Three clear trends are emerging in the domain of executive and leadership coaching and they are destined to reshape the competitive landscape forever.

ONE – Digitalization of coaching
Coaches will differentiate themselves in the future by connecting through platforms and being able to meet almost anywhere and anytime regardless of their physical location.
Coaches will engage clients through micro-learning sessions, gamification and will add value by providing clients access to content beyond their individual counsel.

As our culture changes, so will the delivery methods of coaches to clientele. The days of in-person coaching are dwindling.

Webinars, online training, and digital coaching delivery methods for clients will become the norm.
Professionals will want coaching that is easily accessible and fits into their schedules.

Be prepared to diversify in order to remain valuable and relevant.

TWO – Ability to show measurable results
What will set successful executive coaches apart from others in the coming years is their ability to demonstrate measurable results.
Savvy clients will only choose executive coaching organizations that can clearly demonstrate how they helped their coachees move the needle.

Pre- and post-360 interviews, smart metrics, structured feedback and other tools will be used to quantify and qualify results.

THREE – Foster the gathering of experience in interpersonal skills
Experience is the best teacher. In the future, executive coaching will move from just explaining to supporting experiences. People will desire to learn in a format that is memorable and fun.

Breakthrough thinking and new information will be driven by executive individualization based on what experience the executive needs in order to achieve new patterns of action.
Since organizations will be placing a premium on those skills, it’s very likely that executive coaching will be in high demand and focus even more on those types of skills than today.

If the three aforementioned points have not sufficiently scared those who still avoid these subjects…prepare for the next unpleasant truth…

You are not there when it matters!

When things happen, when your leaders engage in the most critical conversations with their teams, when skills turn into words and words into decisions—you are not there.
Period.

You don’t know what really happened. All you have is a biased story told by one of the parties: the leader you coach, sitting in front of you, maybe a week later.
It’s not easy to help, when you miss the action.

In this article, you will learn how role plays can evolve thanks to technology based on artificial intelligence (A.I.).

You will read about how you can extend your coaching experience through remote and augmented coaching and why the best coaches around the world have already integrated SkillGym into their coaching strategy.

SkillGym is by far the most innovative and advanced collection of simulated critical conversations for leaders.

Thanks to the perfect blend of artificial intelligence, augmented reality, interactive video, storytelling, automation and metrics, SkillGym is the best companion for executive and leadership coaches when it comes to helping leaders gain confidence in critical conversations and boosting their performance through actionable practice.

SkillGym can become your time machine: Assign simulated life-like role plays and review the entire conversation, shadowing the situations that matter with the help of augmented reality, artificial intelligence and interactive video.

You can sit side by side with your coachees and dive deep into the most specific behaviors and then move on to how that specific approach influences their inner feelings and emotions.

You can deliver best-in-class powerful coaching questions based on the review of real action witnessed in front of you.

You can embrace a totally new way of conceiving leadership coaching sessions, where you can deliver extra value through discussion while truly impacting your coachees’ confidence and performance through consistent post-session practice.

How SkillGym supports Leadership Coaching

SkillGym offers executives and leadership coaches all the tools to engage their clients directly in conversations. It allows you to transform your traditional support into evidence-based coaching.

Astonishing Stories
SkillGym’s comprehensive curriculum covers all the elements that are required to master Conversational Leadership and defines the most typical situations worth practicing.

Our professional storytellers are capable of turning those situations into authentic, engaging and life-like stories by bringing the daily leadership challenges into actionable exercises.

Thanks to the perfect blend of training methodology and interactive technology, SkillGym brings these stories to life, ready for consistent practice-based leadership training.

SkillGym is an interactive video—no puppets, no avatars.
Human beings come alive in a seamless experience, where you are totally immersed in the situation. You can feel their emotions, see their hesitations, hear their whispers.

Actors each have their own personality and a story carefully designed to make you feel like they are one of your people.

The simulation is played in real time with no pauses or freezes. Everything that happens is entirely influenced by the way you play.
Twelve A.I. algorithms deliver an authentic and immersive Digital Role Play experience through dynamic flow of emotions and the evolution of the interactions.

Augmented Replay
Augmented Replay is one of SkillGym’s specific tools that allows you to select any past critical conversation played and review it step by step to see what happened and how the user behaviors influenced the outcome.

It is as if the coach was there with the coachee while they played the critical conversation, however without the psychological pressure of being actually there in real time, which allows the coachee to express their own natural approach without inhibitions.

Augmented Replay allows users to move along the conversation and stop on the most significant steps, allowing for a general overview of the ongoing quality of the conversation. This allows the coach to choose what to focus on: What was done correctly, the low-performance areas or the ups and downs of specific turbulent conversations.

At each step, it details what happened and why, showing which behavior generated which reactions in the counterpart. Additionally, the option of showing or hiding the augmented reality opens the possibility of a push or pull discussion.

There are several aids in the augmented replay: It is possible to understand where objectives are placed throughout the conversation and to assess if each objective was achieved or not and why.

The performance curve then allows you to identify where it may be interesting to focus your attention. Steps that are highlighted in blue draw attention to something interesting that happened there.

This allows you to focus on the individual step to facilitate understanding the action-reaction connection between behavior and engagement including detailed aspects of the conversation.

Meaningful Metrics

SkillGym helps you measure and track over time the two key metrics that underpin the efficient development of all skills related to leadership:

• CONFIDENCE: It can be defined as “the feeling or belief that one can have faith in or rely on someone or something.” When referring to the world of leadership conversations, confidence becomes the degree of courage, determination, fearlessness and self-perceived experience with which leaders approach a conversation, particularly a “critical” conversation, with another person.
• SELF-AWARENESS: We simply ask the trainees to rate the quality of their performance and we compare these self-evaluations with the scores provided by the simulation’s algorithms (i.e., confronting the self-perception with the real outcome). The closer the two scores are, the higher the trainee’s self-awareness.

In addition, we measure and trace over 50 specific skills along with their associated observable behaviors, which are connected to conversational abilities. Most importantly, we connect them to every single element of the dialogues that take place within the simulation.

What’s next

What else can I add? If you are looking around to find the Digital Role Play solution that suits your needs, please look around our website. There is plenty of inspiring content including pre-recorded webinars and articles. Of course, we would be delighted to continue this conversation with you; simply book a free 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

In a prior article (“Making the best of SkillGym Analytics”), we already explored how powerful SkillGym analytics can be when it comes to turning conversations into metrics.
We have seen that there are several ways to measure one’s conversational performance, from the broadest “confidence” and “self-awareness,” down to the most detailed competency model KIPs.

However, one of the main challenges when practicing is finding the exact connection between what was said during the conversation and the result in terms of scoring competencies.

This is where the Augmented Replay becomes helpful. Let’s see how this amazing tool can help you quickly improve your confidence, self-awareness and overall performance by analyzing your past conversations.

Enter Augmented Replay

SkillGym’s Augmented Replay allows the entire conversation to be reviewed after it has been played. The idea is to attend and listen to the action from a third-party position in order to review the performance and reflect on the details.

The two main aspects that users often want to review are:

1. Their own behaviors throughout the conversation. Imagine a way to review each sentence, identify the underlying predominant behaviors and rate their application in terms of quality (along with some input on what other ways were available to deal with that specific step of the conversation).
2. The character’s body language. This is one of the main challenges for most everyone: recognizing other people’s body language. The most advanced Digital Role Play platform allows for this feature.

Since this article focuses on the former item, let’s start by saying that the most intuitive, still most powerful feature of Augmented Replay is the possibility to start/stop the action and move along the conversation to find the specific steps that you would like to review.

It may seem trivial, but before entering the Augmented Replay, the user experience is that of real-time action with no possibility to step back during the conversation. And it makes good sense since, while practicing, we want users to feel the authenticity of real life.

But once the real-time practice is completed, having the option to browse through the conversation is essential to be able to reflect, discuss and learn.

Navigation is ensured by the bottom bar, where each step is a rectangle and, at the far left, you can find the play/pause button.

Deciding which steps to focus on depends on the scope of your analysis; you may want to look at those steps:

• Where you performed very badly, to learn what happened and find a way to improve
• Where you performed very well, to double down on those best practices
• Where your behavior impacted the competencies you most need to improve on

In all of the above cases, the blue curve just above the bottom bar can give you a good idea of what to look at in the search for the right step to analyze.

Once you find the step, you can either:

1. Open the detailed view showing which behavior was behind the sentence you chose at that step
2. Open the detailed view showing the body language of the character while listening to your sentence
3. Open the detailed view showing the character’s answer and summarizing the entire step in terms of your behavior, the character’s answer and the impact of the step on the overall trend of the conversation

From competency to conversation and back

I opened this article focusing on how trainees can connect the dots between a competency model and their daily behaviors.

So let’s look at a few passages in order to learn about this point from SkillGym. Imagine that your competency map looks like this:

You certainly want to learn why you scored low, for example, on the competency called “Communicate efficiently”.

The first step is to look at which behaviors are connected to that specific competency.
You can see this in the SkillGym Launcher.

The next step is to open the Augmented Replay and look at the steps where those behaviors were associated with your sentences.
In our example, at step 15:

It looks like your sentence did not perform well on the behavior called “Accept arguments.”

So the next thing to do is to enter into the details to discover which sentence of yours underperformed that way:

At this point, you have a clear connection between the score of one behavior connected to a specific competency and your actual choice in the simulation.

You can also delve deeper here:

• For example, looking at the body language of the character while listening to that sentence, or
• Analyzing the impact of your specific behavior on the character’s next reaction

All of these triggers will help you to turn any abstract concept of a competency model description into a very real and tangible daily action, the same as talking with your employees in a certain way versus another.

