Leadership Academy — Week 2 Assessment Practice

Part of the Leadership Academy series — practice questions to go with the Week 2 study guide.

Q1 (scenario). Your daily standup keeps turning into a 45-minute problem-solving session. What’s going wrong, and how do you fix it?

A1. Standup is being used for something it isn’t — it’s meant to surface blockers only (did/doing/blocked), not solve them live. Fix: move problem-solving into a separate, smaller follow-up with just the people actually involved, and protect standup’s real purpose so it stays 15 minutes.

Q2 (analysis). A leader tells someone, “you’ve been really unprofessional in meetings lately.” What’s wrong with this as feedback, and how should it be rebuilt using SBI?

A2. “Unprofessional” is a judgment, not an observable behaviour — fails the core SBI test (could you have filmed it?). Rebuilt: Situation — “in the last two client calls”; Behaviour — “you interrupted the client twice before they finished speaking”; Impact — “the client visibly disengaged and stopped sharing their concerns”; then pause.

Q3 (scenario). A team member’s 1:1 has quietly become a weekly status check where you ask “where are we on X?” What’s wrong, and what should you do instead?

A3. The 1:1 has drifted from its actual purpose — it belongs to the team member, not you, and that question belongs in standup instead. Reset it explicitly: hand the agenda back (“what’s actually on your mind this week?”) and let project topics come up only if they bring them.

Q4 (scenario). A monthly check-in has started happening one-on-one with each team member instead of as a group. What’s wrong with that, and why does it matter specifically for a monthly check-in rather than a 1:1?

A4. Monthly check-ins are meant to be for the team, not the individual — running it 1:1 risks the strategic message getting unevenly filtered by relationship, so some people end up with more information than others without anyone intending that. Doing it as a group keeps everyone aligned on the same message at the same time.

Q5 (analysis). A manager only ever gives corrective feedback and never acknowledges good work specifically. What’s missing per SBI, and why does it matter?

A5. Positive SBI is being skipped entirely — it’s just as important as corrective SBI, because specific positive feedback reinforces the exact behaviour you want repeated, while generic praise like “great work” doesn’t tell someone what to keep doing. Fix: give specific positive SBI too, same structure — Situation, Behaviour, Impact.

Q6 (scenario). You’ve given someone the same piece of feedback three times over chat and it hasn’t landed. What should you try next, and why?

A6. Switch the channel, not necessarily the content — when feedback keeps landing badly, it’s often a channel mismatch rather than a content problem. If chat isn’t working, try a call; if a call isn’t working, try writing it down instead.

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Back to the series index · Week 2 study guide