SkillGym Results

 

 

What do we focus on?

We look at three different types of evidence to make sure that SkillGym delivers what you deserve from practicing conversations.

 

1. SMARTER PEOPLE

Consistent practice increases confidence and self-awareness and improves 76 additional skills impacting on your Competency Model (look at the Science behind SkillGym to see how you change by practicing).

2. SHARPER CONVERSATIONS

Smarter people increase the quantity and quality of their conversations as the result of broader conversational comfort zone and faster experience gathering (look at our laser-focused SkillGym Programs to learn more).

3. BETTER TEAM PERFORMANCE

Finally, sharper conversations influence your business results (read this case study) and change your work environment for the better (read this article about the importance of Leadership Abundance).

 

1. Smarter people.

Consistent engagement in practice generates permanent and measurable change in observable behaviors.

Increase in Confidence and Self-Awareness.
Confidence and Self-Awareness are the two factors that most influence the daily performance of the leaders we train with SkillGym. Here is the average impact of SkillGym’s Programs on these factors, based on measurements from over 9,000 cases in the last three years (measured comparing scores at the beginning and at the end of six months practice):

 

 

2. Sharper Conversations.

With the help of our clients, we routinely monitor the impact of practice on real-life behaviors. We are specifically interested in tracking:

 

Increase in the number of conversations.

After practicing with SkillGym, 79% of people* claim they engage in a much higher number of conversations than before.

 

 

Change in quality of the conversations.

After practicing with SkillGym, 85% of people* claim they have higher quality conversations with peers and team members.

* These figures are estimates from many of our clients. Results may vary according to the type of organization and the users’ learning agility, leadership approach and consistency of training effort.

 

3. Better Team Performance.

Sharper conversations improve business results and work environment.

Thanks to improvements made in sales, leadership and people development conversations, our customers quickly achieve significant results that profoundly affect the quality of their business results, their work environment and motivation of employees.

 

 

In a sense, they are ‘compounded effects’: positive results that stem form upskilling conversation skills. What we see is most often a combination of nine elements impacting the entire organization, with improvements* including:

 

 

* These figures are estimates as reported by many of our clients. Results may vary according to the type of organization and the users’ learning agility, leadership approach and consistency of training effort.

 

What about program length?

Consistency of practice in the long run is what it takes to reach and maintain mastery, but of course not all programs can last six months or more.

The good news, however, is that practicing with SkillGym also brings great results also when training bootcamps are delivered on a shorter time span.

* Data has been statistically measured on 9.342 past trainees who sustained an average schedule of about four simulated conversation/month. Results may vary according to the users’ learning agility, leadership approach and consistency of training effort.

 

If you prefer to run a shorter, more intensive program, then you are in good company:

 

 

SkillGym Programs’ statistics.

With over 300,000 individuals trained over the years, we have a crystal-clear picture of how SkillGym will work at your organization.

 

 

* Data has been statistically measured on 9,342 past trainees who sustained an average schedule of about four simulated conversations per month. Results may vary according to the users’ learning agility, leadership approach and consistency of training effort.

 

 

Case Studies.

Learn from these field case studies what you can achieve with our Programs.

 

Practicing Improves Performance.
This case study shows how a training based on Digital Role Play generates better results compared to a classical training program.

Learn more about this case study.

 

 

Keep Users Engaged with Digital Learning.
Have a look at these three case studies showing how to leverage habits and win the learning engagement quest with consistency.

Learn more about this case study.

 

 

What’s next

If you are searching for the Digital Role Play solution that suits your needs, take a look at our website, which has pre-recorded webinars and articles among other inspiring content for your review.

You are also invited to book a 1-hour discovery call with us if you would like to continue this conversation.

Enjoy the rest of your day.

 

Leave a Reply

How Can Leadership Conversations Prevent The Failure Of Your Digital Transformation Program?

 

A transformation . . . into failure

Let’s imagine that the nightmare has become a reality: Your company’s digital transformation program has failed.

The consequences have been devastating: millions in lost investments, delays in release plans, negative impact on time-to-market and, above all, stress, discontent and consequently an increase in the resignation of key resources (from managers to individual contributors).

 

How was this possible?
After all, the conditions were excellent: The identified technical solutions seemed to perfectly meet the needs. Everything had been planned correctly, the expert groups in charge of managing the transformation program were carefully composed, and the entire company seemed ready.

After all, the employees are used to dealing with technology. They’re always connected with multiple devices and immersed in the digital dimension in every moment of their lives.

 

The result is paradoxical: A program that was launched with the intention of bringing innovation, accelerating business and enhancing people’s professionalism eventually caused a loss of grip on the market.
There were economic losses, and many talented people resigned. Now they have to be replaced by new hires, who of course must be recruited, trained and onboarded.
Yes, it’s terrifying.

Have you had such a nightmare? Do you fear that this could happen to your company? If so, do you know how to prevent it?

The best thing to do is to keep calm. You can then analyze the common dynamics of all digital transformation programs and identify what critical areas can be mitigated before it’s too late.

 

The common traits

Let’s start with the basics: What are the common features of all digital transformation programs? We can summarize them in three points:

  • Digital transformation programs are complicated, long-lasting projects. They need the creation of cross-functional teams comprised of people with very different focuses and attitudes; people who haven’t previously worked closely with each other.
    This kind of project requires a new mindset through which to interact with colleagues, particularly because the project development is often based on Agile methodologies that require the highest levels of focus, teamwork and lateral thinking.

 

  • They require expert resources to be allocated to the program, which of course means removing them from their business as usual activities. As a result, the managers of those professionals must manage the transitional phase, which often requires great operational effort and the ability to motivate the people involved in the transformation program and the people in their group who keep on carrying out the usual activities.

 

  • It is crucial that people who are part of the project be the main promoters of the digital transformation toward their colleagues who aren’t part of it. They should convey the long-term benefits that the transformation process will eventually bring to the company, and they should know how to involve, inform and generate enthusiasm.

 

The digital product isn’t the problem

Once the typical characteristics of a digital transformation project have been clarified, we should admit an uncomfortable truth: THE PROBLEM IS NOT THE PRODUCT.

Many people believe the central part of a digital transformation activity is the choice of the technological solution, but that’s only the initial phase.
In fact, we could say it’s the least critical part, given that the market offers plenty of valid solutions, so it’s relatively easy to make a benchmark of the functionalities offered by different vendors.

Marking the product as inadequate is a great way to avoid a true retrospective analysis, which would lead to deep-seated internal problems.

 

So, what makes a digital transformation program fail? Let’s identify the five main causes:

  1. Lack of sense of unity among the cross-functional group: This leads to the conviction that every function involved has different objectives in conflict with those of others. For instance, marketing people say IT is only focused on the cost-saving maintenance of tools, but IT people think the sole aim of the marketing department is to increase the gross adds
  2. Line managers’ reluctance to detach their people from business as usual in order to allocate them to the project, or insufficient delegation
  3. The direct managers and top management don’t give enough recognition to the work carried out by the team
  4. Inability to report to management the main points of attention that emerged during the project, through clear and effective communication: To this is often added a tendency to emotionally report conflicts with other colleagues and departments instead of asking for their intervention based on objective data so as to remove the obstacles that have generated misunderstandings
  5. The tendency to search for a guilty party instead of having an attitude of discovery and experimentation in the face of obstacles and unforeseen circumstances

 

People are the key

Thus, it becomes clear that the main causes of the failure of digital transformation are all related to people and the ways in which they interact. It has to do with their preconditioned bias, a lack of mutual trust and insufficient empathy in their relationships.

How can we prevent a failure related to relationship problems among people? It’s done by spreading a culture of leadership that’s supported and developed by all of the key figures in the project.