Of course, several behaviors will impact a single competency and that would happen in more than a single step of the conversation.

Thus, I would recommend focusing on one specific competency at a time and looking at all the possible interactions you had during that interview that somehow affected that specific KPI.

Using the Augmented Replay for this purpose is a fantastic way to gain and improve self-awareness, but also the understanding of how close your daily behaviors are to your competency model.

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

Designing a successful training program, especially in the area of leadership development, is not at all easy these days.

Leaders seem to have already learned everything you can tell them. Let’s face it, most leadership training programs out there revolve around the same boiler plate concepts.

At the same time, it seems like the way they are delivered -the outdated formal class-based education- never stops being the number one choice of trainers.
Despite evidence clearly indicates that it is neither enjoyed by trainees, nor is there any significant proof of practical results -aside from those flashy and useless vanity metrics- that can be shown to sponsors.

Leaders seem to have already learned everything that you can tell them. Let’s face it, most leadership training programs out there revolve around the same boiler plate concepts.

Still, too many L&D managers continue to rely on obsolete formats and tricks to enroll, train, entertain and develop Leaders.

We are already facing a new generation of Leaders

The situation, however, will become increasingly unsustainable in the near future, since the new generations of Leaders are on the rise and they expect things like:

• Actionable training activities vs mere knowledge transfer
• Measurable results vs happy classroom time
• Clear effort/outcome balance
• Interactive sessions
• Technology as a natural way to gain both in knowledge and experience

As many of you already know from following my series in this blog, here at SkillGym, I am passionate about understanding what makes good strategies truly great.
Hence, I couldn’t refrain from observing the way our clients have implemented their training strategies and, most of all, how those strategies have shifted over time to leverage the best practices that were acquired on the go.

The result is one reflection and 12 rules that are derived from what 12 outstanding companies are doing when delivering great leadership training.
I am confident you will appreciate these.

My hope is that some of them may be the inspiration for your next program.
That would make my work worth doing and, certainly, this article worth reading.

We can’t afford to continue with the status quo

Let’s start with the one reflection I have prepared for you.

It’s very simple: we can’t afford to continue to plan, design and deliver leadership courses as we have done for the past 70 years.
Times change, people change, the world changes too.

So often I feel like the only ones who don’t recognize this compelling urgency to refresh the way training is conceived and delivered are the same people in charge of making it change: HR and L&D departments that spend every day passionately working on the very difficult task of developing people.

We can’t afford to continue to plan, design and deliver leadership courses as we have done for the past 70 years.

Guys, the clock is ticking.

A new generation of Leaders is already here, and many more will come soon.
And they are not, mark my words please, they are not the same as their predecessors.
These up-and-comings are smart, more technology oriented, less formal and much more demanding for purpose and actionable results.

So please, take a look at what I have seen being done at some of the greatest companies already delivering 21st century-style successful leadership training.

I have been following those 12 companies for over two years now, carefully analyzing:

• The type of training programs they designed around leadership
• The way they enrolled and involved trainees
• The program around which the courses were delivered
• The techniques and the strategies of delivery
• The way they measured effort and results
• The way they kept trainees involved and engaged over time

Many of those courses were great ones, appreciated by trainers, trainees and their sponsors.
Many were just average, and some were absolutely fiascos.

Through it all, I took note of something that was definitely contributing to the success.

The secret is not (just) technology

You may think that, since I founded a company delivering hi-tech for experiential learning, the scope of this article could be to praise the use of technology as THE way to deliver successful training.
But that’s not actually the case.

As I pointed out in a previous article (“Three Case Studies and One Strategy to Keep Users Engaged with Digital Learning”), we ourselves have learned that lesson the hard way.
Technology is definitely a very important ingredient to consider when planning good and balanced leadership training as a means of delivering the experiential part.

Technology alone won’t make any difference if it is not well blended within a comprehensive strategy. But I don’t want to put the cart before the horse here.

I am sure that the following part of this article will provide you with a lot of elements supporting this statement.

The framework of my research

Before entering the details of the 12 ideas that follow, let me give you a general framework to understand the context.

All of the following best practices are somehow related to the following elements:

• They all refer to the design of training programs revolving around soft skill leadership development.
• All are connected to courses where the average participant was a millennial -age range 30-40 y.o.
• They all refer to programs that include some form of practical activity that follows, anticipates or sometimes overlaps formal education.
• Most of the time, the ratio between knowledge transfer and practical activities in those programs was unbalanced in favor of the latter, sometimes with a ratio even greater that 2:1.
• Almost all of them were collected by me, by analyzing the activities from the privileged position of being one of the partners of the design, providing our SkillGym solution as one of the tools for practicing what they learned and learning from what they practiced.
• Therefore, all of them refer to program where technology-based learning was one of -but never the only one- the key ingredients of training design.
• The companies from which I took these lessons belong to the most varied industries -ranging from banking and insurance, to car manufacturing, to oil and gas, to pharmaceutical and many more. This is just to say that the type of industry type is not a correlation factor.
• Finally, they represent both SME and large corporations in size.

Ok, let’s start.

1. Tease trainees early on

Like any other initiative, training has to be ‘sold’ to trainees the right way.
The age of mandatory training is over and with voluntary training, enthusiasm and participation cannot be taken for granted.

I am not saying that you need to become a marketing expert, however, take a look at how media services are promoted.

Think of Netflix: they announce their series months in advance and keep on teasing the audience with bits of information that make their desire grow until they literally feel the need for that show.

I have seen several examples of how teasing trainees early on with a good dose of F.O.M.O. ‘marketing’ can turn the odds of overbooking a voluntary-based training course upside down.

In most cases the best strategies are the simplest:

• Roll-up banners placed in high traffic places
• Online short trailers delivered by email or placed on the intranet homepage
• Emails with curious details
• Involve well-known (also internal) testimonials

Do not forget that teasing requires recurrence. So, you should plan for a service that can make it automatic to ping your candidate trainees.
Again, without becoming an expert in inbound marketing, you can rely on digital solutions that allow users to pre-enroll with the scope of starting an early and automated campaign to develop awareness, attention, interest and action.

I have seen it in process, and it works.

2. Turn trainees into training experts

Another very important strategy is about raising the level of your trainees with regard to the insights of your job.

Adults want to know why they need to put efforts into something. They need a clear purpose.

This part is often left unattended.
If no methodological background is shared with trainees, the are left feeling like ‘it’s not their business’ to know why a certain learning strategy is applied, how it works and how they will benefit from it.

The most successful strategies I have seen include one dedicated module -it can easily be a pre-recorded video and won’t normally last longer than 30 minutes- that explains:

• What learning strategy will be used and how it works
• Why this strategy versus another
• What types of benefits it will bring
• What type of effort is expected from both sides to make things happen
• Benchmark data to show how efficient this approach will be

In this way, learners become more aware of why they should be involved and what will happen along the way.

Onboarding the trainees to the training methods and on the reasons why is one of the most powerful engagement strategies I have seen.
As humans, we want to be part of something and sharing this part -which I realize is not an intuitive thing to do- turns passive audience into active players or “owners”.

3. Plan in months, not weeks

The impact of leadership training should be about rising awareness, improving in self-confidence and self-awareness as well as changing habits. This does not happen overnight.

It takes time. And it does not happen passively.

The most successful leadership training programs I have seen are those where the outline is planned in months, not days or weeks. It means designing a program that is 80% practice and 20% knowledge and the 80% practice is spread across months where trainees are gently nudged to consistently do something that, time after time, will gradually change their approach and, therefore, their results.

Of course, it takes longer, of course it will cost more effort and, sometimes, money -but not necessarily if well design and supported by smart technology.
However, it’s the only way I have seen, in years of experience, that can really turn concepts into action.

For example, the introduction of technological tools such as:

• Automatic scheduling of self-paced activities
• Smart measuring of weekly/monthly progress (see below about the importance of selecting smart metrics)
• E-learning modules to consolidate knowledge
• Digital Role Play (yes, we are in the business of Digital Role Plays) to practice

can help trainers not only to stretch the duration of the training experience, but also to provide meaningful activities and manage the continuous engagement in a semi-effortless way.

4. Focus on few, actionable metrics

No metrics, no measure, no improvement.
This is an old saying that remains very true. However, the opposite is also very true: too many metrics equals no metrics.

Balancing the quantity and type of metrics is a challenging task.

Once again, the best designed and most successful training programs I have seen are those including a great balance of quantitative and qualitative metrics, supporting:

• The understanding of the dynamics of delivery
• The delivery of proof-of-progression

I recently wrote an article fully dedicated to a reflection on leadership training metrics. It’s here (“8 Key Metrics to Ensure a Successful Practical Training on Critical Conversations”) and it’s worth reading to delve deeper on this specific point.

5. Adapt the schedule to individuals

Once you decide to design your next leadership training program with an 80/20 approach, where the “80” is the quota of time dedicated to long-term practicing, you need to define a schedule of practice.

It means setting up a calendar where you help your trainees to organize their training activity in terms of:

• How often
• When
• How much
• On what

they should practice.

Now, imagine having to organize this -which is absolutely a must-do if you want to ensure long-term commitment and engagement- for each of the many Leaders involved in the many training programs you have in parallel.

Two problems:

• It takes a lot of time, so you need automation
• It cannot be considered a one-off activity: the best results come from adapting the schedule on the go, preferably for each individual

This is a lot of manual work, if you don’t leverage technology here -and most probably also very difficult to achieve because you would need to analyze a lot of data on the past activities to significantly plan the future ones.

