Better togetherLeadership & collaboration
6 practices · 3 case practices
Agree on work and listen to concerns, while giving people credit for what they did.
Leading and collaborating mostly happens in small messages: a clear ask, an invitation to disagree, credit given where it is due, a correction when you promised too much.
The scenarios put you in those moments, and some are case practices where you work from a file before you write.
Situations you can practice
Every practice is a written scenario. Case practices add a file to investigate before you decide what to say.
Turning a vague “look into it” into a clear brief
Kai asks what you want. Give the purpose, the two-page summary due Thursday noon, and what they can decide, then check their workload.
8 minFoundationsSoulful
A teammate privately doubts your launch date
You run the team’s reviews, so others may stay quiet. Reply to Taylor, then invite everyone to raise risks before the date is set.
10 minStretchSoulful
Your launch note left out a teammate’s work
Compare your launch note with the project record to find what it missed, then name that work privately and ask how they’d like it acknowledged.
12 minStretchCase practiceSoulful
Correcting your “seamless” promise about a new project tool
Sort what is decided, being checked and still open from the plan and messages, then correct your promise in an update the team can plan around.
15 minDeep practiceCase practiceSoulful
Handing your engineer a client test you ran yourself first
Tell Imran what the client checks, what you learned running the first session and how the checklist works, then say when you’ll review his first report.
10 minStretchSoulful
Mapping the work before you ask a friend to be your first hire
Sort your business’s tasks between a first hire and the founders, then tell your friend the role, what is uncertain and what each side can expect.
14 minStretchCase practiceSoulful
Read more on leadership & collaboration
How to invite disagreement in a team meetingA manager’s example for asking where a plan could fail, offering a private route, and reporting back, with the limits of what one meeting can do.How to turn a vague request into a clear briefReplace “take a look at this” with a brief: the result you need, the reason, the deadline, who decides what, and a check on the other person’s workload.The research behind these practices
Each practice cites the studies that informed its design and says where they may not apply. These are the sources cited most across the 6 practices on this page; they inform the practices and are not proof that the practices work.
- A meta-analysis of the team learning pathway (Meta-analysis · organizational teams, 2025). Cited by 3 practices here.
This synthesis examines relationships among team learning orientation, psychological safety, learning, and team outcomes. Associations do not prove that any single leadership script causes improved performance.
- Practicing versus inventing with contrasting cases (Experiments · Journal of Educational Psychology, 2011). Cited by 3 practices here.
Schwartz, Chase, Oppezzo and Chin taught adolescents physics ideas with a ratio structure, such as density, using sets of cases that differed in the feature that matters. Students who tried to work out the principle from the cases before being told transferred it better than students told first and then practicing on the same cases. Leetsoul gives the guide first and one case per attempt, closer to the told-first group, so this supports building cases that differ in what matters, not the order; applying it to sorting statements against a case file is an inference.
- Simulation-based learning in higher education: a meta-analysis (Meta-analysis · 145 studies, 2020). Cited by 3 practices here.
Chernikova and colleagues pooled 145 studies of simulation-based learning in higher education and found a large overall effect on complex skills, with scaffolding a positive moderator. Learners with little prior knowledge gained more from worked examples and those with more gained more from reflection. Most studies came from medical and teacher education, so applying the results to adult people skills or to this product is an inference.
- Determinants of delegation and consultation by managers (Surveys and interviews · Journal of Organizational Behavior, 1999). Cited by 1 practice here.
Yukl and Fu surveyed and interviewed managers and found they delegated more to subordinates who were competent and shared their goals, and that many were reluctant to give up control over important decisions or hand an important task to someone inexperienced. The samples were managers in established organizations, so it describes what managers do, not what a founder should hand over.
- Effects of realistic job previews on multiple organizational outcomes: a meta-analysis (Meta-analysis · Academy of Management Journal, 1998). Cited by 1 practice here.
Phillips combined 40 studies of realistic job previews, which tell applicants about a job’s downsides as well as its benefits. Previews went with lower initial expectations, less attrition during recruitment, lower turnover and somewhat better performance, with small effects that depended on timing and medium. The studies were of applicants to established employers, not a founder asking a friend.
- IMBUE: interpersonal practice and just-in-time feedback (Randomized study · interpersonal effectiveness, 2024). Cited by 1 practice here.
A study of 86 participants examined simulated interpersonal practice. Transfer differed across skill and emotional outcomes, supporting varied rehearsal while cautioning against broad transformation claims.
5 more sources are listed on the research page.
Limits
Research on team learning and psychological safety shows associations. It does not prove that any one script improves a team’s results.
Leetsoul has not shown that these practices improve skill in real life, and the original scenarios have not been independently tested. The sources inform the design of the exercises.
Begin leadership & collaboration with a free starter
Write your response to a fictional conversation, read the guidance, then decide what you would change. Three starter practices are free; Soulful opens the full library.
Written by Leetsoul. Updated . Scenarios are fictional.