Now, stop that inner voice from saying, “However, I chose the best leaders to lead my program: those who stood out for strategic thinking, perspective vision and analytical ability.” This is only part of the necessary combination of ingredients.

 

It’s essential, of course, to have a strategic and long-term vision. However, if that’s all one has, such an approach will lead to a digital transformation program based only on strategic impact in terms of economic results and market positioning. In such a case, one will underestimate the crucial impact that people in the company have in dealing at different levels with the changes that occur.

In a world dominated by technology, employees are wary of digital innovations brought by their companies because they don’t feel part of a system that encourages their free initiative and enhances their contributions.
This attitude is due to a lack of communicative leadership, which makes people feel wary of any change. The leader is gauged by his approach toward others; by the way he communicates his vision, his goals, values and strategy.

 

The culture of leadership that must be propagated to support the digital transformation program must not only be strategic but must also be relational. It must put people at the center of the transformation.

It should motivate them, inspire them and lead them toward a new cultural approach. To do all this, your leaders should be aware of the benefits of the transformation program.

Even so, that won’t be enough. They must also have the ability to speak with their collaborators and turn these concepts into moments of enlightening motivation.

 

The best way to make such a radical change is to rely on conversational leadership: It’s a style of work based on the ability to manage conversation so empowering that it will radically, permanently change the mindset of the organization.

 

Empowering conversation for the empowerment of people

Leadership with the ability manage empowering conversation isn’t a matter of hierarchical position.
Even if you aren’t a manager, your success will depend on your ability to talk to your colleagues and convey your values, experience and energy to them.

 

Leadership conversation releases an energy that spreads in all directions:

1. Top-down, where an in-role manager can lead, inspire, support the employees’ reports and discover together new opportunities and viewpoints
Top management must be able to show the way for the whole company in order to legitimize the transformation project and ensure that it’s perceived as the center of the company’s evolution.
The role of top management in a transformation program is crucial, so it goes well beyond the approval of a program proposed by strategic consultants and the budget allocation.

First, it must be about finding the right talents to lead the transformation program. Second, the top management must be able to incentivize the company contribution, to convince everyone that digital transformation projects aren’t a distraction from business as usual but are the driving force in the journey toward the future.

Accordingly, it’s fundamental that the middle management is also able to communicate effectively with all the people involved in the program; to inspire, instill trust and emphasize the long-term value of the project, even if it makes it more difficult to pursue the usual operational activities.

 

2. Peer-to-peer, where professionals can influence other people, even if they don’t have hierarchical authority, in order to turn teamwork into a powerful occasion of collective growth
Team members of a digital transformation program should be able to express peer-to-peer leadership in order to foster collaboration and a sense of common effort on a single path.
The same energy must be brought outside the team to colleagues who aren’t directly involved in the development of the project so as to convey the benefits brought by the program, remove the natural resistance to change and give the entire company a sense of involvement in the journey.

 

3. Bottom-up, i.e., the ability to listen and to make a balanced comparison
Anyone involved in such a strategic program must also be able to demonstrate leadership to his or her own managers and top management; to adequately communicate the quality of the work performed, the critical issues in progress and the need to constantly receive feedback about their work.

 

Conversational training to generate leadership abundance

The attainment of a true people transformation requires conversational leadership as a widespread practice. Conversational leadership creates a corporate culture in which the digital transformation finds the right ground on which to grow and thrive.

The spread of empowering conversation allows you to spray the entire company with a culture of leadership abundance, i.e., a new mindset in which genuine, effective communication helps people improve the way they appreciate, motivate and guide other members of your team.

A people-oriented strategy based on abundance leads to the discovery of new talents, encouraging individual contributions and overcoming cultural barriers that prevent change.

 

The opposite of a culture of abundance is the culture of scarcity: It’s an attitude that refuses to spread positive energy to the rest of the organization. This attitude is expressed through a lack of trust in other groups, the reluctance to resolve conflicts and a minimal sense of involvement.

This is precisely the attitude that will lead to the failure of a digital transformation program.

However, if conversational leadership is the key to success, how can one master it? Obviously, it comes through practice: If we train through empowering conversations, we’ll become accustomed to them.

 

The best way to acquire practice in conversations that can reveal hidden leadership potential is through the use of consistent, practical training. People learn best through concrete experience, so we should constantly train our people in this kind of conversation.

The best way to improve our conversation skills, change our behaviors and make our communication more efficient is to try, obtain feedback and try again.
Live role-play, in which the trainee can simulate a conversation with a counterpart about crucial business-related topics, is definitely a good way to be trained in leadership conversation. Many soft-skill training programs include role-play as part of the learning path.

 

It would be great to involve the key people in a role-play session so as to simulate the most common conversations related to a digital transformation program and help them understand the best way to deal with it.

However, the classic face-to-face Digital Role Play has certain limits. First, it needs the presence of a trainer. It takes effort, it’s time-consuming, and it requires a dedicated training session.

Consequently, it can’t be replicated over time because practicing requires absolutely consistent repetition. Moreover, the trainee may be uncomfortable about stimulating the conversation in a training room, surrounded by other colleagues, and this could negatively impact his learning experience.

That’s why more and more companies are integrating their soft-skill training courses with Digital Role Play systems.

 

Digital Role Play can simulate these types of exchanges with a virtual counterpart reacting in a manner that’s consistent with the quality of our communication, the context, the objectives of the conversation and our own personality traits.
Instead of sitting in front of the trainer, the trainee interacts with a digital or virtual character on a screen. He can do it anywhere, and he can repeat the simulation as many times he wants.

 

A Digital Role Play overcomes the following limitations of a classic role-play:

  • It reduces the stress of being “watched,” so the trainee feels more comfortable
  • It allows one to plan for multiple sessions in a scalable way
  • It tracks the interaction and provides analytical data about the trainee’s engagement and performance

 

The brain doesn’t distinguish between simulation and reality. Therefore, training in a simulated environment that’s realistic enough to replicate reality generates a lasting acquisition of behavioral practices that are maintained in real life.

The digitalization of the training strategy should be the first step toward the radical transformation of your company. A smart digital tool facilitates development strategies in a smart, measurable way.
It’s really the beginning of your digital transformation.

 

Preventing failure with five Digital Role Play programs

Let’s return to the five main causes of failure of a digital transformation program and see how consistent training in conversational leadership can help ensure success:

  1. Conflicts within the cross-functional working group: The management of such a critical situation requires the ability to support conversation in order to encourage the counterpart to make shared decisions and support others during phases involving personal stress.
    A Digital Role Play program focused on collaborative leadership prepares and trains your people in these types of conversations.
  2. Managers who aren’t able to delegate and motivate: In this case, Digital Role Play should train managers to clearly communicate tasks to their employees and support them on the way to success.
  3. The direct managers and top management don’t give enough recognition for the work carried out by the team: It’s essential to deliver a Digital Role Play-based program to train the managers by having such crucial conversations right from the beginning of the project; to have conversations that turn the manager in a mentor for his collaborators and help them acquire the confidence and motivation to resolve conflicts and think strategically.
  4. The inability to make a correct escalation toward management: The success of a project also passes through bottom-up conversations. The ability to talk to your managers is the key to turning a problem into an opportunity as opposed to a stress factor.
    Through Digital Role Play, individual contributors can learn to effectively report to their managers the organizational problems they see, update them on the progress of the project and adequately sustain feedback interviews.
  5. The tendency to search for a guilty party instead of working together to find a solution: Here, managers must be trained to manage the conversations that allow them to inspire their collaborators with a strategic, collaborative and group-oriented way of thinking instead of defending their individual goals.

