At the 2017 Training Conference I led a session on Developing Leadership Awareness Through Experiential Learning, in which I included a brief case study that highlighted using simulations as an experiential learning activity. After the session, I was asked what other activities might be used within an experiential learning laboratory environment.
Part I of this blog series took a deeper dive into what is required to make a learning program experiential. With that framework in mind, let’s explore some of additional learning activities that can be used within an experiential leadership development program.
Role-play
- Create a realistic scenario participants might encounter as a leader
- Identify roles on a team
- Rotate roles within the scenario to experience looking at the situation from different points of view
- Role Play Experiences- Battlefield for strategy or A Day in the Life of a CEO
Problem-based project
- Identify a problem/challenge within the organization
- Individuals can bring their own functional problem/challenge as ideas and the teams can vote on which problem to solve
- Mix teams up by functional background to help look at the solution from different points of view
- Allow the groups to present the challenge they worked on and the proposed solution
- Allow the groups to select the best solution
- Perhaps have the groups present their findings to Senior Functional leads
Case study – leaderless discussion
- Pick a case study that is relevant to the group
- Divide the case study up amongst the team
- Individuals share what they took from their portion of the case study
- Hold a brainstorming session to identify the questions that senior leaders should be asking about the information presented in the case study
- Keep it leaderless to see who emerges as leaders and how all participants can be leaders in one way or another when working collaboratively
- Real-time case study
- Works best if the program is extended over a longer period of time
- Groups observe and discuss how their company or an external company is handling:
Or even performing on a quarterly basis
- Recommendations can be made as to how they may have approached things differently
- Job Rotation
- Identify what functions the participants should rotate through
- Allows for cross functional understanding of the organization
- May require a longer timeline to complete a full rotation
- Growth
- A specific problem
- Change the rules
- Put them in teams (collaboration)
Gamification
- Shorter in duration than simulations
- Works great for repetitive behaviors or actions
- Works well for addressing a specific scenario
- Caution: don’t make it too much like a video game
- Keep it relevant to their current or future roles
- Board Games
- Works well for shorter duration programs
- Business board games
- Don’t rule out games you know and love for non-business objectives
- Imagine playing the game Risk as a team competing against other teams to work on strategic thinking skills
- Make sure to tie game lessons back to their real-world roles
Simulations
- Business Simulations: strategy, business acumen, financial acumen
- Functional Based Simulations: project management, operations
- Task-based simulations
The great thing about experiential learning activities is that they allow for learning by doing, teaching, and mentoring others in your group, and using facilitators as guides in a classroom setting to tie in relevancy. All aspects of the 70-20-10 model for learning are represented in experiential learning programs. Remember, any of these activities should be conducted in a safe environment to allow experimentation. We are developing leaders, we are not in a selection process.
If you’d like to talk further about designing your leadership program, please reach out to me at [email protected]
Stay tuned for our next blog on using off-the-shelf simulations versus custom simulations.