I dedicated a full article on how well technology can help to define adaptive individual schedules of practical training. Read it here (“SkillGym Digital Fitness: Pure, Adaptive Leadership Training”) to have a broader perspective of how to master this single best practice.

6. Read the sentiment about your approach

Of course, when a training program evolves from a few weeks into several months, you need to find a way to check the sentiment of your trainees along the way.
This is very important, not just to make sure that they are still alive and active, or merely to enjoy some vanity metrics showing how well your design is being delivered.

More importantly, you need to understand pretty early on if any adjustment should be considered.

A well-structured survey system will certainly help you; I would recommend the following principles:

• Define a standard set of questions to ask, ideally between 5 and 10
• Include open-ended questions (1 or 2) to collect opinions and suggestions
• Stick to the same questions every time, to ensure comparability and trend-based analysis
• Define a calendar where you will send the survey at least every quarter (if your program is less than 6 months, of course, you can change this)
• Explain from the onset (remember the best practice No. 2 “turn trainees into experts”) the importance of this approach according to a win-win and reciprocal engagement-based way of fine-tuning the program along the way
• Read the answers (it seems trivial, but I have seen many cases where the data are available, and no one cares) and act accordingly

7. Involve the top management

Little to add here.
I am sure you already know about this best practice.

And I am sure that you’ve been frustrated several times by not being able to stress to them enough the importance of their direct endorsement; unless you are lucky enough to work in the perfect organization.

However, it is not just about getting their endorsement, it is also about reporting results the right way. So, on one side, choosing the right metrics is very important; but defining a schedule and a “ceremony” of reporting are equally important.

Old-fashioned leadership training is by nature deficient of significant performance-related metrics, so the idea of presenting metrics to the top management did not have a large diffusion in the past.

The advent of digital training technology not only allows for better measurements, it also provides a lot of space for better marketing of those metrics upstream.
Again, it’s not a matter of vanity, it’s a practical issue: if you can deliver meaningful performance-oriented metrics and you do that on a consistent basis, you will create the conditions where they will feel the need to endorse your next training program, because they will perceive the value to them from your initiatives.

8. Consider individual contributors

This one is my favorite.
You can recognize a 20th century leadership design approach by the fact that leadership and management are almost two synonyms.

And the direct consequence is that leadership training programs are almost always dedicated to in-role managers or occasionally to the so called “high potentials”, who are destined toward formal authority roles and thus you are committed to prepare them early on.

Instead, a 21th century leadership culture is permeated by the idea of “influence without authority”, where individual contributors not only see the concept of leadership totally separated from that of authority, but they also expect to be considered as an active part of the process of influence.

I can’t go in-depth about this fascinating subject here (I will write one dedicated article soon) however one very successful best practice I have noticed in the development of leadership across the organization is definitely that of including Individual Contributors in the leadership training program planning.

Designing specific programs for them will make the flow of leadership fluid across the organization and will certainly contribute to improving the quality of your results as an L&D designer.

9. Plan formal education on evidence (aka “Flip your strategy upside-down”)

This is the hardest of all.
The reason is that it is 100% counter-intuitive. My colleague and friend Matteo wrote an excellent article (“Flipping the Leadership Development Strategy with Actionable and Scalable Programs”) on the idea of “flipping the training strategy”, which I recommend reading.

The article offers a very interesting reflection on the fact that it makes sense to evaluate a complete flip in the L&D strategy assuming long-term practice as a main activity to exploit the behavioral metrics that you want to address and develop with leadership training.

In a well-balanced strategy, “pit-stop” learning activities should be considered as an effective response to specific needs that emerge based on evidences collected in the scheduled practice.
In this way, they become timelier, more impactful and appreciated by learners in addition to being extremely measurable (as you can monitor their impact on the practice itself).

10. Promote peer2peer support

Collaboration is an excellent means of developing leadership.
Incidentally, the longer a practice activity lasts, the more the resources you will likely need to bring in for remote support.
Trainees will certainly come up with questions and support requests.

What I have seen is that the large majority of those inquiries can be dealt with using a peer-to-peer approach, which generates two different consequences:

• On one side, you will be less involved directly, with a significant reduction of resources you need to put in
• On the other side, peer-to-peer support will amplify the effect of practical training, benefiting both those who are in need and those who provide help

Again, turning your trainees into experts on your methodology will increase their motivation and commitment toward being an active part of the program.

11. Promote a diary

One of the classic problems of leadership training is that you teach about something that it is very hard to measure in terms of direct results on the organization performance, especially in the short term.

When introducing long-term practice, for example by means of scheduled on-line Digital Role Plays, you should also introduce the idea of keeping a diary of how leaders manage their daily activity in real life.

For example, ask them to keep track of:

• How many conversations they do weekly
• With whom and why
• How they perceive their own performance
• How well they managed the conversation’s objectives and phases

You will be amazed by the results, already after few weeks.
In fact, this task will nudge them to:

• Connect the idea of leadership to that of people management through meaningful and possibly inspiring conversations
• Think in terms of preparing their conversation in advance
• Plan their conversations in terms of measurable strategies

At the same time, this approach will help you measure their improvement in terms of self-confidence and self-awareness, providing smart benchmarking on how effective your training activity really is -remember the part about reporting meaningful metrics upstream.

Finally, real life will pair your scheduled on-line training thus doubling the impact of on-the-job training, whether simulated or real-life.

12. Read the sentiment about your outcomes

As you do read the trainees’ sentiment on the way you deliver training just like you read the sentiment of your management on the metrics you deliver.

The same approach as discussed above, simply using a different target for a different purpose.
Resist the temptation to being isolated by bringing in the entire chain of stakeholders and easily turning your activity into one of the founding gears of the organization.

Some final reflections

It’s never easy to plan for success.
And it’s not just about applying a set of someone else’s best practices.

However, looking at what others are doing, with a genuine spirit of curiosity and an open and growth-oriented mindset is the right way to improve on a daily basis.

I hope this (long) article was helpful to you. It was certainly to me: reflecting and collecting the materials to write it helped me to structure some of the vast evidence I collected from around the world about the fact that you need to manage an increasing number of variables to deliver quality if not excellent training programs.

By the way, if you are intrigued about how digital technology applied to leadership development can really help you to make a huge difference in the way you deliver your training programs, here are two articles for you:

• The first (“Digital Role Play Stripped Bare”) is an overview of what Digital Role Plays are and how they can be integrated into a more traditional leadership training program.
• The second (“How Practicing on Digital Role Play Improves Performance: a Case Study”) is a very interesting case study showing the extent to which you can actually influence the real and day-by-day performance of your trainees by introducing a more practice-oriented training activity in your programs.

And finally, if you would like to know more or if you have unanswered questions, why not book a 1-hour discovery call with our experts here?

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

When a company wants to affirm its own culture, most of the time it goes through representing, communicating and training around their corporate philosophy expressed as a set of values, competencies and behaviors, the so-called “competency model”.

Looking at the competency model of a company should immediately depict its attitude and vision, showing how they want to appear to the world and face the daily challenges of their market. Core values, ethics, expectations that every company depicts in its model should clearly define its identity and the requirements it has on the managers and employees.

Looking at the competency model of a company will immediately depict its attitude and vision.

A broad spectrum of meanings

However, when there is a need to describe the set of the competencies related to a role, the literature and the plethora of online articles have a very wide range of interpretations around the terms: competencies, skills, behaviors, intentions, attitude, and abilities are very often used as synonyms or correlated in many ways, but there is no constant in assigning the same meaning to the same term.

If you compare the competency model of many companies, you will notice that what someone calls “skill” corresponds to what others call “competence” or “behavior”, depending on the meaning established by the model creator.

There is not always a shared and acknowledged description on the terms, which can generate misunderstandings when it comes to soft skills training.

The concepts of “competencies”, “skills”, “behaviors”, “intentions”, “attitudes”, “abilities” are often used as synonyms or correlated in many ways, showing a lack of a shared and acknowledged description.

 

Looking for constants

In such a scenario, we notice, however, that there is one constant that connects all the models: the presence of a conceptual hierarchy. A model has many levels of complexity to organize the concepts from the broadest to the most specific one.

Usually the broadest is a domain of competencies or values, and the smallest is related to the observable behaviors expected, that are often declined in different levels of shading from the optimal to the worst one.

For example, a company could value at a broader level the “Communication” domain, which is comprised of many competencies including “Active listening”.
This competency is made of many skills, one of which is “Ask questions” and this skill may have different levels of observable behaviors like “Ask open questions” as the optimal choice, “Ask closed questions” as the sub-optimal and “Not asking questions” as the worst one. When a model has this kind of grading, the levels are usually from 3 to 5.

Let’s try to get things straight

That’s not enough however.
If the aim of a competency model should be that of orienting the behaviors of the people belonging to that organization, such scope is normally addressed by designing soft skills training programs.

Clearly, in order to design and deliver truly effective (and efficient) training, there is a need for a very clear interpretation of the different elements of a competency model in order to be able to conduct the measurement correctly and design training programs that can actually improve the performance of the learner.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines competency as “the quality or state of being competent: such as a the quality or state of having sufficient knowledge, judgment, skill, or strength (as for a particular duty or in a particular respect)”. Similarly, the Cambridge dictionary defines the same word as “the ability to do something well”.

Looking for the term “skill”, the first defines it as “the ability to use one’s knowledge effectively and readily in execution or performance”, while the second states “an ability to do an activity or job well, especially because you have practiced it”.

Both of the dictionaries describe the “behavior” as the fact of managing the actions of oneself in a particular way.

We could continue, but the point is that the meaning of a term in a competency model is given by the interpretation of the authors and its position in the hierarchy.
That’s a good starting point, but let’s delve deeper.

