When given the opportunity to learn and grow, people thrive. By adopting a coaching mentality and approach, managers can help members of their team realize their potential.

Why should managers devote time and effort to coaching their team?

Research shows that coaching leads to better engagement, higher productivity and enhanced customer service. It also helps an employee improve performance, overcome challenges, reach goals and build self-confidence.

The importance of coaching over just managing

To become a true Leader, a manager must develop the ability to coach others.
It is core skill required of every successful manager in the 21st century.

We all know that the days of command and control leadership as a standard way of managing people are long gone.

However, the art of coaching -today’s most effective way for managers to lead- requires learning a set of skills. If managers do not become skilled at coaching their employees, it is unlikely that they will be able to achieve sustainable long-term positive results for themselves or their organizations.

There are many different definitions of coaching, but the following one is the most appropriate for this case:

“Coaching is about connecting with people, inspiring them to do their best and helping them to grow. It’s also about challenging people to come up with the answers they require on their own.” Ed Batista

Several in-field studies report how a poor coaching-oriented management style has bad consequences on the motivation and productivity of employees.
Developing the skills and changing a managerial approach amid daily demands can be difficult.

On the other hand, it is widely demonstrated that organizations become more productive and employees become more engaged when adopting these two organizational habits:

• Managers using listening skills and communication to involve others, setting clear performance expectations, self-awareness (Sparks and Gentry 2008)
• Subordinates having regular conversations with Leaders or coaches where individual and organizational goals are discussed, Leaders give constructive feedback, both positive and negative, and Leaders reflect on their own leadership practices (Larsson and Vinberg 2010)

As a way of managing people, coaching demands for a set of new approaches such as:

• Collaborating instead of controlling
• Delegating more responsibility
• Talking less, listening more
• Giving fewer orders, asking more questions
• Giving specific feedback instead of making judgements

Shifting towards a coaching approach clearly requires the development of strong conversational skills and here again, research supports the idea that the majority of managers widely underperform in the ability to develop their teams through authentic, empowering and effective conversations, which are at the core of coaching.

What types of manager can benefit most from coaching skills?

All managers, regardless of level, should be trained in how to inspire and empowering employees rather than just telling them what to do; this provides opportunities for growth, development and autonomy.

Some levels, however, are particularly indicated when it comes to be identified as potential facilitators of a leadership culture based on coaching:

These groups are most exposed to the opportunity -very often accompanied by the fear- of coaching their employees to the highest possible performance achievement hand engagement.

At the same time, they represent an incredible opportunity for the organization as a whole to change gear and start performing at a new level: They are the best gateway to inject a new leadership culture through example, nudge and listening.

What are the benefits of practicing on conversations for Leaders aspiring to become coaches?

Practice is the most effective way to improve conversational skills and to shift the approach of managers toward coaching.
The more you practice, the more you gain confidence and raise your self-awareness.

Your comfort zone starts to expand as soon as you move the first step toward consistent practice. Practicing by interacting in critical conversations is the best way to improve managers’ ability to coach their employees.

The typical shift in observable behaviors we normally see in Leaders undergoing a consistent practice program on conversations can be summarized as follows:

Which Skills get involved the most in this amazing shift?

There are many skills involved with this change of approach.
Just to mention the most prominent ones, I would say that the following twenty are for sure at the center of this revolution:

1. Be aware of other people’s needs
2. Aim for continuous improvement
3. Be confident with the organization context
4. Be diplomatic and tactful
5. Be inspiring
6. Communicate efficiently
7. Ease change
8. Encourage and value input
9. Ensure accountability
10. Find solutions
11. Generate a positive mood
12. Give credit and rewards
13. Give immediate feedback when needed
14. Have a clear vision of the problem
15. Inspire standard of performance
16. Manage objections
17. Remove obstacles
18. Set goals and long-term perspectives
19. Share decisions made
20. Tailor approach and speech

But those of you who follow my series here on the blog certainly know, by now, that the two most important indicators that get affected by practice are:

• Confidence. The degree of courage, determination, fearlessness and self-perceived experience with which Leaders approach these types of conversation using a coach-oriented approach.
• Self-Awareness. The degree of consciousness, precision and sharpness with which Leaders are capable of assessing their own performance at the end of the task.

What types of conversation can impact most this shift?

Leaders face every day a great number of occasions to enter conversations with their employees, and there are so many types of conversations to practice with that any list would fall short.

However, should I be asked to define a very short list of those conversations that can really make a huge difference in inspiring, developing and leading towards a better team performance, I would certainly indicate the following four:

• Negotiating an objective. Leverage a coaching style to motivate the employees and to increase their self-confidence and self-esteem. They will perform better as well as strive for bigger challenges.
• Delegating. One of the crucial tasks of any Leader. Adding a coaching approach will improve the employee’s performance, since they will feel rewarded and appreciated, encouraging them to stay motivated and keep up the good work.
• Priority Setting Nudge. At some point, every employee needs a gentle push; a nudge to improve their performance. Coaching them through their daily organizational challenges will grow their ability to work better and more aligned with the company’s objectives.
• Giving performance feedback. Feedback is a key moment of the relationship with employees. Being able to coach them through a better understanding of their current limits is essential to turn obstacles into opportunities.

