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Managers use Exec to practice the conversations no one ever trained them for: giving hard feedback, running performance reviews, and telling someone no. Managers talk to an AI report who gets defensive the way people actually do, and every session ends with a scorecard that grades clarity, listening, and follow-through. This guide covers what to build first, which skills to track, and when to schedule practice so it happens before the conversation it rehearses.

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Start with One Scenario

When you created your workspace, Exec read your company website and drafted roleplay ideas that fit your business. If you said you were training managers and leaders, those ideas already lean toward feedback and coaching conversations. Pick the one closest to a conversation your managers actually dread, answer a couple of quick questions, and Scenario Studio builds it in about two minutes. Run it yourself before showing anyone. Talk out loud as if the report were sitting across from you, end the session with the green End button, and read the scorecard. If the character feels off for your culture, edit the scenario and tell the agent what to change in one sentence. New to running sessions? Start with Complete Your First Roleplay.

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Scenarios Worth Building

Here are the builds leadership teams get the most out of. Copy a prompt, fill in the bracketed fields, and paste it into the Scenario Studio chat. The full collection lives in the Prompt Library.

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Difficult Feedback

When to use: Managers soften feedback until the message disappears.

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Performance Review

When to use: Reviews turn into negotiations or surprise the employee.

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The Compensation No

When to use: Managers dodge money conversations or make promises they cannot keep.
Schedule practice before the conversation, not after. The highest-value week to run the difficult feedback scenario is the one before review cycles open. HR teams tell us reviews go noticeably better when every manager has hit Gold on the practice version first.

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Skills to Track

Every scenario grades managers against evaluation criteria you control. For leadership training, the criteria that decide whether feedback lands are:
  • Message clarity. The report can repeat back the feedback in one sentence.
  • Leading with the point. The hard part arrives in the first two minutes, not the last two.
  • Listening under pressure. Acknowledging pushback without retracting the message.
  • Commitment capture. Every conversation ends with a specific agreed action and a date.
Managers see how they scored on each criterion after every session, with lines they actually said and stronger phrasing they could have used. See Interpret Your Results for how to read a scorecard, and Skills for tracking these across your leadership group.

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The Cadence

Manager training works best when you tie it to the moments the conversations actually happen:
  1. Before review cycles. Assign the difficult feedback and performance review scenarios to every people manager, minimum score Gold, due before reviews open.
  2. Quarterly. One scenario per quarter on the current leadership theme, such as delegation, comp conversations, or restructuring news.
  3. For new managers. The three-week program below, assigned in their first month.

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A Sample Three-Week New-Manager Program

Bundle scenarios into a Program with due dates and completion criteria. Programs come with Starter plans and above. On Professional plans, attach a certification so managers who clear the bar get a record of it before their first review cycle.

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Next Steps

Roll Exec out to your team

Invites, seats, groups, and your first assignment, in one walkthrough.

Plans and feature availability

What Free, Starter, Professional, and Enterprise each include.

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Getting Help

Need help? Contact us at [email protected] for guidance on building leadership scenarios or rolling out practice to your managers.