 

What’s next

A digital transformation is an extraordinary opportunity for the evolution of the company: When implemented correctly, it can lead to a reduction in the time to market, a more scalable business and faster, cheaper operational processes.

However, it also brings risks that, if not managed properly, can cause the entire program to fail. Generally, such risks are linked to a lack of motivation and common vision from the people involved in the program throughout the company.

 

To generate the necessary synergy, it’s essential to create a culture of leadership based on empowering conversations. It’s important to have a culture that can inspire and lead the organization so that people feel free to use their initiative and bring value through their ideas.

 

A corporate culture based on conversational leadership is the best way to discover, motivate and inspire the talents who design and implement transformation projects.
Practice is the only way to teach people to support the empowerment of conversation.

The more often these conversations are held, the more effective they’ll be. Thus, the best way to practice is to learn to support them in a realistic, scalable simulation environment.

 

Here’s the good news: SkillGym has developed a methodology based entirely on Digital Role Play to develop and maintain the conversational leadership skills.

Each of the conversation types described above, as necessary to spread the culture of leadership abundance throughout your company and ensure the success of digital transformation, is part of the SkillGym library.
They can be used to train the managers, high-potential and individual contributors who will transform your company.

 

Would you like to know more about it? Don’t hesitate to visit our website and book a 1-hour discovery call here.
We would be pleased to get in touch with you and continue this conversation.

Leave a Reply

What is Conversational Leadership and How Can it Improve Team Performance

 

Let’s start from the basics: Leaders need followers. Leadership is one of those qualities that only exist through an external recognition.

You can be a great cook even if nobody ever tasted your perfect beef Wellington, or an excellent guitarist even if no living soul ever had the privilege of listening to your cover of the Bohemian Rhapsody solo.

But when it comes to put into practice leadership skills, the only way is to interact with other people and make them observe and judge our attitude and skills in this field. A Leader must communicate; to talk with the others and to let his words drive his followers towards a common direction.

 

But now we have to move a step forward: In a complex, hyperconnected world, communicating is not enough. A Leader can’t just spread his vision to his followers with impersonal, unidirectional broadcast messages.

If he wants to generate a lasting and positive change, he’d need to involve people in a more democratic, empathetic and engaging form of human interaction: face-to-face conversations.

 

Conversational Leadership is not an option

It is not only a matter of self-improving in communication skills, managing an effective conversation is something that every Leader should be able to do. His organization asks him to it. His team asks him to do it (explicitly, if he’s lucky; between the lines, in most cases).

He needs to do it in order to be recognized by his community. Because leadership is not a medal that someone can pin on his own chest.
And most of all, leadership is not effective if it doesn’t spread a positive energy, capable of generating new Leaders in turn.

Here we understand why Conversational Leadership is not an option. A true Leader has to use the transformative power of face-to-face conversations in his everyday work to build connections, influence, encourage people and learn from them.

 

The aim of a person using a Conversational Leadership approach is not to establish himself as the top of a hierarchical pyramid, but to involve the whole group in a self-sustaining empowering process.

According to educator Carolyn Baldwin, “Conversational Leadership is a core process to cultivate the collective intelligence needed to create business and social value”. As a core process, Conversational Leadership is the center of an empowerment strategy.

How is going so far, is this article helpful?

Contact us to discover our
Conversational Leadership training program
leveraging Digital Role Plays
or continue reading the article

Let’s take a more detailed look at the directions they can take to generate such an innovative effect.

 

Conversational Leadership is a core process to cultivate the collective intelligence needed to create business and social value.

 

The areas of conversational empowerment

As with other Authentic Leadership models, Conversational Leadership revolves around self-awareness, transparency, ethics, and a balanced relationship.

With that as a basis, the conversations proposed by the Leader can involve the following areas of empowerment:

  • Inspire
  • Support
  • Lead
  • Discover

 

These are the crucial areas where a conversation can really make the difference, as they reflect the needs we all expect to be fulfilled by our Leader. If we ask an employee to complete the following sentence with one word: “I would really like my boss to be more…”, you can be certain he will answer with a word related to one of these areas.

Imagine the four areas of empowerment as the compass rose on a map: every conversation can move towards one of these areas, depending on the leadership style, the counterpart’s needs and the goal of the conversation.

 

Let’s take a look at them one by one.

 

 

  • We need to be inspiring to be motivated thus encouraging collaboration to achieve better results. The power of an inspiring conversation is very easy to understand if we think about great revolutionary minds who shared their visions with such high effectiveness that people perceived the visions as their own (just think about a man who once said “I have a dream…”).
    Leading an inspiring conversation requires the bravery to risk failure by contaminating the counterpart with our innovative vision and the level of credibility that allows us not to fail in the process.

 

  • Being supportive means being able to help people find their own way to build a path to empowerment.
    A supportive attitude is typical of the coaching leadership style: according to Goleman, this style focuses on developing people for the future by joining the development of individual goals with the long-term goals of an organization’s success.

 

  • Complementary to the support component, the lead component allows for full empowerment when we’re able to give our counterpart clear direction while conveying that we expect full compliance from him.
    Managing a leadership conversation involving this component requires that the Leader appear clear and intellectually honest to be effective in the eyes of the counterpart. Why would someone comply with the directives if they’re confused and if they don’t trust the person who gave them?

 

  • The discovery component makes the stimulating and democratic potential of Conversational Leadership very clear. We grow and improve through confrontation with different ideas.
    There’s a treasure inside the experiences we never made and the points of view we never considered before.
    A good Leader is well aware of this, which is why he listens to people and he constantly learns from them.

What do you think about
the four Areas of Empowerment?

Contact us to experience how we support them with
AI-Digital Role Plays here at SkillGym
or continue reading the article

Types of conversations

Each of the four empowering areas implies different possible types of leadership conversations.
A leadership conversation belonging to the Inspire quadrant should be aimed at generating a mesmerizing sense of improvement, always with regard to the company’s unique context and culture. It could revolve, for example, around building trust among the team or motivating people and making them willing to aim for continuous improvement.

 

A Supportive Leader attempts to reduce employee stress and frustration in the workplace. Therefore, the typical conversations in the Support area could be around easing change, helping to solve conflicts or nudging towards better choices.
This can imply being able to remove those obstacles that prevent people from successfully doing their job, or even building and maintaining good relationships with peers and employees.

The Discover area boils down to creating a deeper understanding of the unique needs of self and others. It may involve conversations about onboarding a new colleague, exploring new possible strategic approaches with the counterpart or aligning someone with the corporate values and behavioral model.

The Lead area is involved when it comes to managing negotiations or delegating a task, for instance. To fulfill the objective in the first case, the Conversational Leader has to fairly represent his own interest(s) and manage the objections of the counterpart.
In the latter case, the objective is achieved by assigning a task with clear directions and providing all information needed to move ahead.

 

Teams need Conversational Leaders

At this point, it may appear even clearer why Conversational Leadership is not an option. Imagine a team whose Leader is not able to have a crucial face-to-face conversation with each of their members concerning these areas of improvement.

An inspiring conversation can foster the motivation of the collaborators, sharpen their sense of purpose and boost great results and team spirit. If the Leader is underperforming in this area, the team will always remain just a bunch of individuals without a common vision about the objective, the values and the sense of their work.

 

At the same time, let’s imagine the consequences of a Leader unable to support collaborators to ease their daily work and to generate a better workplace. A non-supportive Leader doesn’t make those crucial conversations that help in discovering the reciprocal self, highlighting needs and clarifying contexts, to make better decisions.

When underperforming in the Lead area, the team complains of a lack of conversations conveying the right message to drive them. And simply, things don’t happen.