How can you deliver meaningful practice to your Leaders?

Fostering the ability to leverage fruitful and empowering conversation throughout the entire organization is the new goal of any talent development professional, since more and more multi-directional and cross-function leadership conversations are needed.

This is even more important in view of the general tendency I outlined above: supporting Leaders to adopt a coaching style requires a great deal of innovation in training design, to make sure that practice on conversation is not only included but, even better, placed at the center of the journey.

Training on conversation means becoming an interactive part in a dialogue and receiving continuous and multi-source feedback not only on communication skills, but also on self-awareness and self-control.

Role Playing is one of the most important learning strategies for Conversational Leadership development.
However, as discussed in another article (“Digital Role Plays, the Best Way to Develop Conversational Leadership“) it does not come without some limitations if approached the traditional way.

Digital Role Play, instead, can be an interesting solution to overcome those limitations that are typical of the in-class approach.
In this article (“Digital Role Play Stripped Bare“) I explain what is a Digital Role Play and how it can be helpful to support a leadership training program aiming at delivering sound practice on conversations.

What is the typical effort in practicing to improve on coaching skills?

Having delivered thousands of practice bootcamps on conversations to support the transition of managers to a coaching approach, here are some of the evidences we collected on the field.
An average individual training schedule typically engages the trainee for 1-1.5 hour / month, with one or two simulations every other week.

On average, it takes between 5 and 6 months of regular training for 68% of trainees to gain an improvement of around 25% on their initial confidence level in the most popular types of conversations.

At the same time, we noticed that within 9 months of regular training, 92% of trainees achieve the same result.

We call it the efficient threshold of confidence, it’s where trainees get the greatest benefit in terms of performance at the most possible sustainable impact in terms of participation.

Where to go from here

You may now be interested in learning more about tips to select your next Digital Role Play system.
At the bottom of the article mentioned above (“Digital Role Plays, the Best Way to Develop Conversational Leadership“) I provide you with a detailed checklist about what to look at when deciding on which platform to adopt.

It is also very important to reflect on how to integrate Digital Role Play into your existing strategy, since too often these types of tools are just placed at the end of a classic course for a quick “follow-up” that, most of the time, does not add any value, which results in underutilization of the enormous power and potential of these kinds of solutions.

Read this article (“Flipping the Leadership Development Strategy with Actionable and Scalable Programs“) to learn more about the best way to truly integrate Digital Role Plays into your L&D strategy.

Finally, if you are interested in discovering how we here at SkillGym deliver the best in class Digital Role Plays, feel free to book a 1-hour discovery call.

Written By

Andrea Laus

Andrea has 20 years of experience in the industry of digital learning. Since over 10 years now he designs and develop interactive simulations featuring video and AI to bring immersive and authentic digital experiences to leadership coaches worldwide.

Contact Andrea

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.

Written By

Alessandro Guerrini

I am passionate about sports, arts, communication and listening to people and my challenge is to drive personalized projects to a safe harbor working on clients’ expectations.

Contact Alessandro

Conversational Leadership is gaining daily in popularity. And there is a good reason for that.

Conversations are the energizing fuel of leadership, even if organizations sometimes discover this the hard way, when Leaders underperform in their duties of motivating, leading and supporting employees through this important asset.
The old saying, “people don’t leave bad companies, they leave bad bosses” remains true.

The need to create more inclusive and more motivating organizations is one of the reasons why, clearly, we need more and better performing Leaders. Also, we need to take into account the fact that our society as a whole is developing so fast that old patterns and old references get obsolete at a much higher pace.

It is very urgent to cope with this continuous change by developing a new generation of Leaders.

New Leaders who, at different levels of any organizational ladder, can provide support to a more inspired, stable and purpose-driven ensemble of employees. It’s not surprising then to see the rising interest in the potential that hides behind Conversational Leadership mastery.

However, in witnessing the growing development of Conversational Leadership literature, such as books, articles, webinars and the like, too many organizations are still facing the dilemma of how to integrate effective training to support development in a smart way.

In fact, most of the available literature covers the topics of Conversational Leadership and critical conversations in a very cognitive way, providing best practices to rapidly approach most tough situations, but fails to deliver an appropriate and comprehensive program to train the underlying skills required to master this area of leadership in the long term.

Developing leadership, and specifically on Conversational Leadership, requires more than a general vision of the subject and a list of best-practice tips to be applied as needed to some of the most common difficult situations.

Conversations involve behaviors that are highly dependent on habits. Simply knowing what to do, or even how to do it, does not provide enough foundation to act in a way to influence behaviors and, in the long run, to change old and underperforming habits.

If your goal is to establish a robust structure for Conversational Leadership empowerment, you can’t just rely on framing the issue of “critical conversations” as something you solve with some best-practices and deliver a few days of class to just let your trainees know how they should cope with it.

And you absolutely can’t leave them unsupported afterwards, when they need to find out how to turn such knowledge into habit-driven new behaviors and how to keep the balance between the different leadership situations they face every day.

