Recording will be shared here after the webinar.
Before the session: get set up to follow along
Pick one real leader cohort. New people managers, experienced managers, or senior leaders. Choose the group whose feedback training you'd rebuild first.
Name the feedback moment that stalls. A missed deadline, a performance gap, a behavior that affects the team, a broken commitment. Write down the one your leaders avoid most.
Check behavioral assessment coverage. Role Play is only as specific as the behavioral data behind it. Confirm your leaders and their direct reports have completed assessments (DISC, Enneagram, and 16 Types are a strong starting set).
Part 1: Format & Length
Live in-person
All Live-Virtual
Hybrid: Some people in person and some people live-virtual
In person or live-virtual, this can be ROUGHLY 90-120 minutes, but you can adjust the timing however you need to
The entire training has 3 Parts
Opening & Context Creation - 10 Minutes
Core Training & Exercise (Role Play) - 70 Minutes
Coaching Topic Setup & Wrap Up - 15 Minutes
Part 2: Create Audience Specific Context for The Session
Design your opening 10 minutes
Frame the importance of giving feedback around a specific audience, their current challenges, and the outcomes that matter to them.
Examples of audience-specific framing:-
New managers: Building confidence in giving constructive feedback and navigating difficult conversations for the first time.
Employee engagement survey results: Addressing opportunities identified in the survey, such as accountability, communication, or the quality of feedback.
Experienced managers: Moving beyond annual performance reviews to create a culture of continuous feedback.
Senior leaders: Using feedback to strengthen leadership effectiveness, reinforce organizational priorities, and shape team culture.
Define the desired outcome: What should participants understand or be able to do differently after the training?
Make it relevant: Identify realistic feedback scenarios, connect them to organizational priorities, and incorporate any existing feedback frameworks.
Part 3: Build the core of the session around Role Play
Focus: rehearse the real conversation, not a generic one.
Leaders don't freeze because they lack a model. They freeze because they've never said the words to this person. Role Play is a simulated practice exercise for difficult conversations, simulating how the specific person on the other side is likely to respond, based on their behavioral assessment data.
Why Role Play belongs at the center
Practice reflects the actual person. Giving feedback to someone who wants the bottom line takes a different approach than giving it to someone who needs context first.
Leaders walk in having said it once. The first time they hear themselves say the hard sentence shouldn't be in the real meeting.
It's built on the relationship. The rehearsal accounts for how two specific people work together, not just how the leader communicates.
The leader session you'll run (about 70 minutes)
Today we'll walk through this briefly. The timings below are for the session you run with your leaders.
Frame the moment (10 min). Name the feedback conversation leaders avoid. Keep the model short, and use the framework your org already teaches.
Pick a real person (5 min). Each leader chooses one direct report they owe a real feedback conversation. No hypotheticals.
Read the other person first (10 min). Leaders review how that person operates: how they take in information, what they need to hear first, how they tend to respond under pressure.
Role Play, round one (10 min). Leaders run the conversation. The goal is to get the words out, not to get them perfect.
Debrief in pairs (10 min). Where did the other person push back? Where did the message get softened until it disappeared?
Role Play, round two (10 min). Same person, adjusted approach.
Commit to a date (5 min). Each leader puts the real conversation on the calendar before they leave the room.
Set a Coaching Topic (10 min). Each leader sets a feedback topic so the practice keeps going after the session (see Part 2).
Facilitator notes
Keep practice private. Leaders run Role Play on their own device. The debrief shares what they learned about their approach, not details about the direct report.
Watch for soften and retreat. The most common pattern: the leader opens clearly, meets resistance, and walks the message back. Name it when you see it.
Don't grade the rehearsal. The point is reps. A clumsy first round is the round doing its job.
Try This
Write the opening line first. Before round one, have leaders write the exact first sentence they plan to say. After round two, compare it to what they actually said.
Run it with two people. Have a leader practice the same feedback with two different direct reports and notice how the approach has to change.
Part 4: Have every leader set a Coaching Topic on giving feedback
Focus: make feedback part of how leaders are coached every day.
A Coaching Topic sets a growth area for a person, a team, or a function, and Cloverleaf coaches against it continuously in the flow of work. In this design, each leader sets their own feedback topic before they leave the session, so it folds straight into the coaching they already receive.
Coaching Topic replaces Coaching Focus
A Coaching Topic is anything a leader wants ongoing coaching on: a goal, a relationship, a subject, or something they're working through. If your leaders or clients used Coaching Focus before, here's what's different and what isn't.
What's new
No length and no end date. Unlike Coaching Focus, a topic runs until the leader completes it, cancels it, or says at a check-in they're ready to move on.
More than one topic at a time. Coaching pulls from all active topics together, so a single insight can draw on more than one.
Coaching adapts as it's used. It builds a few insights at a time based on how the leader responds. Every new topic starts daily, then paces from there.
One place to manage it all. The Manage topics panel shows each topic's color, the people it names, and its status. Every insight is tagged with the topic that shaped it.
Updates take about a minute. Leaders describe what should change, and the topic updates directly.
Managers and admins can assign topics. Use Assign new topic to put a topic in front of someone else.
What stays the same
Leaders use their own words. They still describe what they want coaching on and answer a few discovery questions.
