Walkthroughs give leaders a simple, structured way to observe their team in action, document what they notice, and share thoughtful feedback that helps people thrive. This guide walks you through everything you need to know: what Walkthroughs are, when to use them, and exactly how to create and share one from start to finish.

A Walkthrough is a quick, structured observation. It's how a leader steps into a classroom, a unit, or a workspace, notices what's happening, and captures it in a way that's clear, consistent, and genuinely useful for the person being observed.

Instead of scribbling notes that never make it anywhere, Walkthroughs give you a shared framework:

When you're finished, you can share the Walkthrough directly with the employee, so feedback never gets stuck in a drawer or lost in an inbox.

Walkthroughs are built to do more than record what happened. They help you:

Reach for a Walkthrough whenever you want to observe someone's work and turn that observation into useful, documented feedback. That might be:

If your goal is to notice, document, and share — a Walkthrough is the tool.

On the go? You can do all of this from your phone.

Walkthroughs must be turned on for your district by Lebra. It isn't a setting district admins can switch on themselves. If you don't see Settings → Walkthroughs, or the Walkthroughs tab on a person's page, contact Lebra to have Walkthroughs enabled.

Walkthroughs work best when your organization has defined what to look for ahead of time. This is a one-time setup that an administrator handles in Settings → Walkthroughs. Once it's done, every leader in your organization gets a ready-made framework to observe against.

The settings area has three tabs:

1. Types

2. Look Fors

Look-fors are the areas of practice you observe, and each one holds the descriptors — the specific behaviors — that get rated.

3. Evidence Sets

Evidence sets are reusable answer scales. Instead of retyping the same options for every descriptor, you build a set once and assign it wherever it fits.

Tip: Renaming an option in a set updates every descriptor that uses that set — one edit, applied everywhere.

That's it. With your types, look-fors, descriptors, and evidence sets in place, your team is ready to start observing.

Here's the full journey, from opening a Walkthrough to sharing it with the person you observed.

Go to the person you'd like to observe and open the Walkthroughs tab on their page. You'll see any past Walkthroughs here, listed newest first, each showing the date, who created it, and its current status.

NOTE: The person needs an email address on file so you can share the finished Walkthrough with them later.

If the person holds two framework roles, select the role in the role dropdown on their page first. The Walkthrough is recorded under that role, uses that role's look-fors, and counts toward that role's pathway milestones. See Staff Who Hold Two Framework Roles.

Select + Add walkthrough. A window titled New Walkthrough opens, ready for you to begin.

At the top, use the Type dropdown to choose the kind of observation you're doing. Once you select a type, Lebra automatically pulls in the look-fors, descriptors, and evidence sets that belong to it.

If you see a note that no look-fors have been set up for this role and type, ask your administrator to add them in Walkthrough Settings first.

The observation list is organized by look-for: each look-for appears as a heading with its description, and its descriptors are listed underneath. For each descriptor, use the dropdown on the right to select the evidence you observed — the options come from that descriptor's evidence set. If you didn't see anything for a particular descriptor, simply choose No evidence.

Work down the list, selecting what you saw for each one.

Notes: A descriptor without an evidence set is informational — it gives you context but has no dropdown. And when a look-for has a single descriptor with the same name, Lebra shows them as one combined row, so your list may look simpler than the structure described here.

If this person has been observed before, you'll see a summary section near the top. Select the option to generate an AI summary of previous Walkthroughs, and Lebra will pull together the trends, strengths, and growth areas from their recent observations — a helpful way to ground your feedback in the bigger picture. You can edit the summary or regenerate it as needed.

In the General Notes field, add anything you'd like in your own words — encouragement, context, specific praise, or suggested next steps. This is your space to make the feedback personal and human.

Staring at a blank General Notes field after a busy observation is the slowest part of a Walkthrough. Compose with AI turns what you saw into a first draft you can shape.

Steps

Everything remains fully editable after you accept — treat the draft as a starting point, not a finished write-up.

Note: AI drafts appear as formatted text, so headings, lists, and bold render properly while you edit rather than showing raw formatting characters.

Two different AI tools, two different jobs: the summary in Step 5 looks backward at this person's previous Walkthroughs to show you trends. Compose with AI helps you write up this Walkthrough. You can use either, both, or neither.

Tip: Select your evidence before composing. The AI uses the context you've already captured, so a draft written after your evidence is in place will be far more specific.

Compose with AI is also available on informal observations and in the mobile app.

Not ready to finish? Select Save as Draft. Your Walkthrough is saved with a Draft status, and you can come back to edit it anytime.

When your observation is ready, select Continue. The review step shows everything you're about to finalize in one place: the type, each look-for with the evidence you chose for its descriptors, and your general notes. If something isn't right, go back and adjust it.

Note: Selecting Continue also saves your Walkthrough as a draft automatically, so a half-finished Walkthrough survives an accidental close — you'll see it in the person's list with a Draft status until you submit it.

At the bottom of the review step you'll find the Share with Employee toggle, with helper text explaining what will happen either way:

The review step is your confirmation — there's no extra dialog after Submit.

Note: Opening an already completed or shared Walkthrough takes you straight to this review screen, so you can see exactly what was recorded and what the employee received.

If you completed a Walkthrough without sharing it, you can deliver it anytime: open the completed Walkthrough and select Share with Employee. After you confirm, Lebra emails the person a private link to their Walkthrough report.

When they open the link, they'll see a clean, read-only report with the observation date, the type, each look-for with the evidence you recorded for its descriptors, and your general notes. The Walkthrough's status updates to Shared with Employee, so you always know what's been delivered.

Walkthroughs aren't rated against your framework's domains and standards — but they can be pulled into an employee's summative evaluation as evidence, right alongside formal observations, informal observations, in-person meetings, and notes.

When an evaluator creates or edits a summative evaluation (from the person's Summative Evaluations tab), the evidence-selection step includes a Select Walkthroughs section: "Choose one or more walkthroughs to include in the summative evaluation." Check the Walkthroughs you want — or use Select all — and they're attached to the evaluation and listed in its review step.

A few things to know:

For the full summative process, see Creating and Finalizing a Summative Report.

Here's what you'll see as you work, all in one place:

Walkthroughs are about more than documentation. Every observation you capture and share is a chance to help someone feel seen, recognize what they're doing well, and point the way toward growth. That's the heart of great leadership — and with Walkthroughs, it only takes a few minutes.