Instead, you need to consider addressing the entire subject in a smarter and more structured way.

To succeed, you need to implement a comprehensive training program based on actionable practice and nothing is better than Digital Role Play as a powerful integration of any preliminary formal education.
However, in order to deliver it the right way, there are at least two ingredients that need to be analyzed in-depth and carefully implemented.

The first ingredient is the training methodology itself.

Since this is not the focus of this article, I recommend reading at least the following three articles, for a comprehensive conceptual coverage of this important ingredient:

• Why Conversational Leadership should be addressed with practical and actionable training (article “From Critical to Empowering Conversations: Let’s Change the World Using the C-FACTOR”)
• Why you should consider flipping the traditional training strategy (article “Flipping the Leadership Development Strategy with Actionable and Scalable Programs”)
• Which metrics should be measured when training on conversational leadership (article “8 Key Metrics to Ensure a Successful Practical Training on Critical Conversations”)

The second ingredient is a comprehensive Curriculum: one strategic plan based on a consistent vision, outlining all the elements required to cover not just the shortcuts, but also and mainly, the real pillars of sustainable skill set development.

The goal can’t be “fixing the issue” with some recommendations and a low-actionable formal class once in a while.
The outline of a proper Curriculum is instead the foreword to the delivery of a structured and credible solution for the long-lasting development of confidence in conversations and of self-awareness of Leaders in their own skills and potential.

So, when you look at consistent practice-oriented training programs, made of scenarios covering the full spectrum of possible situations to practice with, make sure you double check the consistency of the following elements influencing the good application of Conversational Leadership skills:

1. Areas of leadership empowerment upon which to develop conversational mastery
2. Leadership values around those areas, to make sure that the training delivers skills aligned with and respecting key values
3. Types of conversations to practice with that cover the four areas of empowerment
4. Topics that these conversations can address
5. Types of people (“characters”) with whom the conversation, whatever it is, may take place
6. Styles of leadership to apply
7. Skills to train to master conversational leadership

The intersection of these “building blocks” defines not only the different situations with which it makes sense to practice and the type of training that should be covered by the program, but also the kind of elements that require measurement for monitoring improvements in performance and the overall result of the entire program.

Clearly, one thing is delivering general (although smart) knowledge about how to deal with critical conversations, another is to cover all the building blocks of a complete curriculum, set up a measurement system and deploy a consistent schedule for integrated practice.

Let’s delve deeper and see how these building blocks relate to each other and how they can be the best foundation of an amazing and comprehensive training program on Conversational Leadership.

1. Areas of leadership empowerment

The first founding pillar of a training curriculum on Conversational Leadership should answer the question: what areas of leadership influence can be covered through conversations?
It’s a very important question.

I frequently see that the subject is dealt with using a very tactical approach, by listing a number of “difficult” conversations as they come to mind. However, the list of conversations should be the last step in a more in-depth analysis.

Starting the reflection by identifying the main areas of leadership empowerment is a much better way to proceed.
Incidentally, this element can be considered cross-culture and generally applicable to all types of organizations.

Even though the mix can vary slightly, I would recommend the following and well-balanced short-list of empowering areas:

• Lead. This is the key area of empowerment of Leaders. It’s where conversations can drive action and solve potential issues.
• Inspire. This area is the foreword of any engagement. People want to be part of something and inspiring conversations are the means to bring them in.
• Support. Once employees are in the field, they expect Leaders to support them. Either because they ask for support or because their Leaders understand it’s time to nudge them.
• Discover. Reciprocal discovery conversations allow Leaders to remove blind spots and be fully aligned with the reality.

In my experience, these are the core areas upon which it makes sense to design any training program on Conversational Leadership.

2. Leadership values

Before starting to play with conversational tips and tricks, it is essential to ensure that any technique, shortcuts and recommendations are aligned to a set of values that reflect the organization’s goals.

This interesting article by Jim Collins sets forth some important considerations on the importance of aligning actions with value.
The questions you should ask yourself are: does the curriculum you are referring to sound grounded in terms of value? Do those values reflect your values? To what extent?

It’s very important because if you value honesty, for instance, you can’t support a conversational technique that involves hiding unpleasant truths.
And if you value being humble, you can’t incorporate a conversational approach based on cocky and arrogant directions.

Whatever the conversation, whatever the topic, whoever the counterpart: stay true to your core values. Always.

3. Types of conversations

Let’s face it: there are so many types of conversations to train in, that you can’t work out on all of them in one lifetime. So, you’d better plan smart.
Go for the great classic 80/20 approach and select the most important types of each area of empowerment.

You don’t need to cover all types of conversations.

They are too many and, most of all, the majority are either not as critical as they seem (at least in terms of real impact on results and performance) or they do not happen frequently enough to justify focusing your training program on it.

At the same time, please steer clear of “one approach solves all”. It’s not like that. Although I would agree that some general techniques can be applied all the time, practicing with a type of conversation means gaining experience with that specific type of conversation, which is different from any other.