The different building blocks of soft skills training

Let’s try to add clarity with the purpose of better organizing such hierarchy and coming to a clearer picture, thus simplifying the design process of an effective (and actionable) training program.

To do so, it is important to define what the key elements are and how they can be aggregated to create the other ones.

Observable behaviors are the most suitable since they are the components that can be more efficiently and precisely observed and measured. They represent the expression of a skill at particular levels of efficacy, which can be defined using different criteria, as we will see later.

That’s why we can consider them the basic “bricks” that can be re-arranged in competencies and domains to fit the desired competency model.

Observable behaviors, moreover, are the only elements that can be changed, while the elements generated by their aggregation are a representation of one’s style and cannot be directly changed.

Now let’s clarify the most common terms and their meaning, starting from the broader ones, putting them in hierarchical order by defining the meaning of the various terms and the relationship between them.

• A Domain can be considered as a conceptual area that describes a framework of ability applicable to a profession or a role, which expresses one’s capability of doing something in an efficient way in a particular field. This is often fairly broadly identified. In our example, a domain could be “communication”. A domain is made by an aggregation of competencies.

• A Competency can be described as the capability to apply a set of related knowledge, skills and behaviors to successfully perform a critical task in a defined context. In our example, in the domain “communication”, we can identify the competence “Active listening”. A competency is made by an aggregation of skills.

• A Skill is the activity of performing a task, usually pretty precisely described. In our example, under the domain “Communication”, we have the competency “Active listening” comprised by a cluster of skills, one of which is “Ask questions”. A skill shows up in an observable behavior that can be identified in a range of possible manifestations from optimal to worst.

• An Observable behavior is the representation of a skill in a clearly recognizable action in the user. We can identify different levels of efficiency from optimal to worst. In our example, the skill “Ask questions” can have the following grading: “Ask open questions” as the optimal option, “Ask closed questions” as the sub-optimal and “Not asking questions” as the worst one.

Figure 1: The hierarchy of the elements that make up a competency model

Turning a model into action: from skills to dialogues

As anticipated above, the purpose of a model of competencies that details all the hierarchy from the broadness of the domains to the specificity of the behaviors is twofold:

• On the one hand, it serves to align the resources to an approach that is consistent with the organization’s objectives and vision (and therefore to classify for the purpose of including or excluding some elements)
• On the other hand, is used to have an organized system to evolve people’s behaviors (in order to align them to the expected ones, and to improve the individual and general performance)

To do this, the classical training uses a cognitive approach, which is strongly anchored to knowledge transfer that merely explains the model and the expected behaviors related to it. But since behaviors are acted by people mostly through habits, it is necessary to integrate the cognitive part of the training with a more practical one, which can be done by immersing the trainee in an authentic situation to test, simulate and train individual behaviors.

The ideal learning strategy for doing this is the role play, and even better the Digital Role Play (or DRP, take a look at this article “Digital Role Plays, the Best Way to Develop Conversational Leadership” to learn more) that is more scalable, interactive and less expensive to implement than the traditional face-to-face version.

However, even using an actionable training strategy is not enough to ensure effective skills’ development. In order to be truly effective, any training strategy, especially when devoted to actionable practice such as Role Plays and Digital Role Plays, should embrace in a correct and balanced way all the topics discussed up to this point to efficiently work on the competencies, skills and behaviors deployed by the user during the simulation and to provide a realistic response from the virtual character.

Let’s take, for example. the case of how a competency model can be useful in the design of a truly actionable training tool on soft skills such as a Digital Role Play.

We have said that observable behaviors are the basic bricks and also the most important components of a hierarchy of a competency model, since they are the only ones that can actually be measured in a direct way through observation and can be modified through a repetition and feedback-based training process.

The first step is to decide how many levels of grading we will be using: usually the final result is 3 to 5 levels. Based on my experience, 5 is the best compromise since it lets you have the right amount of specificity for each grade whilst keeping a reasonable amount of granularity.

In addition to this grading, which generally describes the worsening of a behavior, a skill can be also turned into a different cluster of observable behaviors that bind to each other with different grades of effectiveness with respect to a goal.

In our example, the skill “ask questions” can have as its optimal “ask open questions” if you want to explore a topic, but if the situation is different and you need to analyze and classify something, the optimal behavior would be “ask closed questions”.

To be able to order the behaviors correctly, it is necessary to apply a series of criteria (I normally use the 6 listed below) which allow for the contextualization of the reasons for which a certain behavior is optimal or not, according to a set of rules of grading:

1. The character we are meeting
2. The type of conversation we are managing
3. The topic of the meeting we are in
4. The scope of the measurement
5. The seniority of the user
6. The time when we use it (at the beginning of the conversation, in the middle, at the end, etc.)

Having a situational approach here is one of the key factors to success, as we have said for the leadership in another article (“Using Situational Leadership to Manage Different Types of Conversations”).

The most important elements to work on in the Conversational Leadership training are observable behaviors, as they are the measurable expression of a skill at a particular level of efficacy.

The application in a Digital Role Play

In a digital role play, these gradings and shadings are usually represented by a very well-designed set of sentences available to the user as options to choose from along the dialogue, where the user is requested to select the one he feels closer to his real-life approach.

The experience is designed in a way that the skills involved are checked multiple times and in the different shades along the story, to provide a precise and weighted measurement of the actual and situational behaviors acted by the user.

Every step of the conversation is bound to one or more skills, guiding the writing of the available options in a way that the storytelling becomes a trigger to action and trains the existing user’s skills in such a subtle way that is invisible to the user, thus also making this methodology suitable for assessment purposes.

In the following image, we can see an example where the user can act the skill “Use objective data” in an optimal, sub-optimal or wrong way according to a mix of the above 6 criteria defining the reasons of such a rating and ranking.

Figure 2: An example of the interaction with a virtual character

Learning from the situation

Using Digital Role Play to show how the concept of observable behavior can be graded and shaded in a training tool to turn it into an actionable learning-by-doing strategy is even more interesting when we consider those Digital Role Plays that allow the option of reviewing a previously played interview and providing the trainees with information about where, when and how certain behaviors were acted (you can check this article “Digital Role Play Stripped Bare” which explains the different phases of the DRP-based training method).

In such case, the meta-narrative strategy to build the sentences of the dialogue (see this article “The True Learning Scope Behind a Digital Role Play” for more details on this approach) can be fully exploited in pedagogical terms by helping the trainees to track a line between their choices and the underlying behaviors (and then up to competencies and domains).

We refer to this as “reverse engineering”.

In the image below, you can see how the explanation of the observable behavior measured according to its qualitative grade for this specific context is given during the review (“replay”) of a conversation.

Figure 3: The sentence as an expression of a skill at a particular grade of efficacy, as shown in the replay

This kind of user experience can be leveraged to design emotional storytelling that helps people to practice behaviors, which are the contextualized in everyday life, as well as to measure their efficacy by providing valuable feedback, both qualitative (in the post-meeting feedback by the character) and quantitative (in analytics and Augmented Replay).

The outcome of this training made by a looping sequence of experience, feedback, reasoning and re-experience leads to an evolution of the trainees’ behaviors and therefore the overall quality of the skills of the Leaders and, as an effect of it, of the entire organization.

The importance of behavior mapping

Still within the context of this practical training application of a competency model, a good question to move forward on would be: what criteria should be used to connect the competency model to the design of a Digital Role Play?

There are several elements to be considered here, but the primary component is increasing effectiveness training. This is accomplished when it is designed as situational while taking into account the mix of variables that define the “situation” in order to understand which skills can reasonably be linked to the exercise.

You have to identify the most important skills to train by selecting the ones that, if well managed, lead to a better performance in the role’s KPI.

Here are some criteria to identify the skills set:

• The type of conversation
• The topic of the conversation
• They type of character with which the conversation is taken
• The role of the trainees

Those elements define the situation and each situation shall be dealt with in a preferred leadership style, which will attract certain skills and relevant behaviors. Then, once the skills are identified, the plot will be developed (what turns a situation into an actionable story) by turning well-graded and well-shaded behaviors into storytelling dialogues.

Grading and shading of the behaviors can be done using the six criteria shared above.
When designing the dialogue, it is very important to assign one or more skills to each passage, ensuring that every skill is checked multiple times (around 10) along the entire story to ensure a more precise measurement.

An important consideration to keep in mind is that the weighted aggregation of behaviors in the skills must be done at the time the DRP is designed, since it is strictly related to the meta-narrative of the storytelling.

After that, it is always possible to re-aggregate the skills in personalized competencies models through an analysis of the meaning of the individual behaviors of a skill and of the skills themselves. To explain this point, let’s see what happens when you choose ready-made Digital Role Plays and you need to connect the trained behaviors (and skills) to your personalized competency model.
In this case, we start from the skills and their shades of behaviors, and we connect them to the competencies possible in a well-weighted manner.

Every skill is made by two or more observable behaviors (OB) that contribute to the score of their related skill with different weights. They can have more or less the same importance as you see in Figure 4 on the left or there can be an OB way more important than the other(s) like you can see on the right (expressed in weighted percentage).

Figure 4: Observable behaviors with different degrees of importance are aggregated to create a skill

The upward aggregation of skills into competencies can be done by analyzing the meaning associated with the skills (and to the subsequent observable behaviors) and searching which skill(s) can contribute to the description of a certain competency.

Since skills (and, more so, observable behaviors) are the most elementary piece of the model, it is normally quite easy to find a way to bring several skills together to match the content of a competency. As we have seen, this operation can be done by excluding, aggregating and balancing the available skills in the desired competencies.

