March 2026 Design Challenge: Using the GROW Coaching Model
Stopping by the pharmacy when you are sick or to pick up a refill seems like an everyday errand, but what goes into filling your prescription? Careful preparation, communication with healthcare providers and insurance, and patient education all ensure the prescription is dispensed properly.
Gilbert’s Pharmacy is a brick-and-mortar pharmacy chain with counter and drive-thru service. This spring, people managers are preparing for performance review conversations with their direct reports (namely, pharmacists and pharmacy technicians).
Gilbert’s employees encounter a wide range of performance challenges. Shifts are typically hectic, and employees juggle phone calls, in-person customers, insurance rules, and filling scripts. The technical acumen required to measure, mix, or count hundreds of drugs demands accuracy and attention to detail under the law. To ensure patients take their prescriptions as directed, pharmacists and technicians educate them and answer questions.
As Gilbert’s has grown over the past 85 years, its core values have remained the foundation of customer care. During performance review conversations, people managers use the GROW Coaching Model to help employees identify obstacles and take ownership of their improvement.
🌟 Challenge Sponsor
This month’s eLearning challenge is proudly sponsored by Mindsmith—an AI-native authoring tool that applies generative AI to every step of the eLearning creation process.
If you want to unlock the full power of Mindsmith beyond the free tier, you can get three months 100% free by entering the code TIMSLADE when you activate your account. This is your opportunity to experiment, build something meaningful for your portfolio, and explore what AI-native authoring actually looks like in practice.
✅ The Challenge
Using Mindsmith, create an eLearning course to train Gilbert’s people managers on how to use the GROW Coaching Model for upcoming performance reviews.
Your course should teach the GROW model through the lens of Gilbert’s Core Values, reinforcing how coaching conversations support both performance improvement and patient care. Your course should include at least one Gilbert’s pharmacist or pharmacy technician with a clearly defined performance issue they plan to improve in 2026.
To get started, determine what performance issue(s) will be addressed and align them with the GROW Coaching Model:
Goal: What goal does the employee want to achieve?
Reality: What does the employee already have (skill set, resources, opportunities)?
Options: What are the pros and cons of the options they might pursue to achieve the goal?
Will / Way Forward: How will they move forward and commit to action?
After completing this course, Gilbert’s managers will be able to:
Integrate Gilbert’s Core Values throughout the coaching conversation as guidance when forming improvement plans.
Ask strategic questions aligned to each stage of the GROW Coaching Model.
Investigate the context surrounding a performance issue in partnership with the employee (Who is involved? Why is this happening? What is the impact on the employee and/or patient?).
Frame (or reframe) potential solutions collaboratively.
Provide meaningful feedback on action plans, including skills, resources, barriers, and trade-offs.
📋 Requirements & Constraints
As you design and develop your course, keep the following requirements and constraints in mind:
Authoring Tool: For this month, we’re encouraging you to use the Mindsmith authoring tool to create your project. If you’re new to Mindsmith, visit the Mindsmith Help Center for additional how-to information on developing and sharing your project.
Interactivity: Your solution should move beyond informational content and include decision-based practice. Here are some ways you might leverage Mindsmith’s interaction types to support that goal:
Scenario – Create a branching coaching conversation where managers choose what to say next and see the impact of their choices.
AI Conversation – Build an interactive role play that simulates a live coaching discussion with a pharmacist or technician.
Flashcards or Flashcards Carousel – Reinforce key concepts, such as strong coaching questions for each GROW stage.
Accordion or Tabs – Organize examples of effective and ineffective coaching questions.
Process or Timeline – Visualize the flow of a performance conversation using the GROW model.
Hot Button or Sorting – Ask learners to classify questions or statements into the appropriate GROW stage.
Video – Generate or embed short explainers or scenario context (like a flashback scene from a patient interaction).
🎨 Style Guide
To help in the design of your eLearning course, you can view and download the client style guide and brand assets below. You are free to use these to design a branded course template or create your own design.
Gilberts Style Guide.pdfGilberts Brand Assets.zip📑 Reference Materials
One of the unique features of Mindsmith is the ability to upload your own source content and use it as context for the Mindsmith AI Agent.
For this challenge, you’re encouraged to upload the Gilbert’s Pharmacy Core Values document, along with the Gilbert’s GROW Coaching Guide, and use them to help shape your coaching scenarios, feedback, and examples. To support alignment with Gilbert’s culture, your course should demonstrate how the GROW Coaching Model connects to and is reinforced by Gilbert’s Core Values.
Gilberts_Values.pdfGilberts_Grow_Coaching.pdfAdditional reference content you may find helpful:
🏆 Submission Guidelines & Contest Rules
Once you're done building your course, you can submit it by commenting below and sharing a link to your finished project. Along with a link to your published course, share a few words explaining your design decisions, challenges, inspiration, etc.
Your submission must be posted no later than Friday, March 27th, at 11:59 PM ET. This month’s prize winner will receive:
A $100 Amazon Gift Card
A One-Year License to Mindsmith
An iPad Air
You can learn more about the contest rules and criteria here.
📢 Share Your Work & Get Seen
If you’d like to get more eyes on your submission and encourage others to participate in the challenges, you might also consider…
Writing a Blog Post: If you happen to have a blog or online portfolio, write a post about your submission and share it on social media. Make sure to link to it in the comments below for others to see!
Record a Video: If you want to share how you went about designing your submission, record and share a screen recording video (via Loom, Camtasia, SnagIt, or YouTube) to showcase and explain your process. And, of course, don't forget to share a link to it in the comments below!
Share on Social Media: If you’re active on LinkedIn or another social media platform, create a post to share your submission. If possible, make sure to link back to this page and tag The eLearning Designer’s Academy on LinkedIn in your post.
💬 Give & Get Feedback
After you've shared your submission, make sure to review what others have submitted and provide constructive feedback. Remember, the monthly challenges (and this community as a whole) are meant to provide an inclusive and supportive environment. As you provide feedback, make sure to keep our Code of Conduct in mind.
As you work to develop your project, also consider sharing your work-in-progress for community feedback in our Get Feedback space here.
🎉 Challenge Recap, Submissions & Winner
After reviewing all of the incredible entries, the Mindsmith team selected three winners whose projects demonstrated strong instructional thinking, creative execution, and thoughtful use of the platform.
🏆 1st Place: Coaching for Better Patient Care by @Uliana Cheliuskina
Uliana will receive a $100 Amazon gift card, one free year of Mindsmith, and a brand new iPad Air.
🥈 Coaching with GROW by @Foteini Sofouri
Both Jinny and Foteini will receive $50 Amazon gift cards + one free year of Mindsmith.
We also want to recognize all of the participants who took on this challenge and put their skills into practice. The level of creativity, problem-solving, and design thinking across nearly 60 submissions made this one of our most impressive challenges to date.
Check out all of this month’s challenge submissions (in no particular order):
🙋♂️ New to the Design Challenges?
If you're new to the eLearning challenges, check out this post to learn how they work.