I would recommend selecting 3-4 types of conversations for each empowerment area. To make sure you cover what’s really needed.

A good approach can be that of dividing the types of conversations in groups, such as:

• Conversations happening frequently and/or pushing things forward
• Conversations happening less frequently, but necessary for setting the grounds for better performance
• Other types of conversations that can make a difference when things get really though

4. Topics

Don’t get confused here. Topics and types of conversations are not the same thing.
A type of conversation can be, for instance, giving feedback (I would connect this between the Lead and the Inspire areas of empowerment and I would group it within those conversations happening less frequently, but necessary for setting the foundation for better performance); a topic for this type of conversation could be the performance, attitude or a recent accident, etc.

Each type of conversation includes an abundance of possible topics, which is why.

However, topics are very important to consider in one curriculum since they are one of the key elements toward turning a type of conversation (which is a conceptual thing) into a situation (which is a much more practical thing and that can be addressed with practical training by means of role playing and/or digital role playing for training conversational skills).

A good way to make order of topics is to organize them with a matrix that considers:

• On one dimension, the scope of dealing with that topic. To be very straightforward, here I would recommend the scope being either to review (something happened in the past) or to plan (something for the future).
  Of course, each topic can carry (and usually it does) a piece of both. However, this classification is useful to select truly actionable topics.
• On the second dimension, the domain in which that topic is set. Here I would recommend distinguishing between performance/results (very objective) and relationship/approach (the subjective side).
  Again, very actionable.

So, for example, you may want to focus part of the training on the area of Support, addressing a type of conversation dealing with Ease the Change by discussing the topic of Discrimination for the scope of planning a new approach in the relationship/approach domain.

Whatever the case and the example, this approach to curriculum planning will ensure you define a proper pathway designed with clear directions in mind.

5. Types of people

One of the factors in turning a conceptual type of conversation (i.e. “delegate”) into a trainable situation, is the type of person the conversation is done with. Of course, you can’t design a conversational training program that includes practicing with any and all human beings on earth.

That’s why you need to select a limited range of “characters” that makes sense to practice with. Again, the 80/20 principle can help here.
Some types of characters are more “interesting” than others to play with.

The key criteria of selection here could possibly be:

• How common that character is, so what are the odds of facing that character in our next critical conversation
• How difficult it is to deal with such character once the conversation is started

Of course, the selection needs to consider several elements such as: the way characters think, the way they behave and the way they communicate.
There are several models to define the key traits that determine the way in which people deal with conversations.

This article (“Building Authentic Characters for Effective Digital Role Plays”) outlines the most widely used and I would recommend using more than one model at the same time, to make sure you have a broader vision of the different aspects to consider.

6. Leadership styles

There is no such thing as one leadership style fitting all the situations. Each situation requires the application of a specific leadership style in order to achieve the best effects in terms of conversational outcome.

So, you should carefully connect the dots between the above elements of the curriculum that lead to different “situations” and make sure that each situation is then dealt with using the appropriate style of leadership.

This is a key step. Much too often I hear about things like “we have our own leadership style, coherent with our internal culture”. But the point is that no absolute approach is really performing at all the times.

Instead, it makes sense to say “we have our own competency model” (see this article “Making a Competency Model Truly Actionable in People’s Development” for an interesting discussion about this subject) and, from time to time, we support a different leadership style to adapt according to the specific conversation.

And the specific conversation is the result of a situation which is the result of a mix of elements as described above.
Here is where you get the full potential of reasoning in terms of Conversational Leadership curriculum.

There are several leadership models defined as “styles” using different approaches that a Leader should take when dealing with a situation. Pick one, but make sure you make an informed decision.

If I were to recommend one, I would definitely say Emotional Leadership and I would suggest exploring the 6 styles that make up a very comprehensive canvas of different approaches (this topic is well covered by this article “Using Situational Leadership to Manage Different Types of Conversations”).

7. Skills

Sometimes I see a certain degree of confusion around the subject of competency and skills mapping.

This article (“Making a Competency Model Truly Actionable in People’s Development”) specifically addresses the topic and shows how to connect the dots (and most importantly, how to relate the abstract concept of “competency model” to the more practical and actionable concept of “learning-by-doing” training).

With that clarification of which is which in the competency domain, I recommend sticking to a very well-structured skill set both for the design of the entire training program and for the selection of each scenario of practical training.

Conversational Leadership development is about behavior development and behaviors are the building blocks of skills.
Therefore, it is very important to choose wisely.

Where to go from here

While reading these lines, you are probably planning or working on a training program about leadership. So, I hope I was able to deliver on the following:

• Conversational Leadership is increasingly becoming a part of the picture, which brings with it new challenges on the design side
• Working from the perspective of a well-structured curriculum is necessary to ensure consistency and measurability
• Since Conversational Leadership is acquired mostly through practical training, and since practical training in Conversational Leadership is best delivered through Digital Role Play, relying on a solid curriculum is the best way to approach the world of Digital Role Play design or selection

Most likely you will want to select a ready-made Digital Role Play solution, rather than building one from scratch.