Conclusions

Let’s draw a conclusion.
On one side, in order to provide an actionable meaning to a competency model, whatever it is, it is paramount to clarify the meaning of each of its components and, most of all the relationship between the different building blocks.
On the other side, it is important to relate the entire competency model to some actionable form of measurement and development, to make sure that people in the organization can recognize it as a meaningful way to orientate behaviors along the way.

The most actionable learning strategies normally come with some sort of role-playing, such as Digital Role Play. When the design of such tools is well crafted, it is quite straightforward to leverage the smallest bricks of a competency model to develop powerful soft skills training solutions that fit any model upwards.

Finally, it is therefore fundamental to carefully choose those Digital Role Play solutions that work on observable behaviors that are well aggregated in a comprehensive skill map, since they can be more easily integrated into proprietary competency models.

If you are interested in learning more about designing a balanced curriculum for training soft skills in an actionable way, I would recommend reading this article (“A Curriculum for Conversational Leadership”).

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

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• On classifier domains of competence, E.B. Mansilla; Tin Kam Ho. Check here
• What Is Competence? FRANCOISE DELAMARE LE DEIST & JONATHAN WINTERTON, Human Resource Development International, Vol. 8, No. 1, 27 – 46, March 2005. Check here
• University of Texas School of Health. Check here
• Toward a Common Taxonomy of Competency, Domains for the Health Professions and Competencies for Physicians. Robert Englander, MD, MPH, Terri Cameron, MA, Adrian J. Ballard, Jessica Dodge, Janet Bull, MA, and Carol A. Aschenbrener, MD. Check here

Written By

Livio Mariani

Contact Livio

As mentioned in this previous article (“Make SkillGym the Barebones of an Effective L&D Strategy”), a lot of L&D professionals report difficulties in making new HR technologies (the so called “HR-tech Universe”) quickly actionable and integratable in their L&D strategy.
Often this is described as the consequence of a general scarcity of resources (economic, logistic, etc.) of people development departments, but this is not always the case.

Many times, in fact, the slow adoption of innovative solutions is the result of a deep-rooted mindset of “pit-stop” learning where, even if new and innovative approaches are applied, they most often result in very short experiences for the trainees, typically a couple of days, in line with the consolidated class training framework.

In this situation, methodologies and tools based on practical learning are pushed in the area of the so-called knowledge-transfer nullifying their effectiveness and huge potential.

The result is that they provide only a weak awareness on practices or techniques without consolidating them into the continued practical experience that drives to a consistent performance.

However, the good news is that there is an increasing number of companies starting to approach HR-Tech vendors to benefit the support of technological innovations, such as AI-based Individual Adaptive Learning, Augmented Reality, etc., to develop and maintain their people’s skills with consistent practical learning approaches.

The back side of this is that the majority of them are still looking at HR Innovations with what we call a “predator approach” trying to satisfy the last and more urgent need with a “surgical injection” of innovation into an already designed program, where they should, instead flip their perspective and think how they can evolve their programs into the opportunities offered by HR innovations.

In our experience, the general approach of L&D professionals to the Digital Role Play (DRP) methodology is not exempt from these dynamics.
We (my team and I) can report many cases of L&D professionals deeply impressed by the positive impact of DRP on people development even when they embrace it with the “Pit-stop” approach mentioned above.

In some ways, it offers some short-term results on learners, but unfortunately, it doesn’t allow for the full potential of Digital Role Play tools to be exploited.

Eras of application in L&D programs have, in fact, confirmed the effectiveness of role play techniques to consolidate theoretical and inspirational learning, but have even shown their limitations.

To enable a consistent and sustainable behavioral change, a different approach is required.

The good news is that Digital Role Play tools, if well applied, are able to sustain a true development of behaviors through time, going beyond these limitations.

L&D professionals tend to approach Digital Role Play tools in the same way they do with the traditional role play.
It happens for two main reasons:

1. Digital Role Play is as powerful as traditional role play in providing an effective way to practice Conversational Skills.
2. At a first sight, Digital Role Plays look to be simply the digital version of role plays. That, however, isn’t actually the full picture.
   Digital Role Play offers more than its “non-digital version” because it goes beyond some of its limitations by providing a lot of new opportunities for personal development.

This article explores these opportunities based on the premise that it makes sense to evaluate a complete flip in the L&D strategy assuming Digital Role Play as a main activity to exploit the behavioral metrics that are usually provided by this kind of applications to drive the application.

In a well-balanced strategy, “pit-stop” learning activities have to be considered as an effective response to specific needs that emerge by evidences collected in the Digital Role Play practice.
In this way, they become timelier, more impactful and appreciated by learners in addition to being extremely measurable (as you can monitor their impact on the Digital Role Play practice).

Let me clarify further.
Consider typical People Management or Customer Care training programs.
Those are normally basic courses (historically based on class-training, now “refreshed” adding some e-learning pills). They are usually provided to new-in-role managers or sales reps to support them in dealing with new duties and responsibilities.

Those programs, still largely diffused, offer a strong knowledge transfer imprinting as they include a lot of theoretical elements, Dos and Don’ts lists or instructions and, usually, a smaller number of learning by doing elements.

Practical exercises are commonly covered by individual or group activities. Sometimes those activities are innovative and mind-opening such as pills of Design Thinking (research, define, prototyping, etc.) or Collaborative Solution Definition while other times they are built using more consolidated items, such as card games, puzzles, role plays, surveys, etc.

All of them aim, with different angles, to give a concrete and physical application to the theoretical elements transferred during the training program.

As mentioned above, Role Play Techniques are probably among the most effective ones to achieve this objective in the short-term, but unfortunately, often they are not enough to enable a deep and sustainable behavioral development in the mid- and long-terms.

Let’s move back to the L&D professionals to analyze the main limitations of Role Play Techniques they report:

1. They cannot be constantly performed due to economic and logistic sustainability, as the trainers are not always at the disposal of all of the learners to conduct role plays
2. Those activities put people in situations where they are observed by others, sometimes feeling judged, which could be an issue for reserved or self-conscious employees
3. They are not enabling an individual consistent self-development path, since those are often one-shot activities, normally limited to the training program time frame

In this context, “injecting” a Digital Role Play tool into a one-shot training program is not the optimal way to express its full potential even if it is the most natural temptation for the reason explained above.
A deeper reflection on the L&D strategy is needed, as DRP tools, in particular the AI-driven ones, offer a sustainable opportunity to enable remarkable and persistent behavioral developments.

The benefits brought by Digital Role Play tools

As explored in detail in this previous article (“Digital Role Plays, the Best Way to Develop Conversational Leadership”), DPR introduces five benefits in the application of role play techniques:

1. Consistency of practical training
Behavioral changes require time and consistent practice. DRP platforms make it sustainable from an economic and logistic point of view.

2. Scalability
Everyone deserves the opportunity to improve.
DRP allows the application of the effective “Learning by Doing” approach to all of the employees in a very immediate and manageable way.

3. Metric driven
DRP solutions provide a set of homogenous and unbiased behavioral metrics for the entire learners’ community. It allows L&D professionals to obtain a complete picture in order to set objectives and design specific actions where required.

4. Self-awareness through conversation review
Having the opportunity of self-reflection is a key element in personal development. The best Digital Role Play allows the learner to re-watch the performed sessions adding additional behavioral insights to build internal and external self-awareness.

5. Safe environment
DRP solutions make trainees feeling “safer” than when they play a traditional role play. In fact, they remove that feeling of “being judged during confrontation” that can embarrass and even block some people, in favor of a more natural way to express themselves in the role play session.

As a direct consequence of the elements above, instead of focusing on the elements of similarity between Digital Role Play and role plays, it is worth leveraging the elements of differentiation between them, as they provide an immediate clarification on how a flip in the entire L&D Strategy in the direction of DRP brings a lot of benefits.

I’m referring, as a first element, to the direct measurability of the impact of an L&D strategy when it embraces the DRP approach.

Secondly, its scalability makes the difference in many contexts in providing a consistent (and sustainable) support of practical learning for the trainees.

On top of that, some DRP solutions come with Adaptive Learning features that allow each single trainer to get and follow a meaningful and effective individual learning path.

Take a look at this article (“SkillGym Digital Fitness: Pure, Adaptive Leadership Training”) about Digital Fitness to read in-depth on this topic.

Self-development path to improve confidence and awareness

As mentioned above, Digital Role Play tools offer the opportunity to exploit a wider set of benefits to sustain a process of behavioral change. It takes time and requires a constant effort to be kick-started and sustained through time.
DRP tools have to be conceived as life-long companions for growing organizations that put people’s development in the center of their strategy.

This conclusion is strictly related to the development of individual confidence and self-Awareness (see this article “Self-Awareness: the Single Factor Influencing the Most the Speed of Leadership Development” -and the recording of this webinar– for an in-depth analysis of the fundamental role of Self-Awareness in developing Leadership).

Leadership is a complex matter, sometimes an empty and too broad of word, but certainly it implies a status that has to be recognized by others and not assigned “as a badge”. It means that leaders have to embark on never-ending self-development paths to improve their soft skills.

On the one hand, they have to become masters in leading their teams, inspiring, communicating and acting in the direction of empowering people toward a set of shared objectives.
On the other hand, leaders must have a top-notch mindfulness and sensibility in understanding the true (beyond first impressions and “formal reactions”) impact of their behaviors both from an Internal and External Self-Awareness perspectives.

Being able to deal with these two elements represents a necessary condition to be a successful leader and, of course, it is not for everyone. It implies constancy in practice (that normally means fatigue) and an open mind, ready to accept criticism and negative feedback along the way.