Coaching stays private. Nobody on the team sees it. People featured in a topic are coached on, and they don't see it either.
Check-ins still show progress. Each topic has a benchmark that leaders see at check-ins.
Role Play is still inside every insight. So are Discover and Request Feedback.
What to do about it
Update your materials. Replace "Coaching Focus" with "Coaching Topic" in facilitator guides, rollout emails, and job aids so leaders see the same name in training and in the product.
Partners: flag it for clients. Clients who rolled out Coaching Focus may still use the old name internally. Walk them through the change before you design the next program.
Why leaders set their own
The topic is in their words. Leaders describe what they want coaching on and answer a few discovery questions, so the topic fits the relationships they actually manage.
It picks up where Role Play left off. Leaders can name the direct report they practiced with, so the coaching that follows is about that real relationship.
It happens in the room. Setting the topic is part of the session close, not a separate signup leaders have to remember later.
What a strong feedback topic sounds like
Tied to a person. "I need to give Jordan clearer feedback when deadlines slip."
Tied to a pattern. "I want to address problems when they happen instead of saving them for the review."
Tied to a stretch. "I want to hold peers accountable to commitments without damaging the relationship."
How to set it up in the training + add your Wrap Up (15 Min)
Share starting examples (2 min). Put the examples above (or your own, in your org's language) on a slide before the session close.
Build ten minutes into the session close. Leaders open Coaching > Manage topics > Add new topic (5 min) and move through three steps: say what they want coaching on, answer a few discovery questions, then review the topic and the people it includes.
Walk leaders through Coaching settings. (2 min) Leaders choose when coaching arrives: weekday mornings, only around their meetings (requires a connected calendar), or specific days and times. "Only around my meetings" keeps feedback coaching right next to their 1:1s.
Confirm before they leave. (1 min) Each leader should see a Coaching ready card showing when and where their first insight arrives. Every new topic starts daily, then paces from there.
Set a review date. (1 min) Put a check-in on your calendar 30 days out to look at Reporting.
Course Wrap Up (4 min) : Share learning take-aways, their commitments, etc
Try This
Connect it to the Role Play person. Ask leaders to name the direct report they practiced within their topic, and to bring one example of how the coaching applied to their next 1:1 with their own manager.
Layer it by level. Share "Giving specific feedback" examples with new managers and "Holding peers and senior stakeholders accountable" examples with directors.
Part 5: Keep the training going after the session wraps
Focus: keep practice close to the real conversations.
The training session ends. The coaching doesn't. Once leaders set their Coaching Topic, leaders get coaching reinforcement where they already work: Slack, Teams, or email.
What reinforcement looks like for a leader
On the schedule they choose. Coaching arrives through Email, Slack, or Teams, on the timing each leader sets in Coaching settings.
Before a 1:1. With a connected calendar and "Only around my meetings," coaching arrives ahead of the conversations on their calendar.
Shaped by how they respond. Marking an insight helpful, answering its question, or skipping it shapes what comes next.
Before the next hard conversation. Role Play is available inside each insight, for any upcoming conversation, not just the one from training.
In one running history. The Coaching page shows every insight a leader has been sent, filterable by date range or topic.
What you do as the trainer, leader or coach
Week 1: follow up on the commitment. Check in on the conversation leaders put on the calendar during the session, and reach out to anyone who didn't set a topic before they left.
Weeks 2 to 4: watch Themes. Themes surface the coaching topics and patterns emerging across your org, pulled from every coaching touchpoint. Look for where leaders keep asking for help.
At check-ins: help leaders keep going. When a topic seems worth reassessing, leaders see a check-in with the topic's benchmark and a choice: Keep going or I'm ready to wrap this up. Tell leaders about this in the session, so the feedback topic doesn't get wrapped up after one conversation.
Then adjust. What you learn from Themes shapes the topic examples you share with the next cohort, instead of a guess.
Try This
Replace the follow-up survey. Instead of a satisfaction survey the week after, share one Themes finding back with the cohort and ask what they'd practice next.
Bring HRBPs in. Share Reporting with your HRBPs so they know which teams to spend their limited time with.
Part 6: Reuse the design across contexts and leadership levels
Focus: same structure, different moment.
The four moves stay the same every time: rehearse with Role Play, have leaders set a Coaching Topic, reinforce in the flow of work, review with Reporting. What changes is the feedback moment and the topic examples you share with leaders.
The design by leadership level
Leadership level | Feedback moment to rehearse in Role Play | Example Coaching Topic |
New people managers | First corrective conversation with a former peer | Giving direct, specific feedback |
Experienced managers | Addressing a pattern that's been tolerated too long | Holding people accountable to commitments |
Senior leaders and directors | Feedback to a manager about how they lead their team | Coaching managers through hard conversations |
Cross-functional leads | Accountability with someone they don't manage | Giving feedback without formal authority |
Other contexts to reuse it
Performance review season. Leaders rehearse the review conversation in Role Play, and the Coaching Topic keeps the development plan alive after the review.
After a reorg. Leaders inherit new direct reports. Role Play the first expectation-setting conversation before trust has been built.
New manager onboarding. Build the design into the first 90 days, so the first hard conversation isn't the first practice.
Partner client programs. Swap in the client's feedback model and language. The structure holds.