 

There are several reasons to explain such power of conversations. Advanced research is increasing proving neuroscience to be the root.

According to William R. Reddy, there is a deep and inextricable link between the emotional process and the cognitive process. Concept learning takes place automatically when the subject associates an emotion.

A state of profound empathy with the counterpart, therefore, acts as a powerful accelerator of the message, since cognitive learning is accompanied by a deeper level, namely emotional learning. Emotions act at the neuronal level and facilitate the processes of knowledge, but there are two other clear pieces of evidence brought forth by neuroscience.

 

The first is that repetition stimulates the automation of emotional learning. Furthermore, emotions can also be easily induced.
In front of the image of a happy person, subjects are more likely to claim to be happy.

That’s why Conversational Leadership is the best way to generate positive energy and boost employees’ sense of purpose. The empowering energy of the Leader is empathically transferred to his counterpart; and the more the conversation is recurrent, the more its positive effect will last over time and will stimulate the intellectual and emotional activity of the team.

 

Making the whole team succeed

It’s clear that Leaders need to understand their organization. And this can’t be done if they don’t talk to the people on their team, build connections and share a purpose with them. Conversational Leadership is the most efficient way to pursue these objectives, as it places the Leader at the center of a successful and scalable system.

 

A performing Conversational Leader encourages and eases the individual improvement of all the people with whom he interacts; and the value of the personal development is priceless for an organization, as self-empowered and motivated people are an example for the others, their positive mindset is shared between the whole group and it becomes a model that is eventually followed by the rest of the team.

The Conversational Leader is the trigger of a chain reaction: he does the first step when he leads, inspires, discovers or supports the others, but the effects of his actions don’t stop with the conversation. The counterpart who’s involved in an effective leadership conversation learns from it, he endorses the transmitted values and he propagates them among the rest of the team.

 

A long-term impact

Psychologist Richard Boyatzis once conducted an experiment during a study on the impact of the emotional situations generated by significant Leaders on the people who worked with them. These people were asked to identify the key moment when they have felt an “interpersonal synchronicity” with their Leader.

The experiment demonstrated that recalling these moments of full emotional resonance with leaders activated neural circuits in their brains.

 

In order to unleash all their potential, people do need Leaders able to create intense interpersonal communication. The effects of an empowering leadership conversation are durable, and they are remembered as life-changing key moments, and their mere memory produces mental energy.
And by the way, all of those people who felt such intensive interpersonal synchronicity with their own Leader eventually became executives.

An interesting discovery, isn’t it?

Get in contact to discover how to practice
Empowering Leadership conversations
in a safe environment with AI-Digital Role Plays
or continue reading the article

A system of empowerment

The bad news? All of that is not easy, and it cannot be improvised.
Managing a conversation able to engage and motivate others is hard and it requires a high level of confidence. This is why this kind of conversations are perceived as “Critical”: if we do not practice enough to gain real confidence, they are out of our comfort zone, thus requiring much more effort to perform.

We may know what our objective is, but once we start talking with our counterpart, we feel uncomfortable, our phrases are not clear, the arguments slip our mind and the effectiveness of a conversation that was supposed to be crucial increases dramatically until it becomes useful or even damaging.

 

The good news? There is a clear pattern to follow to turn this kind of conversations from critical into empowering.
And of course, practice is the key. The more we train, the more our confidence arises.

You can be absolutely sure that Conversational Leadership can’t be episodic; it has to be seeded and constantly nurtured within the whole organization. It has to become viral and grow following an abundance approach.

When everyone is able and confident having these conversations, a leadership mindset will become an intrinsic quality of your team, leading to a long-term improvement of creative thinking, openness and innovation.

 

What’s next?

Well, this was just an initial overview of a huge and amazing subject. Following is a basic bibliography and a list of articles for further details.

Would you like to know how to get practice and improve in Conversational Leadership?
Don’t hesitate to take some time to read this article (“How to Support the People Development Programs with Artificial Intelligence”) or to book a 1-hour discovery call here. We would be pleased to get in touch with you and continue this conversation.

Let’s change the world together, one conversation at a time!

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Avolio, B.J. and Gardner, W. L. (2005). Authentic Leadership Development: Getting to the Root of Positive Forms of Leadership. In The Leadership Quarterly, 16, pp. 315-338.
2. Gehrke, B. and Claes, M. (2013). Global Leadership Practices. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
3. Boyatzis, M. (2012). Neuroscience and the Link Between Inspirational Leadership and Resonant Relationships. Retrieved from here
4. Gurteen, D. Conversational Leadership. Retrieved from here
5. Hurley, T. and Brown, J. (2009). Conversational Leadership: Thinking Together for a Change. Retrieved from here
6. Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bantam Book.
7. Groysberg, B. and Slind, M. (2012). Leadership is a Conversation. Retrieved from here
8. Patterson, K. and Grenny, J. (2011). Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes are High. New York: McGraw-Hill Education.
9. Reddy, W. M. (2001). The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
10. Scarcity or Abundance in Leadership? (2018). Thrive Global. Retrieved from here

Leave a Reply

Training Conversational Leadership Across Cultures

The impact of cross-cultural management on a behavioral training tool

Those involved in the field of Learning & Development are well aware of the central role that the socio-cultural context plays in the learning processes.
Particularly when dealing with soft skills and improving interpersonal interactions, it is necessary to bear in mind that perceptions, feelings and practices of any trainee are always filtered by the culture to which he belongs. 

 

Here at SkillGym, we are well aware of this challengeSkillGym is a system based on Digital Role Play that aims to improve user behavior in real life. This is done by involving the user in the simulation of a Critical Conversation with one or more characters and evaluating the quality of his observable behaviors put into practice during the conversation. 

It is therefore clear that the socio-cultural context affects at least four structural elements of a Digital Role Play: 

  • The verbal modes in which behaviors are expressed 
  • The verbal reaction of the counterpart on the basis of the way the behaviors have been put into practice 
  • The non-verbal reactions of the counterpart
  • The physical appearance of the counterpart

 

The interpretation of a culture: emic and etic approaches

The main question of this article boils down to thiswhat should be done to ensure that a Digital Role Play developed to be used in a certain local context can be used in different countries, not just with regard to the geographic distance, but also with consideration of ethnographic and social factors? 


T
his question is best answered by first introducing some theoretical concepts.

Behavioral sciences identified two different approaches to understanding the role of cultures: 

  • EMIC approach: it reflects an “inside” perspective and it describes a behavior from the point of view of a person within a specific culture
  • ETIC approach: it reflects an “outside” perspective and it attempts to describe differences across cultures in terms of general and external standards

 

It clearly emerges that the etic approach has a positivist perspective and tends to find the cultural categories universally applicable to every local context.
The emic approach instead has a postmodernist and interpretative matrix, and acts from within a specific context to identify its characterizing traits.
 

 

What is a localization?

The difference between the emic and etic approaches helps to answer our question: what does it mean to localize a behavioral Digital Role Play? 

While developing new contents, the SkillGym methodologists start from an etic approach: they identify the universal categories that underlie behavior common to every culture.  

 

While developing new contents, the SkillGym methodologists start from an etic approach: they identify the universal categories that underlie a behavior common to every culture.

 

For example, elements such as active listening, engagement of peopleand results orientation are key factors required of managers around the world regardless of nationality. 

Once these cross-cultural elements have been defined, the development of the Digital Role Play will follow an emic approach: 

  • Writing the texts or text options from which users select, while taking into account the specific way in which the user’s reference culture puts into practice that behavior 
  • Defining the possible answers that the counterpart is going to consider the typical way in which an individual belonging to the reference culture reacts to behaviors acted by the user 
  • Identifying an actor to interpret the role of the counterpart, who has consistent ethnographic characteristics 
  • Directing the actor’s acting so that his tone of voice and his non-verbal language express the appropriate moods in the most appropriate way to the local context 

 

Now, let’s imagine that a digital role developed to be used in the Anglo-Saxon area should be localized in the Middle East. 

