The Observation
What you are noticing vs. diagnosing
Your best performer missed two deadlines this month. Their work is slipping and their energy is wrong. You notice — but noticing and diagnosing are two very different things.
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Part of this story
The Manager's Responsibility
→One of your best people is struggling. You can feel it. HR says it's not your problem. You know better than that.
Part of the quest
Mental Health Conversations
→From checking in on a colleague who seems off, to telling your manager you are burning out, to supporting a friend in crisis — practice the conversations that most people avoid until it is too late.
What you'll learn from The Observation
This scenario focuses on What you are noticing vs. diagnosing — a critical skill inside the broader emotional intelligence 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 Manager's Responsibility, a full interactive story inside the Mental Health Conversations quest.
Skills you'll build in Mental Health Conversations
More scenarios in this quest
You close the office door and check in. Not as their evaluator. Not as HR. As the person who sees them every day and can tell something isn't right — and hopes they'll let you in.
They open up more than you expected. Now you're holding information that sits awkwardly between 'manager' and 'human being' — and the line between supporting and overstepping is thinner than it looks.
You can't fix this alone and you shouldn't try. But you can connect them with real help — EAP, professional support, accommodations — without making them feel like a liability.
Ready to practice What you are noticing vs. diagnosing?
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