In fact, creating Digital Role Plays is costly and time consuming and there are several solutions on the market that can well-fit your needs.

There are two articles I would recommend you read on these two topics:

• The first article (“The True Learning Scope Behind a Digital Role Play”) tells about the real learning scope of Digital Role Play and it explores the reasons why a Digital Role Play does not need to copycat your scripts and situations to be effective.
• The second article (“Making a Competency Models Truly Actionable in People’s Development”) mentioned earlier, shows how easy it is to connect ready-made Digital Role Play based on a structured curriculum with any proprietary Competency Models.

I hope this article was useful. I would welcome the opportunity to continue this conversation if you would like to comment below.

Of course, we would be delighted to show you SkillGym’s solution in a 1-hour discovery call.

Written By

Andrea Laus

Andrea has 20 years of experience in the industry of digital learning. Since over 10 years now he designs and develop interactive simulations featuring video and AI to bring immersive and authentic digital experiences to leadership coaches worldwide.

Contact Andrea

Is there a “one best way” of leading people?

In 1911, F.W. Taylor stated that there is not a “one best way” of organizing all the possible tasks, but each one should be analyzed and engineered to find ITS OWN best way of doing it, which may differ from one to another, thus creating Scientific Management.

We can take this as a starting point and similarly ask: is there a “one best way” of leading people? The answer, of course, is no, but there is a best leadership style for any given situation.
Thus, a leadership style should be intended as a tool, not only a personality trait.

Is there a “one best way” of leading people? The answer, of course, is no, but there is a best leadership style for any given situation.

Let’s take a closer look at leadership theories

There are many theories about leadership, all trying to define the traits of the excellent Leader according to different criteria. Based on what defines a good Leader, we can group them in macro-categories, and our learning design mainly relies on situational leadership, according to which a Leader should choose the best attitude and action plan based on the context within which he is operating.

In addition, we can identify three macro-styles of leadership according psychologist Kurt Lewin, who developed his framework in the 1930s, thus providing the foundation of many of the approaches that followed.

• Autocratic leadership consists of making decisions without consulting the team members, even if their input would be useful. This can be appropriate when you need to make decisions quickly, but can be demoralizing for the team.
• Democratic leadership includes team members in the decision-making process. This style is not suitable when a quick decision is needed, but generates satisfaction and high productivity.
• Laissez-faire is a style in which a Leader gives freedom on how to do the job and on the deadlines, while providing support and advice if needed. This autonomy can lead to high job satisfaction, but can be counterproductive if the team members lack the knowledge, skills or self-motivation to do their work effectively.

Some years later, Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee described six distinct leadership styles that are nicely summarized in this graphic (source).

A good Leader is not always the same, but must be able to read the context and implement different styles of leadership according to it.

The importance of emotional intelligence

Before defining the best leadership style for each situation, we must point out that to apply situational leadership, emotional intelligence must be fundamentally understood and used, i.e., the ability to recognize our own emotions as well as the emotions and feeling of others, label them appropriately and use this information to guide our thinking, behavior and attitude.

According to a study performed by D. Goleman, “Executives who lacked emotional intelligence were rarely rated as outstanding in their annual performance reviews, and their divisions underperformed by an average of almost 20%”.

Thus, knowing and applying emotional intelligence is the first step to being a better Leader and to using situational leadership.

The model introduced by Goleman defines the emotional intelligence as a wide array of competencies:

• Self-awareness: the ability to recognize and label our emotions, values and goals, and identify  their impact on others during our management activity
• Self-regulation: the ability to control our emotions and adapting to different scenarios
• Social skill: the ability to efficiently managing relationships to drive people to the goal
• Empathy: the ability to be in another person’s shoes, thus considering their feelings in our decision-making process
• Motivation: the ability to set and maintain a drive on the achievement of the goal

Goleman suggests that everybody is born “with a general emotional intelligence that determines his potential for learning emotional competencies”. In fact, emotional competencies can be learned by study and practice, which is also an important point at the basis of the SkillGym methodology.

By practicing in a safe environment specifically designed to train these aspects, every user can improve his emotional intelligence and related competencies, while applying the most suitable leadership style.

Each situation, its own style

In the next section, based on the different theoretical approaches, we will show the best leadership style to efficiently manage a situation that you could encounter in real life and in SkillGym’s Digital Role Plays.

Crisis situations

In crisis situations, when a fast change is needed or if a problem arises with an employees, a commanding, coercive leadership style is the most effective approach. This style often depends on orders, punishment and tight control.
It can have a negative effect on a team, so Leaders must know when to stop using it, usually immediately after the critical situation is over.

Typical aspects of the best leadership style in this context:

• Give lots of directives
• Rarely seek any input from the team
• Control tightly through constant monitoring
• Use negative feedback
• Motivates others by emphasizing the consequences of doing a bad job

This approach is most effective:

• When tasks are straightforward
• When the team needs clear direction and the Leader has more information than the collaborators
• When not doing it will result in serious consequences, such as safety and health issues
• With underperforming individuals when other strategies have failed

This approach will not work well in complex situations and with highly skilled team members.