The operation will need to keep the cross-cultural textual structures and to realign what is relevant to the specifics of the new context:  

  • Translating texts in the local language  
  • Modifying them according to the cultural reference 
  • Identifying an actor who reflects the linguistic and ethnographic features 
  • Making new video footage with a new actor who will act out the scripts with an expressiveness consistent with his own culture 

 

The result will be a new SkillGym simulator, coherent with the new context, measuring and training the same behaviors and soft skills as the initial version of that role play. 

The necessary attitude to carry out such an operation recalls Derrida’s Deconstructionism. According to this theory, the meaning of a text is not given a priori, but is subject to multiple successive interpretations. 

The textual canvas of a Digital Role Play must be deconstructed and reworked through an emic interpretation of the local culture. 

 

The impact of the local culture on the verbal language

The social dynamics of a local culture are reflected in work life and have a profound impact on the relational modes that are put into practice during a business conversation.

Let’s take a look at some practical examples of the consequences that these specific aspects have on verbal language. 

 

In China, individual employees can see their work as meaningful when they are garnering support from their managers rather than from their peers.
A Leader who provides precise indications and communicates a sense of authority will tend to have a more positive effect than in Western cultures, where employees prefer to have the opportunity of creating networks of relationships with their co-workers and taking part in decision-making processes.

 

During the process of localization of a Digital Role Play aimed to train managers in the relationship with their collaborators, the forms of communication expressed in the text must take into account these specific cultural aspects.

For instance, if the localization is intended for a Central European country such as Germany, the optimal conversation style should include verbal terms that render a sense of openness and participation.
In contrast,
 the same conversation localized in China will use direct expressions and a top-down approach. 

 

Another classic example of the application of cross-cultural values ​​is the use of cultural metaphors. Metaphorical expressions are quite useful in understanding how a society makes its own universal categories.
In Swedish society, harmony with nature and the ability to live 
with the strictly necessary are considered fundamental elements for the development and well-being of the individual.

Values ​​such as self-awareness, empowerment and resilience can be recalled through metaphors that recall a spartan life in the woods far from technological comfort. 

 

Body and expressions

In addition to verbal language, nuances in non-verbal forms of communication must also be considered in the localization of a Digital Role Play. The same body posture, the same facial expression, can express very different attitudes according to the cultural context in which we find ourselves.  

 

The same body posture, the same expression of the face, can express very different attitudes according to the cultural context in which we find ourselves.

 

In Russia, open demonstration of emotions is an integral part of building trustworthy relations. While playing a behavioral simulator like SkillGym, a Russian user will expect his virtual counterpart to express emotions freely and openly.

On the other hand, when it comes to a non-verbal expression, he would prefer to experience an underacted reaction. 

 

Nevertheless, even the counterpart’s outfit and his physical appearance are elements to be carefully considered while localizing the role play.

In Brazil, sensuality as a business characteristic is related to charisma. For a business professional, presenting himself in an appealing manner is very important.
The way he dresses, talks, and looks at the counterpart are prerequisite to success.

In the United States, casual dress and an informal approach are perceived as a demonstration of a pragmatism and a results-driven attitude.

 

 

How we localize

The SkillGym team has developed a structured process to localize a Digital Role Play as efficiently as possible. 

Starting with the reference text, the content manager at SkillGym identifies and characterizes as “modifiable” those elements that are closely linked to the starting context and which therefore will have to be reworked to be adapted with the new context.

Such elements can be, for example, cultural references, idiomatic expressions, appearance and age of the character, interests and family status of the character.

 

The text, enriched by these indications, is then translated into the reference language. These elements are then analyzed with the help of a local subject matter expert and the most relevant way to rework these elements in the new context is identified.

Thanks to the work carried out, the text will be credible and adapted to the new culture, but the conversation plot will always revolve around the application of the observable behaviors of the original version.
Once this is done, the entire text is translated into the local language.
 

An actor is then selected who has the appropriate ethnographic and linguistic characteristics to interpret the character.
The video is then shot based on the new scripts. During filming, the local subject matter expert verifies that the expressions of the actor’s body express the correct mood and attitude in the way they are normally expressed in the local culture. 

 

Anthropologist Clifford Geertz used the term anthropopoiesis (from ancient Greek anthropos = man, poiesis = construction) to define the process of the cultural construction of an individual as a part of a social interaction.

It is an expression that evokes a rebirth, a state of transition through a cultural manipulation that makes an individual be primordial and indefinite to a member of a social context.
The location of a 
SkillGym simulator can be seen as the result of an anthropopoietic process: a re-elaboration that allows it to be recognized and codified by a specific ethnocultural area. 

 

An English-based SkillGym Digital Role Play

 

The Arabic localized version

An English-based SkillGym Digital Role Play and its Arabic localized version

 

More than a localization: adaptation

Sometimes the elements to be modified may be deeper than those seen so far. In fact, the original Digital Role Play could refer to products, conditions or practices that are not applied to the local context. 

The modification of these elements is called Adaptation and it’s typically carried out at the request of multinational companies that have adopted SkillGym in a country (typically the one in which the headquarter is located) and for which content has been developed revolving around product lines, corporate terminology or regulatory frameworks that are not used in other countries.

 

The adaptation process follows the same steps as the localization, but it requires a deeper level of work by the SkillGym Content Manager.

The modified elements, in fact, have a greater impact on the course of the story, so the Content Manager will have to rework these elements and establish what impacts these changes have on the story as a whole. As a result of this analysis, the plot will require a partial rewrite.
In any case, the structural elements at the base of the original version remain unchanged: the conversation phases, observable behaviors and applied skills.
 

 

The benefits for corporations

Global organizations increasingly need to create new forms of collaborations. The main challenge of an L&D department is to develop competence models that are universally acceptable, but at the same time, can be understood and put in place by the company’s employees all around the world. 

Companies that adopt localized versions of Digital Role Play by SkillGym have the guarantee of being able to distribute an instrument that trains all users according to a single model of skills centralized and crosscultural– to all their branches around the world 

 

Companies that adopt localized versions of Digital Role Play by SkillGym have the guarantee of being able to distribute an instrument that trains all users according to a single model of skills -centralized and cross-cultural- to all their branches around the world.

 

Each country will have at its disposal a version of the role play built according to the specifics of the local culture.

The result is a powerful tool that allows us to understand how behavioral models and common skills must be put into practice in our actual daily context, all thanks to a realistic and immersive experience.
 

At the same time, the different countries have the guarantee that the reference model is developed in such a way as to foster local ethnocultural characteristics, thus ensuring the trainees an authentic and contextualized conversation experience within their personal experience.
The effectiveness is maxi
mized because it takes a central model, theoretical and developed externally according to an etic approach and applies it to concrete and personalized references. 

 

Everything is done by applying an industrialized development process –centralized and controllable- every step of the way. 

Moreover, thanks to the adaptation activity, SkillGym also allows for references to the market and to the business methodologies of specific regional branches to be modified, with a lower economic impact than the cost of developing a Digital Role Play from scratch. 

 

Did you find this article interesting? Take a look at our other articles to learn more about our methodology, case studies and scientific papers. 

And if you want to test out SkillGym, please book a 1-hour discovery call here. 

