic

Each lesson moved learners one step closer to producing effective feedback on their own.

I sequenced the learning to progress from recognition to application:

• Compare effective and ineffective examples
• Identify why a feedback statement works or fails
• Distinguish among coaching, feedback, and evaluation
• Rewrite vague feedback to make it specific
• Apply structured models to realistic situations
• Make decisions within branching scenarios
• Reflect on how the approach would transfer to their own work

Knowledge checks helped learners test individual concepts before they were asked to combine those concepts in more complex situations.

In Storyline, I used branching logic and immediate feedback to let learners test a decision, see its consequences, and try again without the stakes of an actual employee conversation.

Learning → Performance

I applied learning theory and cognitive science to identify strategies that would extend the learning beyond the course experience itself.

Connect new learning to past experience

Reflection connected the feedback models to conversations learners had already avoided, delayed, or found difficult.

Rather than asking learners simply to summarize what they had learned, I asked them to consider situations from their own experience and how a structured model could change their approach.

That made reflection part of transfer, not a pause between content sections.

Turn the final activity into a performance tool

The course ended with a workflow managers could reuse in their next real feedback conversation.

This shifted the final interaction away from “Can you remember the course?” and toward a more useful question: Are you ready to use what you’ve learned?

Results

96% course completion

The course was deployed to more than 400 first-time managers across regional distribution hubs.

Within the first 60 days, 96% of learners completed the course.

91% reported greater confidence

After completing the course, 91% of learners reported increased confidence in giving constructive feedback.

87% planned to use the approach

87% said they planned to apply one of the structured feedback models in an upcoming check-in or evaluation.

More consistent coaching conversations

The client reported more consistent coaching conversations across the organization and fewer instances of feedback being misinterpreted.

Note: Confidence and intent measures are learner-reported outcomes rather than direct metrics of manager performance, but they provided an early signal that learners saw the training as relevant and usable.

Reflection

The central challenge of this project was not explaining what constructive feedback is. It was designing enough practice that a new manager could recognize, structure, and prepare for a difficult conversation before having to do it for real.

The project reinforced a principle I continue to use: the closer learning gets to the decisions people actually make at work, the more useful it becomes. Models such as SBI and COIN helped create structure, but the value came from giving learners repeated opportunities to apply that structure in context.

If I continued this work, I would connect the training to longer-term behavioral data: whether managers used the frameworks after training, how employees experienced those conversations, and whether coaching quality changed over time.