The Setup
Setting the scene
Your performance review lands and the words blur together until one sentence stops you cold. It is not what you expected, and it does not feel fair.
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Part of this story
The Gut Punch
→Your manager just told you something you were not ready to hear. Process the sting without dismissing the message.
Part of the quest
Giving & Receiving Feedback
→The skill most people avoid and everyone needs — learn to deliver honest feedback that drives growth and receive criticism without crumbling. You'll navigate four escalating scenarios — from the sandwich myth to the growth conversation — practicing the decisions that matter most when the pressure is real and the stakes are personal. This isn't theory. It's practice for the moments that define how this chapter of your life unfolds.
What you'll learn from The Setup
This scenario focuses on Setting the scene — a critical skill inside the broader leadership domain. You'll face a decision where the instinctive response is often the wrong one. After you make your choice, you'll see exactly what happened in the other person's head and why it mattered. The scenario is part of The Gut Punch, a full interactive story inside the Giving & Receiving Feedback quest.
Skills you'll build in Giving & Receiving Feedback
More scenarios in this quest
Your first instinct is to explain, defend, contextualize. You open your mouth and then close it — because the hardest part of receiving feedback is not hearing it, it is sitting with it.
Hours later, the sting fades and something underneath starts to surface. The feedback is not entirely wrong — and admitting that to yourself is harder than hearing it from someone else.
You go back to your manager, not to argue but to ask questions. The conversation that follows is more honest than the review itself — and it changes what you work on next.
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