 

Bibliography

  1. Chhokar, J.S. et al. (2007). Culture and Leadership Across the World: The GLOBE Book of In-Depth Studies of 25 Societies. New York: Psychology Press. 
  2. Derrida, J. (1976). Of Grammatology. Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press. 
  3. Geertz, C. (1965). The Transition to Humanity, in S. Tax, Horizons of Anthropology. London: Allen and Unwin. 
  4. Geertz, C. (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. 
  5. Gehrke, B. and Claes, M. (2013). Global Leadership Practices. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 
  6. Morris, M. et al. (1999). Views from Inside and Outside: Integrating Emic and Etic Insights about Culture and Justice Management in Academy of Management Review, 24 (4). 

 

Leave a Reply

How to Support the People Development Programs with Artificial Intelligence

 

What is SkillGym?

SkillGym is a Software as a Service (SaaS) Digital Role Play environment that offers the opportunity to practice behavioral soft skills in Critical Conversations.
Thanks to the Artificial Intelligence, the tool provides a realistic environment where conversations, as in real life, dynamically adapt to the behavior of the user as the counterpart expresses natural behaviors dictated by their needs and emotions, whether displayed or hidden.

 

SkillGym is a consistent and versatile system that includes several features, such as:

  • A digital fitness program: a personalized and adaptive schedule of the training activity
  • A “preparation room” where the user can find all the necessary information before starting the Digital Role Play
  • The Digital Role Play itself: a realistic simulation of a critical conversation with one or more characters
  • A self-assessment questionnaire: right after the simulation, the user is asked to evaluate the quality of his behaviors during the conversation he just had with the character
  • An analogic feedback: the character talks about the conversation providing an immediate feedback to the user
  • Digital metrics: a dashboard containing all the detailed results of all simulations played by the user
  • Augmented Replay: it allows the user to re-watch each session exploiting Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality to identify key passages in the conversation and analyze each behavior

 

 

To delve deeper into the benefits that SkillGym can bring to your organization, we suggest you read this article (“10 Reasons Why You Should Consider SkillGym for Your Next Leadership Development and Maintenance Program”).

 

Here, we’ll be focusing on the following practical questions:

  • What is the difference between SkillGym and a traditional learning course?
  • How can SkillGym enhance my company’s L&D programs?
  • How can it be subscribed to and used?
  • Can it be integrated with my company’s technical environment?

 

A gym to improve behaviors

SkillGym allows managers and professionals to get involved in a scheduled training program of Digital Role Plays in order to improve the behaviors and the competences needed to successfully deal with the most common human interactions throughout their work life.

The concept forming the basis of SkillGym’s methodology can be described using an obvious analogy:

Behaviors are like muscles: the more intensive the training, the better the results. And above all, the greater will be the spontaneity with which the user will put into practice those same behaviors in real life.

 

SkillGym is the virtual place where the key-people of your company have the opportunity to train their relational skills in a simulated and yet highly realistic environment. We can see the impact of our behaviors on a virtual counterpart with a true personality.

The Artificial Intelligence provides all the SkillGym characters with a specific personality profile, which allows them to have consistent and authentic reactions to our behaviors. This is the key of SkillGym’s “learning by doing” approach: we see the results of our relational approach reflected in the reactions of another individual, and then we learn how to improve in real life.

 

Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn. – B. Franklin

 

Read this article (“How AI Helps Delivering a Better SkillGym Training Experience”) to discover how we leverage AI to provide authentic interactions.

 

One shot training vs constant practice

In a traditional classroom training session, the participants typically retain about 20% of the information that is conveyed to them. Much of the improvement in their performance depends on the daily application of this training “in the field”.

This leads us to two points:

  • Adults learn by doing. The learning process should leverage the learner’s existing experience, it has to be problem-centered and related to topics that are relevant to his/her work or personal life.
  • Practice is the key. Critical conversations drag us out of our comfort zone because we are not used to them. When they happen, we are basically unprepared: as a result, our level of stress grows, reaching sometimes high levels and emotions overwhelm us. Emotions are a huge interference when we have to deal with a business conversation.

 

How many full-day behavioral courses have we attended throughout our work life? We might find them interesting, sometimes even astonishing.
But once back to our usual work, we don’t really apply them. And after a while, we end up to forgetting everything.

Why? Because habits are stronger than knowledge: to change habits, the practice of the behavioral skills has to be constant.

 

SkillGym’s Digital FitnessTM feature allows trainers to define a scheduled engagement strategy for their trainees. Thanks to this feature, users are involved in an automatic and adaptive follow up system. They receive email invitations to play with a frequency that is based on their previous results and usage attitude.

The scheduled engagement makes all the difference in terms of retention of the new behavioral skills learned during the role play.

 

The following case study shows the different impact of three training strategies on comparable groups of trainees: each of them was composed of 45 Leaders with a homogeneous level of the new behavior mastery.

  • The first group trained for two months with a one-shot course of 16 hours, using a puppet-based serious game (the characters of the role play weren’t portrayed by real actors).
  • The second group adopted the same training approach as the first group, but they used SkillGym instead.
  • The third group trained for 1 hour per month, following the SkillGym’s Digital Fitness TM program.

At month nine, the first group retained 4% of the trained behaviors; the second group 16%.
Astonishingly, the third group retained 46% of the behaviors, with progressive improvement.

 

 

Use it everywhere!

SkillGym is a cloud-based SaaS, which means nothing has to be installed on users’ devices. It can be used from any device: desktop, laptop, tablet, smartphone.

 

 

It runs with all the HTML5-compatible versions of the main browsers (Chrome, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Safari, Firefox).

All of the contents in the tool are optimized in order to grant an optimal user experience even using a limited internet bandwidth: a connection speed of 400Kb/s for each user ensures seamless streaming of the contents and a realistic role play experience.

New product updates and technical optimizations are periodically released with no need to locally download or install any updates, and they are included in the existing subscription.

 

How to subscribe SkillGym

SkillGym can be subscribed to with license-based annual plans. The needs of each company can be covered thanks to a set of different plan sizes.

The more the licenses included in the plan, the lower the price per license. Licenses can be assigned to the final users all together or separately throughout the year.

 

The subscription also includes one or more (depending on the plan) trainer profiles, entitled to:

  • Enrolling new users (according to the available licenses)
  • Assigning the users to a specific training group (aka “bootcamp”)
  • Defining a training program for each group, supported by the Digital FitnessTM feature
  • Accessing a dedicated dashboard to track the engagement and the results of all trainees
  • Reviewing the Augmented Replay of every simulation played by each user

There are advantageous terms applied for multi-year subscription.

Contact us for a free quote and find how cost-effective adopting SkillGym is.

 

Same subscription, new stories!

The annual subscription grants access to all the available SkillGym libraries. Each library consists of two to four Digital Role Plays for different business-related areas, such as:

  • Leadership (English, Italian, French)
  • Sales (English, Italian, French)
  • After Sales (Italian)
  • Job interview (Italian, French)
  • Job safety (Italian)
  • Pharma meetings (English, Italian)

 

Quarterly, new contents are made available and included in all the active subscriptions.

Once released, the new contents will automatically be available for all users, with no need to locally download or install any updates.

 

Keep calm and tell me your story

None of the available Digital Role Plays fits your specific needs? Let’s develop your Digital Role Play from scratch!
The beauty of working with the SkillGym team is the possibility to ask for the development of new Critical Conversations and influence elements such as:

  • The type of character (targeting)
  • The plot of the conversation (situation)
  • The setting of the conversation
  • The process of communication, provided that the overall length of each story is shorter than 25 steps
  • The behaviors/competences measured and trained
  • The pedagogical outcome of the exercise

 

A significant savings can be applied to the development price if the client agrees to:

  • Not including specific and branded-related contents
  • Not asking for exclusive usage of the specific tailored critical conversation(s)
  • Focusing on topics that have a significant relevance for other potential companies

 

A very structured process defines all the tasks and terms of collaboration throughout the development of a customized Digital Role Play.