It doesn’t mean that Digital Role Play tools aim to fully replace the current actors of the Leadership Development Industry such as business schools, corporate universities, consultancy firms, etc. (see the HBR’s article “The Future of Leadership Development” by M. Moldoveanu and D. Narayandas, for a very interesting and complete picture of this).

DRP tools offer a booster to support and accelerate current programs, whatever they are, injecting elements of practical learning (which some of them above demonstrate a lack of) with the aim of consolidating and sustaining behavioral development.

Digital Role Plays and the culture fit

It’s time to analyze an interesting point about the adoption of Digital Role Play in an organization.
Revolving around conversational leadership and being deeply connected with the ability of delivering empowering conversations, Digital Role Plays are always measured based on their alignment with the so-called Organization’s Culture.

Defined as “the set of core values, beliefs, and formal and informal ways of interacting that creates the unique environment of each organization”, Culture is one of the key elements leaders have to keep in mind on their journeys as it influences how people evolve and grow.

Surely each organization is different from a cultural point of view, however, there is something to consider when we think about the culture fit of a Digital Role Play solution. Some of the DRP tools, in fact, consider observable behaviors as building blocks of their methodology and scenarios.

You can consider those basic behaviors, such as Asking Questions, Showing Understanding, Involving the Counterpart, etc. as part of the Culture of almost all the organizations.

The way those behaviors are acted (directly or in response to certain stimuli) and how they are organized (with a thoughtful weight) into competencies determine, not only the Competencies Model of an organization, but also its values, beliefs, dynamics, etc., in a word: Culture.

Focusing on basic behaviors, how they are acted and rewarded together with their impact in each specific organization is one of the best ways to ensure an optimal culture fit of a Digital Role Play solution.

Other elements can be considered to maximize the fit, but this is not the scope of this analysis, so let me leave them for another article.

Why flipping the L&D strategy is not only possible, but logical

Let’s come back to the tendency reported in the initial part of this article that “DRP is amazing, let me find a Training Program to inject it in” commonly heard by L&D professionals when they see DRP solutions in action.
In our experience, we saw that the best results (getting sustainable and maintainable behavioral developments) are achieved where there is a flip in the L&D strategy.

It happens when the Digital Role Play practicing paths are made available for the trainees regardless of the training programs already in place. In those cases, instead of “injecting” DRP into current learning modules, we see a flip in the approach, where all the other training programs (e.g., class-based lessons, coaching paths, etc.) benefit from the DRP metrics resulting from the consistent practice of the trainees.

Coming from a unique and homogeneous source, DRP data, in fact, can be used to fine tune, maximize and recalibrate, where necessary, objectives, approaches and scopes of other training interventions.

Employing a Digital Role Play tool as the structural skeleton of an L&D strategy brings measurable and sustainable results because:

• Practicing is extremely useful. See this article (“How Practicing on Digital Role Play Improves Performance: a Case Study”) for an interesting case study on that
• Practicing constantly and consistently is the only way to improve
• Conversations are the essence of everything for human-beings and the core of any leadership development approach
• Training cannot remain a “pit-stop”, bur rather must be seen more as an “ongoing maintenance” part of a never-ending process

In a nutshell

To wrap up some of the conclusions, we can certainly say that the application of the so-called “HR-Tech Universe” that groups all the latest innovations applied to HR management, is one of the most important current trends for L&D professionals.

It’s almost impossible to slight its great potential in terms of both process efficiency and effectiveness.

On the flip side, the application of these innovative technologies and tools into L&D strategies often results in one-shot tests under a what we have defined as a “predator approach”.

Digital Role Play tools, which empower the undoubted effectiveness of Role Play techniques overcoming their logistic limitations, are not out of this dynamic.
Since they provide an effective support to raise confidence and self-Awareness, tackling a matter as pervasive as the ability to manage critical conversations, they should be seen as a long-term companions for learners instead of occasional tools to address specific and time-based needs.

This vision definitely implies a flip in the L&D strategy where a Digital Role Play solution is seen as a structural skeleton from which all the other Learning Programs (that should be maintained “on air”) can benefit by exploiting data and metrics coming from the DRP sessions to maximize their effectiveness.

Feel free to comment below or book a 1-hour discovery call of our tools.

Written By

Matteo Malatesta

Matteo is the head of business design at SkillGym. He supports the product design teams, bringing the voice of stakeholders to the discussion thanks to his international experience in the learning and development industry and his human-centered approach.

Contact Matteo

Is leadership a prerogative of managers only?

We believe that leadership skills are not just a domain of management, since they can be expressed in various activities like listening, motivating and driving whatever the person we have conversation with.

They have the power to shape the context and achieve objectives. So, if well practiced, conversational skills can help any role to achieve leadership.

In this case study, we will see what happens when practice is for sales people. Our objective was to identify if there is a correlation between the use of a Digital Role Play and the increase of job performance in the trainees.

For this purpose, the number of sales actually made by each agent after the training is a suitable and tangible element to rely on, especially because it is compared with their performance before the training, and with the performance of a control group who did not train with a simulator.

Measuring impact of soft skills training is difficult

Measuring soft skills is often a difficult task, and even more difficult is to measure the effect of a soft skills training with real-life indicators, such as the impact on sales.
Identifying the ROI of a training course is a struggle for all trainers and coaches around the world due to the missing immediate correlation with real, tangible results.

That’s why we have implemented a methodology based on a simulation of a real-life situation, with a specific learning design and accurate analytics, where users have to use the same skills from their everyday practice, measured by the software.

Identifying the ROI of a training course is a struggle for all trainers and coaches around the world.

Why digital?

Role play is an important resource for the development of soft skills, since it allows the learners to practice the critical conversations of their role and discuss the outcomes of this experience. Universal issues associated with this methodology are the necessary time commitment and difficulty in scalability, which relegate it as a niche tool or as a resource targeted only toward high-level and expensive training throughout most of the world.

A Digital Role Play is easily scalable, thus letting a greater number of learners profit from it, also relieving them from the time and location constrictions.

How Digital Role Play works

The SkillGym simulator is an interactive movie operated by artificial intelligence in which the user engages in a conversation with a virtual but authentic character in a context specifically designed to challenge his skills.

The dialogue between the user and the customer takes place by selecting from a set of questions and answers, which are designed to fit the most common communications styles and possible mistakes related to good communication rules as well as the selling model created by the company.

Each sentence that the user can choose represents one or more observable behaviors and allows the flow of the conversation to follow 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.

The interface is clear and self-explanatory, so the user does not have to learn how to use the tool and can concentrate on the experience and the contents. It is also possible to activate subtitles and voice-over if needed.

Before and after every user interaction, the customer is “alive” and waiting so that the user can analyze his body language to understand if he is comfortable, under stress, etc.
Even if we aim to reproduce a real-life situation where time matters, the user has the possibility to pause the simulation if he needs to manage an important task that emerges during the training.

Simulation Based Learning (SBL) [1] is a rapidly growing paradigm in education. From the days of simple hyperlinked versions of textbooks, digital learning systems have evolved to complete simulation environments in which students are placed in complex, life-like situations.

It has been shown that these systems provide definite advantages in terms of learning efficiency [2][3].

Role play is an important resource, but the issues of time commitment and difficulty in scalability relegate it as a niche tool for high-level training. Until today.

Our experience

The Digital Role Play we proposed consisted of two different scenarios about a sales meeting: one about distance selling (by phone) and one about face-to-face selling. The products considered were a car insurance policy and a comprehensive household insurance policy.

We have trained a group with the simulator and a control group with a different, classical training methodology.
After six months, we compared the results before and after the training of the two groups, also comparing their real-life sales results in terms of quotes and sales.

An example of a SkillGym simulation

Our objective was to identify if there is a correlation between the use of a Digital Role Play vs traditional learning, and the increase of conversion rate in the trainees.

The numbers

The whole analysis involved 13,755 salespeople from a banking and insurance company, from eight different facilities all around the country.
During the training period, 23,909 simulations were made, with an average of 5 simulations completed per user.

The maximum possible score was 100; the average score was 52.6 and the average best score for the users was 68.
With regard to diligence and performance, 15% of the SkillGym users completed at least 10 simulations (2 times the average). Of that group, 21% reached a best score equal to or greater than 85.

Virtual sales results improved

As a first step, we compared the average score attained by the simulator users at the beginning and at the end of the training period.
For the simulator that mimics a phone sale, we observed an increase in the average score reached by users from 19 to 47 points.

The face-to-face simulator showed a similar trend, but with higher results. Users scored an average of 30 at the beginning of the training and an average of 71 at the end.
This score represents the confidence of the user, i.e., his ability to face the virtual interview like a routine task without too much stress and with a clear process in mind.

This data demonstrates that the trainees actually improved their virtual sales confidence by using Digital Role Play.

Figures 1 and 2 show a detail of the average score for each phase of the interviews at the beginning and at the end of the training activity.

(Fig.1) Average results for each phase of the interview – phone meeting simulator

(Fig.2) Average results for each phase of the interview – face-to-face meeting simulator

Real-life performance improved too!

As a second step, we compared the evolution of salespeople’s real-life sales results between the group who trained with the simulator and the control group who did not use it.
The group who trained on the simulator managed to conclude a customer meeting with a quote 76.8% of the time, while the control group concluded a customer meeting with a quote only 50.5% of the time, indicating a difference of 26.3 percentage points.

With regard to actual sales, the group who trained on the simulator managed to conclude a customer meeting with a sale 26.7% of the time, while control group did it only 18.3% of the time, resulting in a difference of 8.4 percentage points.

Moreover, we analyzed the performance of a smaller sample on the gross sales made by 1,150 salespeople. In the period studied, the increase of the gross sales made by the group who trained on the simulator was 42%.