Times of change

Situations in which a new direction is needed or a turnaround is on the way, are well managed with an authoritative, visionary leadership, since there is the need to inspire and motivate people toward a common goal. The Leader will tell them where they’re all going, but not how.
Empathy is the most important aspect here, but keep in mind that this style is less likely to be effective when you’re working with a team more experienced than you.

Typical aspects of the best leadership style in this context:

• High use of facilitation technique
• Individuals’ perspective on the vision is requested and considered
• Use of a wide array of methods (both positive and negative) to enhance tam’s motivation and performance

This approach is most effective when:

• A new vision or clear direction is needed
• The Leader believes in the vision
• The Leader is self-confident, self-aware and empathic to others

This approach will not work if the Leader is not viewed as credible by the team.

Conflict and stressful times

When the team is experiencing tension or conflict or in presence of trust problems, an affiliative style will help to promote harmony within the team. The Leader has to take in account the emotional needs of all the people and be positive.

Typical aspects of the best leadership style in this context:

• The Leader places more emphasis on the individuals than on the task
• The Leader shares his emotional challenges with the team members in an appropriate manner
• Correct behaviors and task delivery are rewarded

The approach is most effective when:

• The team requires direct assistance
• When used together with other leadership styles like coaching or visionary
• Team’s emotional needs and concerns are clear and shared

This approach will not work in complex situations where clear directions are needed, if the Leader lacks empathy and when the team or individual performance is weak.

Supporting growth

Whenever a collaborator needs coaching or mentoring to develop some skills in the medium term or there is a misalignment in behaviors, skills, etc., a coaching leadership style is suitable because it connects people’s personal goals with those of the organization.

A Leader using this style has to be empathic and focus on developing others. The coaching is usually expressed in having critical conversations, often informally, and has a positive impact because it’s motivating and helps to establish rapport and trust.

Typical aspects of the best leadership style in this context:

• The Leader helps the team member to identify their strengths and weaknesses with the context of their aspirations
• The coach/mentor provides on-going support, challenges and feedback
• In some contexts, it may trade off short-term performance for longer-term development

The approach is most effective when:

• The coachee acknowledges a gap between the “here and now” and where he would like to be
• Team members are motivated to take initiative, be innovative and take risks

This approach will not work in crisis situations, when there is no time to invest in longer-term development of individuals and when individuals are seeking direction and feedback.

Building harmony

When there is a need to onboard the collaborators on a new idea, build consensus and gather the input of the team, a democratic leadership that focuses on collaboration and listening is the best approach.
The Leader has to involve the team in problem solving and decision making, and eventually teach the members the skills they need.

Typical aspects of the best leadership style in this context:

• Team members are invited to make decisions affecting their own work
• Decisions are made by consensus
• Many meetings are held to gather team’s concerns
• Adequate performance is rewarded and negative feedback is rarely used

The approach is most effective when:

• The team members are competent
• There is enough time to manage the meetings
• Team members don’t have a passive attitude

This approach will not work in crisis situations, when there is a shortage of time and with people who are inexperienced or uninformed about a situation.

Getting good results

When the focus is on performance and goals and high standards are expected, the Leader should apply a pacesetting leadership style.

The Leader who chooses to rely on this style must learn how to improve the skills of the team using Kaizen techniques, train them properly and coach them whenever needed.
To maintain team motivation, it is advisable to share the vision and clear expectations.

Typical aspects of the best leadership style in this context:

• The Leader holds and exemplifies the high standards he requests of the team
• Asks the team to work faster and better
• Poor performers are pinpointed

The approach is most effective when:

• Team members are motivated and competent
• Team members need little direction or management
• Quick results are required

This approach will not work if team members have a strong need of vision, personal development and management or are poor performers. Using this style can have a negative effect on the team if overused or used for a long time since it can lead to burnout, exhaustion and high turnover.

Experimenting in a safe, virtual environment

Considering what we have said up to this point, we can conclude that a good Leader is not always the same, but must be able to read the context and implement different styles of leadership according to it.
The leadership in any context is expressed by words, attitudes and gestures. In fact, it’s within a situation that things, gestures, words and attitudes gain a meaning.

When providing soft skills training, role play is one of the most effective strategies because it allows learners to practice a difficult conversation in a protected environment, while having the opportunity to discuss outcomes and receive personalized feedback.

In this context, the situation that is depicted in the simulator is very important and is part of the training experience.

Carefully practicing on the most common and the most critical situations that can happen in real life helps to build confidence in the trainees and generates a “Deja-vu” effect in the most efficient way.
The dialogue between the user and the character of a SkillGym Digital Role Play takes place by selecting from a set of questions and answers that are designed to fit the most common communication styles and possible behaviors.

Each sentence represents one possible application of the requested skills and allows the conversation to flow according to one’s own style and topics. If the user would not use any of the three sentences presented, he is encouraged to select the one he feels is the closest to his style (more on SkillGym skill set in this article “8 Ways Your Skills Will Improve by Practicing on Digital Role Plays”).