The related milestones are detailed in the project calendar, shared with the client at the beginning of the project, including the relevant dates. The average timing of delivery can be estimated in 12-16 weeks for the development of up to four simulations in parallel.

 

Main phases of the development process of a new Digital Role Play

 

Integrating SkillGym into your company’s technical environment

As in many companies, you already have an L&D workflow? Let SkillGym be part of it.

The SkillGym environment can be linked to your LMS with an SSO connection: this would allow users to access SkillGym with no manual log in.

And all of the users’ results can be sent to the LMS platform or to a Data Warehouse using dedicated web services or secure file transfer protocols. Its data-driven approach allows SkillGym to feed your workflow with the key metrics needed to track the usage and improvements of the users.

 

Did you find this article interesting? Take a look at our other articles to learn more about our methodology, case studies and scientific papers.

And if you want to test SkillGym, please book a 1-hour discovery call here.

Leave a Reply

How a Behavioral Simulator Supports Companies in Finding the Best Fitting Employees

The recruiter’s primary concern

A recruiter has the difficult task of observing a number of unknown people and identifying among them the most suitable person to fill the company’s vacant position. He carefully reads their resumes, which allows him to learn a series of objective data: where they studied, how many languages they speak, where they worked before, etc.

He then meets in person the candidates with the most interesting resumes, where he has the opportunity to personally verify their technical knowledge as well as their ability to present their best qualities.

 

The recruiter knows very well that the person right in front of him is not the candidate in his daily working life: he is the candidate presenting the best version of himself.

A car salesman focuses on the best qualities of the SUV when showing it to the customer: high performance, leather interior, cutting-edge multimedia system, etc. It’s only after buying the vehicle that the customer realizes the high fuel consumption in the city or how complicated pairing it with his smartphone is.

Similarly, a person who is putting himself on the line to get the job he wants will describe himself by hiding his own flaws and focusing on his strengths.

 

But what will be the candidate’s real way of behaving once hired? Will he be collaborative with colleagues? Will he be able to deal with problems and interact with the rest of the group to find the most effective solutions?

If the recruiter had a time machine during the interview, he would definitely want to travel six months ahead to see if that guy who’s answering “Of course, I work very well under pressure!” would really know how to keep calm when it’s only two days until the software delivery date and the development team still has no idea how to fix the bug they’ve been working on for a week.

As Robert McKee wrote: “True character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure – the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character’s essential nature”. [1]

 

It is only when we are faced with concrete choices that we reveal our true personality.

Of course, the recruiter can use work behavior questionnaires. Many solutions available on the market offer scientifically well researched forms that aim to map the behaviors acted at work.
But the limits of these tools are the level of abstraction from a real and concrete situation.

The candidate will be faced with a list of theoretical questions, such as:

  • When working on your tasks, do you take a lot of care with details?
  • Do you always check the details of your work?
  • Do you rapidly absorb new information and facts? [2]

 

Before answering, the candidate will always ask himself the same thing: what is the answer that best reflects the image I want to convey?
The candidate has in mind which skill that the question is aimed to measure and he will naturally look for the best way to answer.

Once again, the direct risk is having a biased version of the candidate: a form of idealization that has not been filtered by real experience.

[1] R. McKee (1997). Story. Substance, structure, style and the principles of screenwriting. HarperCollins Publishers.
[2] All of these questions are taken from real assessment questionnaires

 

Know your candidate, know his attitude

To fill this gap, Lifelike has developed SkillGym Attitude: a digital role play that involves the user in a familiar, realistic, decontextualized situation to measure the candidate’s real approach when interacting with other people.

Through an immersive relational simulation that winds along five episodes that are interconnected, the simulator maps the prevailing attitude within a range of five values (proactive, active, responsive, durable and saboteur).

 

The prevailing attitude is the weighted result of 45 observable behaviors that are analyzed by a computational algorithm throughout the course of the simulation.
In addition to a concise formulation of the prevailing attitude, the simulator provides a timely assessment of the 45 individually observable behaviors and allows for a weighted aggregation in a customizable map of skills.

More in-depth information about SkillGym Attitude’s methodology will be included in an upcoming article dedicated to this topic.

 

An ordinary situation anyone can imagine himself in

The simulated situation has been developed based on users between 25 and 35 years old to parallel the primary age range applying for entry and middle level positions.

The plot revolves around a situation that looks familiar to all: organizing a weekend with friends at the seaside. During the simulation, the user will have to manage unforeseen events, find solutions, reconcile conflicting positions.

The setting in a non-work context is a key element: the user has to be involved in a typical situation where he feels free to be spontaneous and to speak his mind, such as dealing with his friends and family.

 

Although the characters with whom he interacts are not real friends and real family members, the user experiences a sense of involvement and identification, created by three typical factors in the SkillGym simulators:

  • All the characters are portrayed by real actors, who address the user directly, asking questions and reacting to the user’s inputs.
  • Each character in the simulation has his own personality and specific character traits. In addition, thanks to the artificial intelligence algorithms, each character’s reaction is consistent with the way the user interacted with him during the entire conversation.
  • While waiting for the user’s interaction, the characters move and express their moods through non-verbal language. These messages are important to observe, because they are the first signal that makes us understand the effect that our behavior has caused on them. Like at the cinema, the lens of the camera becomes the eye of the spectator, and the realism of the story creates links with his personal life experience, making him perceive what he is observing as the reflection of reality. According to Metz, “The activity of perception that cinema involves is a replica of reality in a new kind of mirror”. [3]

 

The leisure setting and the immersive scenario of the simulator facilitate the user’s spontaneous answers according to his true personality.

At the same time, the tool asks the user to put in place his best abilities, putting himself out there, understanding and adapting to the context and relating to others effectively. In other words, he has to use all of the soft skills that make the difference in work life and that make a person a good person with whom to collaborate.

Furthermore, Lifelike is currently working on new stories to fit the senior level profiles. This scenario will also be a simulation set in a decontextualized situation.

Again, the smaller the connection with a specific job role, the more spontaneous the answers.

[3] C. Metz (1982). The Imaginary Signifier. Macmillan Press.

 

 

How Attitude works

Like every SkillGym’s Digital Role Play, Attitude is a license-based tool provided in Software as a Service (SaaS) mode.

 

The whole process consists of 4 steps:

 

  1. Enrollment: the candidate fills in a registration form and then accesses the tool via a dedicated webpage (usually it’s corporatename.skillgym.biz).
  2. Simulation: the candidate completes at least one episode of the Digital Role Play.
  3. Metrics: the tool measures the observable behaviors acted by the user and it evaluates his prevailing approach (among the following: proactive, active, responsive, durable and saboteur).
  4. Feedback: a synthetic, textual feedback is provided to the candidate. At the same time, a detailed, data-driven report is provided to the recruiter.
  5. The data included in the report can report on each of the 45 measured behaviors or, as an alternative, they can be aggregated into a set of skills.

 

In several cases, SkillGym has been integrated with the customer’s HCM (Human Capital Management) system.
The HCM system sends Attitude the candidate’s information; therefore, Attitude automatically creates the user’s account and it sends him the access e-mail.
At the end of each simulation, SkillGym Attitude sends the results back to the HCM system, using a dedicated web service.

 

The candidate’s user experience

Once registered to the system, the candidate receives an e-mail containing a link to access the digital role play. Clicking on the link will open a web page to start the simulation.

The system is web-based: no program needs to be installed and it can be used by PCs, tablets and smartphones.
Each candidate can only play the simulation once: afterwards, the link will not allow any further access.

