Leadership Coaching Platform Manager Experience
Case Study Overview
Sounding Board already supported coaching and mentoring well for coachees, but managers still had a very limited product experience. That gap mattered for two reasons. First, managers play a major role in a direct report’s development. Second, they influence buying decisions and long-term program value.
The PRD made the opportunity clear. Delivering value to managers was not just a UX improvement. It was a way to strengthen manager and employee relationships, support customer retention, and create a foundation for future growth.
Outcome:
Success phased agile released product with a GTM plan that went smoothly. Resulting in more efficient use of engineering capacity and clearer business outcomes. Pendo showed adoption was successful, CX and sale reported increased closed contracts with companies, increase customer satisfaction, and later the large overhaul help lead to the acquisition of Sounding Board.
Guiding idea
Managers are short on time. The experience should feel quick and effortless. A fast read on what matters, followed by a clear path to action.
MVP Overreaching Goal
Deliver transformative value to the manager in a beautiful, modern experience as a way to grow the manager + employee relationship and build a strong foundation for dynamic development.
Roles
PM (scope, requirements, release planning) · Co-designer (flows, UX, UI) · UX copywriter (microcopy, empty states, guidance)
The Problem
Before this work, managers did not have a single place to understand how their team was progressing across coaching, group coaching, mentoring, surveys, and goals. Important signals were fragmented, hard to prioritize, or not visible at all.
Minimal manager experience
Managers could not easily get an overview of team development in one place.Low actionability
Even when information existed, it did not clearly show what the manager needed to do next; it was hidden behind several layers of clicks.Scattered signals
Engagement status, surveys, goals, and leadership growth were disconnected.
Goals
The MVP focused on giving managers practical value fast while laying the groundwork for a broader manager experience later.
Create a real manager home
Give managers a dashboard that provides an overview of their team’s leadership development.
Support quick action
Show the most important information first and make follow-up tasks easy to complete.
Increase visibility
Surface engagement status, sessions completed, goals, surveys, and leadership capabilities.
Build for growth
Create a foundation the business can expand as the manager experience evolves.
Release plan: the PRD outlined a staged rollout, first to Sounding Board managers and then to all managers in production. That let the team reduce risk while validating the new experience in a focused way.
The solution
We introduced a dashboard-style manager home that makes the state of a manager’s team visible in one place. The experience balances summary and action. Managers can quickly see who is enrolled in which engagement types, where progress stands, and what needs their input.
What the MVP included
A summary of direct reports enrolled in 1:1 coaching, group coaching, and mentoring
Engagement status and sessions completed
Surveys that need manager attention
Goals shared by direct reports
Leadership capability progress over time
Drill-in access to an individual direct report view
Direct report detail view
The manager home solved the overview problem, but managers also needed a way to understand one person’s progress quickly. That led to the Direct Report Overview tab, a manager-only view inside the profile page.
This view brought together enrollment, completed sessions, pending surveys, mentoring relationships, goals, and development progress. It helped managers move from team-wide awareness to person-specific support without losing context
Direct Report Case Study Coming Soon
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Direct Report Case Study Coming Soon 〰️
UX Writing
I contributed UX copy across the entire experience, including CTAs, modules, actions, and empty states. In a manager workflow, clarity is critical. The words reduce hesitation, make the state of the system clear, and guide managers toward the right next step.
UX writing principle: use plain language, explain the system state, and make the next step obvious. Great copy here should feel calm, helpful, and clear.
PM Leadership
I contributed across PM, design, and UX writing. On the PM side, I helped define scope, strengthen requirements, and shape a release path that balanced delivery needs with product coherence.
Scope and priorities
Focused the MVP on the manager loop of scan, decide, and act instead of trying to solve everything at once.
Cross-functional alignment
Worked across design, engineering, sales, marketing, CX, and product perspectives to shape a manager experience that was valuable and feasible.
Release planning
Helped support a phased rollout strategy that reduced risk while moving the work forward.
Reflection
The MVP created a strong foundation for the manager experience. The go-to-market plan was thoughtful and phased, allowing us to educate users as we rolled it out. Adoption and feedback were evident. Revenue increased and sales closed more deals after the release.
Looking ahead, I’d focus on deepening personalization and helping managers stay proactive over time, grounded in user feedback and thoughtful tradeoffs between impact and effort.
Next opportunities
Measure how quickly managers complete follow-up actions after landing in Manager Home (this work has started)
Introduce AI to help anticipate next steps and personalize the experience
Refine how leadership capabilities are surfaced for faster understanding
Continue improving education and empty states so the experience stays clear and self-explanatory
Why share this project?
This work reflects how I operate across PM, design, and UX writing. It shows how the team and I partnered closely, made tradeoffs, and navigated scope and time constraints together. I care deeply about the business impact, the product system, and the clarity of every interaction.