Since the possible canvas of different situations to practice critical conversations is potentially endless, here at SkillGym, we decided to apply the Pareto rule -also known as the 80/20 rule- to define which specific topics or issues we would use in developing each new plot, thus efficiently selecting the most common and the most critical situations that could happen in real life.

Finally, it is common practice to aggregate skills or behaviors into broader classifications referred to competencies. Naturally, we also apply this practice at SkillGym.

You can read about our approach in detail in this article (“A Curriculum for Conversational Leadership”) about our Leadership Curriculum.

For the user to achieve the best possible outcome in managing the situation in the Digital Role Play based on the learning objectives, the most suitable leadership style (as theorized by Goleman in this theory about the six styles of leadership) must be chosen.

Would you like to try these different leadership style in a virtual environment? You can book a 1-hour discovery call here.

Bibliography

• Gill, R, Theory and practice of leadership. London: SAGE Publications, 2011

• Goleman, What Makes A Leader, best of Harvard Business Review 1998

• Goleman, Leadership That Gets Results, Harvard Business Review Classics, 2011

• Boyatzis, R., Goleman, D., & Rhee, K. (2000). Clustering Competence in Emotional Intelligence: Insights from the Emotional Competence Inventory (ECI). In R. Bar-On & J.D.A. Parker (eds.): Handbook of Emotional Intelligence (p. 343–362). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

• Six Emotional Leadership Styles

• Leadership Styles –Daniel Goleman et al

Written By

Livio Mariani

Contact Livio

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:

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:

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.

Written By

Alessandro Guerrini

I am passionate about sports, arts, communication and listening to people and my challenge is to drive personalized projects to a safe harbor working on clients’ expectations.

Contact Alessandro

Recently, I was discussing three ideas that are quite fascinating from a conceptual point of view, but also much more practical than one could expect.

Here they are:

1. Leadership is not a badge that we can just pin on our own jacket. Instead, it’s something that we get recognized for by other people, typically members of our community or, if we are well known enough, even by people we don’t know directly;
2. Others start recognizing your leadership footprint through several types of signals. Among them is a prominent role in the way you manage communication, and empowering conversations specifically. People need Leaders, people search for Leaders, and they love to recognize leadership through the way you treat them;
3. Leadership, in its purest form, generates new leadership. This is an age old saying. But it makes a lot of sense to me right now. A true Leader is capable of igniting the light of greatness in other people. This can happen in many ways of course, and certainly conversations are one of the “highways” for this type of ignition.

Starting from there, in this article I invite you to reflect on a couple of powerful questions: how does leadership training, and in particular conversational leadership training really contribute to the development of a more abundant leadership?

What can we do to help to develop the idea that, at least in this field, “scarcity” can be defeated, and leadership can be seeded, nurtured and finally harvested without limits?

Seed communication, harvest Leaders

While reflecting on these intriguing questions, I came across to an interesting article (you can find it here) dealing with the never-ending fight between scarcity and abundance.

I totally share the point of the Walt Institute and the angle they suggest in the article about the correlation between mindset and leadership: “The way you think about the situation has a substantial impact on the way you handle stress, work with others, your level of resilience and the success you experience in the world”.

Specifically, one of the points they highlight in their five recommendations on how to cultivate an abundance mindset: “Appreciate your team and colleagues – let them know how much you value their contribution. The more genuine appreciation you give to individuals, the more positive influence you will have”.

This is where I focus every day and where I think leadership training can make a difference.

Somehow and from this perspective, the answers to the two above questions become quite straightforward: conversational leadership training, delivered in practical and actionable ways such as Digital Role Plays, can help on the development of a more abundant leadership by helping people improve on the way they appreciate, motivate, and drive their team through genuine and efficient communication.

Pursued consistently, this contribution can definitely support the virtuous development of abundance of leadership through a chain-like effect.

In writing this, however, I realize that some of you may raise some more, deeper questions that are worth considering:

• How the mastery of conversations turns people into Leaders?
• How conversations can help Leaders to develop new Leaders (a sort of “legacy of leadership”)?
• Finally, how all this can lead to a whole new level of energy, to a virtuous ecosystem where leadership itself spreads through generations while simply helping people feel appreciated and energized (a “community of abundance”)?

So, our reflection today starts here, let’s try to answer.

Well managed conversations boost leadership

It’s a fact. Leadership is not a skill. It’s a recognition from others when they perceive you as inspiring, reassuring, motivating, driving and all the other adjectives you may want to add to the list.

People around you perceive your leadership by observing and judging your results, your example and the way you communicate with them. What matters to them is how you care about them, how you help them, how you inspire and motivate them toward results that can be shared as a team.

Leadership is the recognized result of your efforts to improve yourself and the world around you.

It’s at the same time a destination and an endless path since leadership requires maintenance and you can always become a better version of yourself.

On the other side, a “conversation” is also not a skill. It’s rather the place where certain skills can be applied and where part of your leadership can flourish.
Conversations are very much connected to the concept of leadership in fact, because among any other leadership factors, they are the most suitable place where you get the most in touch with other people and where other people get close to your way of dealing with them and treating them.