This is a pretty good result considering that in the same period, the overall average increase of gross sales was only 17%.

Impact on quotes and sales

People who trained with SkillGym Digital Role Play achieved better real-life results as compared to the control group.

Diligent users sell more

We considered a user as “diligent” when he/she completed more than 10 simulations. To compare “diligent” and “non-diligent” users, we excluded the facilities that had less than 100 “non-diligent” users, because it wasn’t significant enough.

So, for this particular analysis, we have considered only three out of the eight company facilities.

In the three cases studied, diligent users always sold more than non-diligent users (32.4% vs. 30% in the first case, 29.9% vs. 25.9% in the second, and 29.4% vs. 25.3% in the third).

Efficient users sell more

We considered a user as “efficient” when he/she reached a best score of at least 85%. To compare “efficient” and “non-efficient” users, we excluded the facilities that had less than 100 “non- efficient” users, because it wasn’t significant enough.
In only one out of eight facilities did the efficient users sell 2% less than non-efficient users.

In all other cases, “efficient” users sold slightly more than “non-efficient” users, as shown in the figure below.

Efficient users sell more

The importance of authenticity

The simulators used in this training activity are designed with authenticity and realism in mind. They follow the company’s selling model while using cases experienced in real life by subject matter experts when creating the stories and the scripts.

The skills trained in the simulators (the ones needed to achieve good performance in the virtual interviews) are the same that salespeople will use in real life.

This is why we believe that the SkillGym methodology allows people to “train by doing” in a virtual environment that is absolutely authentic and realistic, so that the improvement they gain in the simulators can be transferred to real life.

It’s always great to witness how SkillGym impacts real life behaviors. This case study is simply amazing: performance had a huge impact on people, turning those who took the practice seriously into real Leaders of their role and profession.

You may want to read another article (“10 Reasons Why You Should Consider SkillGym for Your Next Leadership Development and Maintenance Program”) in which we outline, in more general terms, how the introduction of SkillGym can be beneficial for your organization.

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

Bibliography

[1]  S. Barry Issenberg, William C. McGaghie, Emil R. Petrusa, David Lee Gordon, and Ross J. Scalese. “Features and Uses of High-Fidelity Medical Simulations That Lead to Effective Learning: a BEME Systematic Review”. Medical Teacher, 27(1):10{28}, 2005.

[2]  Margaret Bearman, Debra Nestel, and Pamela Andreatta. “Oxford Textbook of Medical Education”. Oxford University Press, 2013.

[3]  De Ascaniis S., Cantoni L., and Sutinen E. and Talling R. “A Lifelike Experience to Train User Requirements Elicitation Skills. In Design, User Experience, and Usability: Understanding Users and Contexts.” DUXU 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 10290. Springer, Cham, 2017.

Written By

Livio Mariani

Contact Livio

During training, it is harder to improve your performance if you are not aware of your real level of expertise from the very beginning. That’s why this first step is crucial at the beginning of a training.
There are different ways to raise self-awareness: the emotional feedback and the concrete figures. Here we will show you that mixing the two is even more efficient.

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. – Carl Jung

Self-awareness: an important asset

First, let’s define what self-awareness is. It means that you have a clear and honest vision of your personality that includes not only strengths and weaknesses, but also your emotions and motivations.

In other words, it is the ability to know what you are doing as you do it and understand why you are doing it. Self-awareness is a skill, and like all skills, it needs to be trained.

Being self-aware of your own performance is key. Here are a few reasons:

• When you’re aware of your weaknesses, it’s easier for you to define which way to direct your effort. You know what you have to improve and can directly focus on it.
• It’s also easier to rely on others who don’t share your weaknesses in order to overcome difficulties. Working with complementary people is always easier when you already know what your strengths and weaknesses are.
• By being self-aware of your strengths and weaknesses, you gain objectivity and it helps you make all your choices and decisions.
• Self-awareness helps you be proactive instead of just reactive and makes you raise your standards to always aim at doing better. In other words, it makes you respond rather than just react.
• Self-awareness helps you to improve your emotional intelligence, according to Daniel Goleman’s studies. And mastering this skill makes you understand better the problems you face and so the best ways to solve them.

For all these reasons, it is essential to stimulate self-awareness during training: if you know what your weaknesses are, it’s easier to work on the problem.
Besides, the more self-aware you are, the more rapid and efficient the training will be.

Self-awareness helps you be proactive instead of just reactive and makes you raise your standards to always aim at doing better.

How to efficiently stimulate self-awareness in the long term

In order to stimulate self-awareness, there are two consecutive steps: ask yourself good questions and get a feedback on your actions.

Once you’ve defined your motivations and goals, it’s easier to make decisions.
You can ask yourself for example:

• What am I trying to achieve?
• What am I doing that is working?
• What am I doing that is slowing me down?
• What can I do to change?

After your actions, you can ask for feedback from friends, colleagues or managers. We always need an objective, constructive and direct view on what we did, and they will play the role of the honest mirror for your actions and behaviors.

Feedback, whether it’s positive or negative, is the most powerful way to realize the impact of your actions and attitudes towards others.
But usually people are reluctant to give feedback freely, hence why you often have to ask for it specifically. In part because it’s not always easy or pleasant to hear (who likes to hear that he is performing poorly?); in part because managers, friends and colleagues don’t always have or take time to do it.

That’s why training via role plays using familiar conversations that learners face in their everyday life is a good alternative. It makes users self-aware of how they interact with people and what their impact on them is.

Getting feedback on the conversation they had during training maximizes the self-awareness effect while also helping them find a way to improve their performance.

The self-assessment role in self-awareness

Before getting a feedback from someone to know how you really performed during the role play, it’s very interesting and instructive to self-assess your actions and behaviors.

The questions you can ask yourself can be classified in two types: internal and external self-awareness.
Internal self-awareness is the way you evaluate the impact of your actions.
External self-awareness is having a clear view of what people think of you.

To go deeper into this subject, do not hesitate to read our article (“Self-Awareness: the Single Factor Influencing the Most the Speed of Leadership Development”).

After or during a simulated conversation, we assess internal self-awareness, for example, by asking you to evaluate:

• how the meeting went/is going
• how you think you interacted with your friend or colleague
• if you think he/she understood your point and arguments
• if and how you put into practice some skills, etc.

These questions seem ridiculously simple and you may think the answers are obvious, but this “inner examination” is the best way to raise your self-awareness of your performance because:

• You HAVE TO think objectively about your performance and the way you managed the conversation, but also about how the character perceived your approach. This is something we usually don’t do as part of our day-to-day activities.
• It will make you put into practice during subsequent conversations all the elements that you became aware of during this role play.
• In a more general way, assessing your own performance during the role play you’ve just done involves and engages you even more in the training, empowering you in the development of your performance.

SkillGym self-assessment questionnaire

Assessing your own performance during the role play you’ve just done involves and engages you even more in the training, empowering you in the development of your performance.

From self-assessment to feedback

Once you have self-assessed your performance, it’s time for you to receive feedback on what you did. There are two forms of feedback: subjective and objective.

Subjective feedback is usually an oral report from your counterpart, trainer or manager. It is defined as subjective because you receive his personal opinion on what you did.
He gives you his feelings, his perception and so this feedback depends on his characteristics, motivations, needs met, etc.

By receiving this feedback, you activate the right side of your brain, which is connected to feelings, imagination and holistic thinking, according to Roger W. Sperry’s right brain-left brain theory.

On another hand, the objective feedback consists within a set of metrics and measurable data and figures that provide information about your performance.
This can be, for example, a customer feedback survey, software results obtained after a training, etc.

By receiving this kind of feedback, you activate the left side of your brain, connected to logic, facts and analytical thinking.

What your brain hemispheres prefer

That’s why receiving both kinds of feedback is twice as efficient. You activate both sides of the brain and, by doing so, have a full vision of your performance as it raises your awareness of your true skill level.

Combine emotional feedback and analytical metrics: the Digital Role Play solution

As we said earlier, self-awareness is a skill and, like all skills, it needs to be regularly trained to improve.
Additionally, skills can improve or worsen over time as your strengths, weaknesses, motivations and goals evolve with your experience. That’s why regular practice helps you maintain it.

In order to put this skill into practice, it is shown that Digital Role Plays like SkillGym are very efficient. As it places the learners in real conditions of a familiar situation, it helps them see if they have the appropriate qualities, skills and behaviors for the task.

And in order to change them, repeated practice is the best way, as demonstrated in our article (“Why Use Interactive Storytelling in Training: Benefits of Role Plays”) on mirror neurons. Mirror neurons record what you see, hear and learn and thus help you unconsciously assimilate, repeat and improve your actions and behaviors.

The self-awareness skill can improve or worsen over time, as your strengths, weaknesses, motivations and goals evolve with your experience. That’s why regular practice helps you maintain it.

And thanks to digital technology, combining metrics and emotions has never been easier.

In SkillGym simulators:

• You can simulate in a safe environment one of the typical conversations you have with your teammates and managers by meeting a real character with his own needs, personality and moods.
• Then, after the meeting, you will be asked to assess your performance based on different questions on your behaviors, skills, approach, etc.
• You will receive an emotional feedback from the teammate or the manager you’ve just talked with. He will give his personal opinion on your approach and attitude during the meeting.
• Finally, you will be provided objective results and metrics in order to know exactly what your performance was: global performance, objectives reached, skills and behaviors, etc. Even your self-awareness is calculated according to your self-assessment.

The character’s feedback is always combined with objective metrics to give you a full overview of your approach

Using this unique approach, SkillGym is able to provide enough data for both your left and right hemispheres to process thus helping you raise your self-awareness on your strengths and weaknesses.
By knowing yourself better, you can focus on improving!