 

The simulation is composed of five episodes, all connected to each other.
Before starting each episode, a quick overview of the context is provided: where it takes place along with the description of who the user is about to meet.

 

Below is the list of the five episodes and the related plot:

 

During the simulation, the user can interact with the characters by choosing among different text answer options. Three sets of options are presented at each step, and the user will have to identify the one that is closest to what he would express in real life.

At the end of each episode, the candidate will be able to choose whether to continue with the next episode or to finish the simulation.

Once completed, the tool displays to the candidate the description of his profile, as emerged from the simulation.


A tool engaging Millennials

The candidates using SkillGym Attitude are typically Millennials: very familiar with digital systems, especially through smartphone.
On the other hand, they are used to short content, direct messages and immediate entertainment. Content would keep their prolonged attention only if involving them from the beginning.

 

SkillGym Attitude is structured into five episodes, with an overall average duration of about 50 minutes (the effective duration of each simulation is determined by the user’s answer time).

Completing the first episode (average duration: about 10 minutes) is enough to get a complete assessment of all the behaviors, which allows a mapping of even the less involved candidates. The subsequent episodes, if carried out, will allow the evaluation to be refined and to provide increasingly reliable results.

 

Despite this flexibility, usage data show that almost 90% of users complete all 5 episodes and that the average duration of the assessments is over 40 minutes: SkillGym Attitude is a tool that speaks the language of Millennials by involving them in a prolonged use.

 

Usage data from a sample of 9,500 Millennial users:

No. of completed episodes Average usage time % of Millennial users
1 12 minutes 4%
2 21 minutes 5%
3 32 minutes 2%
4 41 minutes 3%
5 49 minutes 87%

 

Of course, the number of episodes completed by each user is tracked by the tool and is included in the report made available to the recruiter. This is also a parameter that will allow candidates to be evaluated.

 

The benefits for the candidates

As mentioned before, the tool displays to the candidate a textual description of his profile at the end of the simulation.
If requested by the customer, the candidate can also receive an e-mail with a description of his profile and advice on how to improve the effectiveness of his / her interpersonal skills.

 

In this way, even the unsuccessful candidates will be able to benefit from the application process. The time they have dedicated, the effort they invested during the selection process will not be rewarded with the usual impersonal e-mail, “We carefully reviewed your application and we regret to inform you that your profile doesn’t match with the vacant position”.

The feedback provided is really focused on the candidate and allows him to understand what strengths to improve upon before the next job interview.

 

The benefits for the hiring company

By accessing a dedicated reserved area, the recruiter can download at any time the results of all the simulations played by the candidates until then.

The report provides an accurate assessment of the behavioral approach of all candidates, with a level of detail that can be personalized according to the customer’s needs.

 

Nevertheless, the benefits SkillGym Attitude provides to the hiring company are more than this:

  • It improves the employer branding: it provides candidates with an innovative digital tool, appealing to Millennials and providing immediate feedback.
  • It’s a way to improve the brand reputation: all candidates are important, all of them are engaged and all of them receive feedback. And an unsuccessful candidate still remains a potential client, etc.
  • It allows the recruiter to assess all of the candidates who applied for the job. A major pain for large companies that receive thousands of applications for each position is that often the recruiter does not have the time to screen all the profiles of the candidates, with the risk of missing fitting people. With SkillGym Attitude, this first screening can be done without any effort by the recruiter.
  • It provides a reliable and accurate assessment of the actual behavioral skills of the candidate, allowing to evaluate in advance the way the candidate, if hired, will manage the situations in everyday working life.

 

What behaviors and competencies are measured?

Attitude provides data about the measured 45 observable behaviors, and it aggregates them according to a skill model provided by Lifelike.

Customer can remap the aggregation of behaviors (possibly excluding some) to fit the company’s own model. Accordingly, the system adapts the classification criteria to the specific business needs.

 

The list of the 45 observable behaviors is below:

 

Lucidity Consistency between commitments and actions undertaken Use of the network to satisfy the customer
Self-Confidence Clear communication Clear vision of the problem
Attitude to priority change Effectiveness of the arguments Finding a solution
Attitude towards difficulties Understanding the other’s point of view Practicability of the solution
Finding opportunities even in critical situations Management of divergences and agreements Distribution of efforts/resources
Auto-motivation Impact of communication Planning
Personal Availability / Responsibility Active network Search Monitoring
Go beyond Target sharing Flexible use of planning
Generosity Active promotion of the debate Deploying tasks
Medium to long term investment Opening to the debate Removing obstacles
Active Change Research Involvement and collaboration Initiative, willingness to do
Openness Knowledge of Needs Autonomy in execution
Learning speed Customer-centered mentality Responding to the onset of problems
Intellectual honesty Commitment to satisfy the customer Make things happen
Continuous improvement Authoritative relationship Realization

 

The default skill model provided by Lifelike aggregates these behaviors into 9 competencies that are related to 3 macro areas:

  • The SELF area: the way the user leverages his own resources in a situation. The competences related to this area are: RESILIENCE, ENERGY, LEARNING AGILITY
  • The RELATIONSHIP area: the way the user creates connections with other people in a situation. The competences related to this area are: INFLUENCE, HORIZONTAL INTEGRATION, CUSTOMER ORIENTATION
  • The ACTION area: the way the user understands the context and makes concrete actions to manage a critical task. The competences related to this area are: PROBLEM SOLVING, PLANNING & EXECUTION, INITIATIVE

All these parameters are measured by SkillGym Attitude in a scale from 0 to 100, and they can be included in the detailed results report provided to the assessor.

 

Some experiences from the field

Released in 2018 in multiple languages, SkillGym Attitude has been used by several companies operating in different industries.

Here’s some success stories.

  • A large Italian group in the Food Retail sector has implemented SkillGym Attitude for the selection of candidates at different positions offered. The company decided to use SkillGym Attitude as the first step of the recruiting process. All the people who applied for the position received an e-mail asking them to self-register and to complete the simulation. The best fitting candidates were contacted by the recruiter for a live interview. More than 7,000 users made the simulation and 86% completed all of the 5 episodes.
  • A large European financial Group (Bank and Insurance) adopted SkillGym Attitude for the screening of candidates on several open positions. The tool was primarily used during the career days organized by the Group. In these occasions, the result of the simulation has been compared with the results of some live role plays provided to the same users, with a 75% correspondence.
  • A French government department integrated SkillGym Attitude in an app aimed to create connections between the recruiters and young people looking for a new job. The tool has proven to be the killer application to accelerate the matching.
  • Several pilot projects are currently being rolled out in many multinational corporations, with the aim of comparing the effectiveness of SkillGym Attitude with the traditional behavior assessment tools they are currently being used and progressively include this new angle of observation as one of the ways they select candidates efficiently.

 

The decontextualization of the story is the key element that makes SkillGym Attitude such a versatile tool, making it useful to different size companies from myriad sectors. The setting of the digital role play is not related to any specific industry sector.
On the other hand, the behaviors and the competences measured by SkillGym Attitude are fundamental qualities in any job that requires dealing with other people.

 

A plenty of success stories witnesses how SkillGym Attitude can be integrated in the recruiting processes of the companies that operate in different industries all around the world.

It provides the hiring company with an accurate list of metrics about the candidate’s approach and his way to interact with the people facing critical situations.
It engages the users in an immersive simulation and it returns them a personalized and immediate feedback.
It allows the company to get in touch with all the applicants through an innovative digital tool, with positive benefits in terms of employer branding and reputation.

 

If you found this article interesting, we would be delighted to show you how SkillGym Attitude works in a 1-hour discovery call.

Leave a Reply