The results of a conversation are almost always significant for how your leadership is perceived and very often such perception is so thin that you need a very high degree of self-awareness to understand the real results of your conversations and just as much level of confidence to be comfortable enough to deal with certain types of conversations,

But, in any case, a conversation transfers energy. Whether it is positive or negative energy is mainly up to you, to your confidence, to your communication skills and to your self-awareness in recognizing when it is time to adapt your approach. When the energy you transmit is positive, people start feeling better.

And the better they feel, the more they will be keen to follow-up in a positive way. This is one of leadership’s most important footprints.

Conversation after conversation, you will not only improve your fundamental communication skills, including the paramount self-awareness and confidence in dealing with critical conversations, but also expose your approach, your intimate core beliefs, your decisions, and your example.

You will expose yourself to the judgement of the people around you in a more intimate way, of course. Putting your effort in mastering the art of critical conversations will help to boost the way you are perceived, but also the impact of your work.

And if you do a good job, your leadership will grow in the eyes of the people you engage.

Energized people can become the next Leaders

Let’s raise the bar. It’s not just a matter of how other people perceive you. As a Leader or not. It’s not a beauty contest. It’s an opportunity for a higher aim.

Being recognized as Leaders offers the opportunity to amplify your message, whatever it is. At the same time, it carries the responsibility of working hard to seed and nurture the next generation of Leaders.

To make an organization really great, leadership must generate and spread in every role from every employee, every manager, every staff member.
Great Leaders are those who have the highest responsibility to leverage their skills and influence to develop all the people around them as well as help them to become new Leaders.

Once again, this responsibility must be met with several ingredients, but helping to spread the culture of empowering conversations by being a living example of it, is one of the most important.

In this way, you will not only nurture better-energized team members, but you will also inject into them, by your example, the best approach of all: listening and supporting others through conversations.

People around us continually judge the importance we give to the things we say by observing the things we do.
Leading by empowering conversation as the peak and moment at which any decision is made and of any action required is a great way to put conversations at the center of collective leadership development.

You will be surprised by the chain effect that generates from here. Those that are considered “critical” conversations will turn into nurturing and energizing moments, where everyone will be happy to stay.

And the collective mindset will move much faster from the “scarcity” to the “abundance” side of reality perception.

You may think of developing a conversation culture as a higher aim of getting recognized as a Leader. As Maya Angelou said, “At the end of the day people won’t remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel”. Developing a culture of empowering conversations is the ultimate way to develop your leadership’s legacy.

The next level

What can generate from this revolution – did you think even for one second about a revolution while reading these lines? Just imagine.

A world where “critical” (and avoidable) conversations turn into “empowering” (and enjoyable) conversations creating a world where Leaders develop new Leaders and where collective energy flows throughout organizations and teams.

A new community made of people who feel better by energizing other people through their communication skills and a well-maintained self-awareness; where Leaders can develop their legacy in a very practical, actionable and effective way for the benefit of the entire group.
A group of growing mindsets and Leaders supporting each other through intimate, clear, and consistent empowering conversations.

Our recommendation for you? Start now.
Start now to work on your skills that bring you closer to your employees.
Start now to ask yourself how self-aware you are about the way you manage what you may call “critical conversation”.
Start now to grow your confidence in this very important step towards true leadership.

There is a potential Leader inside each of us that can be discovered and recognized by others according to how much energy we are capable of conveying and igniting through conversations.

Conversations have superpowers

When Leaders start developing their skills around critical conversations, turning them into empowering moments, individual energy gets multiplied. Visions get shared and collective efforts are organized more efficiently to solve problems and leverage opportunities.
If we strive to think big and we imagine new ways to grow this potential, we start to talk about abundance.

Abundance of energy, of trust, of clarity, of influence. Abundance of better people.

People grow in an environment that naturally nurtures reciprocal respect, manages stress, dissipates fear and encourages each person to expand their own comfort zone. This is where each of us is naturally nudged to grow an abundance mindset.

Next time you think about growing the leadership of your organization, think about what type of investment you are pursuing toward encouraging the development of empowering conversation as a signature of your organization’s culture.

Next step

Wow, what a long reflection. Sorry if I went too long, but I think it was worth.

You may now be interested in learning more about ways to make all this possible in an efficient and measurable way.

In this article (“From Critical to Empowering Conversations: Let’s Change the World Using the C-FACTOR”), I discuss how practicing critical conversation makes all the difference between great Leaders and the rest of us.

If you are looking around to find the Digital Role Play solution that suits your needs, we explore some useful criteria in this article (“Digital Role Plays, the Best Way to Develop Conversational Leadership”) to help you select wisely.

Please take some time to peruse our website. There is plenty of inspiring content including pre-recorded webinars and articles.

Of course, I would be delighted to continue this conversation with you, just schedule a 1-hour discovery call with us.

Enjoy the rest of your day.

Written By

Andrea Laus

Andrea has 20 years of experience in the industry of digital learning. Since over 10 years now he designs and develop interactive simulations featuring video and AI to bring immersive and authentic digital experiences to leadership coaches worldwide.

Contact Andrea