Conclusion

In adult learning, self-awareness is key.
Knowing what your skills and motivations are helps you focus on what the problems are, what you have to improve on and how you can do it.

To raise your self-awareness on your skills and improve them, SkillGym and its Digital Role Plays are the solution.

In a safe training environment, you can face as many simulated scenarios as you want, self-assess your performance, receive emotional feedback and evaluate your results thanks to objective metrics.

Do you want to go more in depth into the SkillGym approach? Don’t hesitate to read our article (“How AI Helps Delivering a Better SkillGym Training Experience”).
If you’re interested in the theories behind our approach, then why not read this article “Learning Theories Supporting SkillGym Methodology”?

If you are interested in our work and approach, book a 1-hour discovery call here.

Written By

Anne-Laure Blanco

I love to turn life into pedagogical stories. My challenge is to make storytelling as powerful as real-life experience. For a real immersive User Experience.

Contact Anne Laure

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 Fitness^TM 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 Fitness^TM 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.

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

Training adults is always a challenge: adults have enough experience to have already built their own opinions, ideas and habits, which are hard to change.
Besides, they don’t want to waste time, so training has to be quick, efficient and concrete.

That’s why interactive storytelling is a good combo in training: since it reminds them of everyday-life situations, it immediately speaks to them.

Tell me and I forget.
Teach me and I may remember.
Involve me and I learn.
– Benjamin Franklin

Adult learning: a bit of theory

The field of adult learning has been the subject of dozens of studies over the years and different theories have emerged.
According to Malcolm Shepherd Knowles’s Andragogy theory, adults don’t learn like children. And for several reasons:

• Adults need a purpose: kids go to school because they have to, as their parents went before them, and because they are told to. Adults need to know why they have to learn.
  It can be a future promotion, acquiring new skills or knowledge, or for a new experience, but regardless of the impetus, adults need to have clear objectives. If they don’t, they will be reluctant to be trained and ultimately learn nothing.

• Adults rely on their experience: adults already have a good deal of experience and background, whether it is social, academic or professional experience, and it must be taken into account in their training.
  They already have their own way of thinking and analyzing situations and problems, they have their own ideas and opinions. That’s why training must feed off of all of these elements to bring something fundamentally new.

• Adults don’t like theory: unlike children who learn perfectly well through books and theoretical lessons, adults need task-oriented learning. In other words, they learn best when they “practice”.
  Give a problem to an adult and, for him, to solve it and by doing so meeting the challenge is far more effective than any book you can give him.

• Adults like doing things by themselves: whether out of self-pride or search for respect, adults don’t like too much guidance. They tend to prefer autonomous learning and being able to try, even if that means making mistakes and having to start all over again.
  By providing the learner an environment where he can try and learn by himself, you will make the training far more effective.

Adults need task-oriented learning. In other words, they learn best when they “practice”.

Storytelling: the answer to adult training

Let’s face it, traditional learning methods are becoming obsolete. It was shown that passive learning like reading, listening and seeing implies that the learner is more prone to forget what he has been taught within 24 hours.

On the other hand, active learning like discussion by storytelling and practice by doing are far more efficient, with a retention rate that can reach 75% after 24 hours.

First of all, what is storytelling? It is a way to carry a message or a lesson through a story, an example of a real situation.
It can be a case study or a role play, for example.

Storytelling helps you share an experience while involving people in a familiar and safe environment.

As it immerses the learners into a concrete, believable and engaging scenario, it helps them gain knowledge through examples and encourages reflection and discussion. It helps the learners think about their past experience.

The information collected is also easier to remember as the learner can identify himself in the situation and reproduce later what he has heard, seen and learned, and by doing so, change his behavior, habits and attitudes.

That’s what makes storytelling one of the most effective methods in adult learning.

Thanks to storytelling, the learner can identify himself in the situation and reproduce later what he has heard, seen and learned and by doing so, change his behavior, habits and attitudes.

SkillGym puts storytelling at the heart of its training method. Our Digital Role Plays are all based on well-defined situations and scenarios that users face in their everyday life: at work, at home, with friends, with colleagues, etc.
These simulations train you to face them the best way possible.

These simulations also include a lot of benefits in training:

• Thanks to the simulations, the user has a purpose and is active in his training. The scenario gives him objectives he has to reach to complete the task assigned. This means that he will remember what he has learned during the simulation better.
• We bring him a tool where he can put into practice what he knows to solve the problem.
• The user finds an engaging conversation where he can feel involved and immersed in something new and familiar at the same time, something that he will be able to reproduce in real life.

And last but not least, we let him do it by himself. He can practice autonomously, when he has time to do so, giving him the opportunity to try as many times as he wants, make mistakes and start again, until he has learned the required skills to reach his goals.

The Deja-vu effect: mirror neurons at work

For SkillGym, the “Deja-vu effect” is THE key benefit of our method and approach.

Read this article (“Self-Awareness: the Single Factor Influencing the Most the Speed of Leadership Development”) for more information on the Deja-vu learning trigger.

Scientific research from Dr. V.S. Ramachandran shows that in our brain, special neurons called mirror neurons automatically apply what the brain sees and does during a simulated scenario.
As mirror neurons are related to imitation behaviors, they are a great tool in training.

Since our brain doesn’t see the difference between reality and a very realistic simulation, training on a simulation activates the mirror neurons, which put into practice in real life what they saw and learned during a simulation.

As people constantly train and practice, their mirror neurons make them unconsciously change and improve their habits without them even noticing it.

That’s why SkillGym encourages a scheduled and regular training regimen: repeating the best skills and behaviors over and over again in the simulations helps the user assimilate them easier and faster and then replicate them in real life.

Storytelling is not only about stories

Story is important, that’s true, but not the only piece. The characters you meet in the scenarios and the way you interact with them is crucial.
Your way of leading the conversation will help you reach your goal…or not.

Because you don’t talk to, support or manage introverted people the same as you do exuberant ones. The way you look at the situation will also depend on your skills to define the type of person you have in front of you.

In SkillGym, we give the characters of our simulations a full biography: age, job, family. We also define their explicit and implicit needs, their problems and their personality.

That means that we also take into account their behavior, their way of thinking and communicating with others and their reactions to stressful situations.
Our objective is to create characters that are totally defined in any aspect, just like real human beings.

This is where we reach authenticity: by providing an immersive experience where every single detail, each nuance of a SkillGym Digital Role Play character resembles real life. In fact, each character can even be described according to the several psychometric models that have been developed by prominent researchers, such as Marston’s DISC®, the Wholebrain® or the MBDI® models.

That’s what makes our Digital Role Plays realistic and instructive for the learner (more on our psychometric approach to character development in this article “Building Authentic Characters for Effective Digital Role Plays”).

Because you don’t talk to, support or manage introverted people the same as you do exuberant ones, the way you look at the situation will also depend on your skills to define the type of person you have in front of you.

 

Our main goal, as we said, is to involve the user in the story. That’s why we decided to make him a real interested party in the scenario.
In order to do that, we jumped from static storytelling, where the user is only a spectator to the story, to interactive storytelling, where the user fully participates and interacts with the character.

By doing so, the user creates changes and influences the actual course of the story. The possibilities are countless, that’s why our stories are not predefined, and each of the user’s decisions has consequences.

A quick look at a SkillGym Digital Role Play

During the simulation, the learner will interact with a real character, not a puppet or an avatar. The character is embodied by a real actor, with a real body language, personality, way of talking…

You can find more information about the building of a Digital Role Play in this article (“Digital Role Plays, the Best Way to Develop Conversational Leadership”).

The objective is to have the most realistic simulation possible, so that the mirror neurons can come into action and help the learner improve his behavior and skills unconsciously and effectively.

Besides, having a real person in front of you will make the situation more familiar and you will bond to the character and interact more easily with him/her.

Your approach will have visible consequences on the scenario and on the character’s mood, which you can identify thanks to his/her body language.

A SkillGym simulation lasts between 10 to 20 minutes, from the preparation of the meeting to the debriefing and results. Why?

• Because we consider that people are busy and have little time to train,
• Because a short, but repeated effort brings about better results than a single long one,
• Because long simulations can annoy users and cause them to lose focus,
• Because we want to focus on what’s essential and not include details that have very little training interest.

The story we are telling is defined according to several criteria: the type of conversation based on the skills the user needs to train on and the type of problems/situations that the user has to face.

It can be, for example, supporting a teammate who was discriminated against at work, giving a feedback to a collaborator with a low performance, solving a conflict between two people, delegating a task to someone, etc.

Their common trait? They are situations that the user may encounter in his day-to day life. 

After the simulation, the user will receive feedback from the character. He or she will give his subjective opinion to a relative or a colleague about the conversation you’ve just had.

This unique asset will raise the learner’s awareness on his behaviors, skills and approach in the conversation. It will help him understand the consequences of what he does and make him reflect on what he could change in his approach to improve his performance.

Characters talking about the conversation you’ve just had with them

It’s always easy to say “I’ll change” just after a conversation, it’s not that easy to really do it in the long term.

That’s why the user will also have what we call a “cold feedback”: you will see the result of your conversation on the character a few days/weeks later.
With cold feedback, the user can really see if his approach and behavior during the conversation concretely changed the character’s approach and if he really reached the objectives or not.

2 weeks after the conversation, you see what the character is doing

Conclusion

Adult learning is evolving, and storytelling appears as the best option to make people change their habits. It’s realistic, engaging, and it involves learners trying and doing things by themselves.

Thanks to Digital Role Plays and scheduled training, SkillGym helps users improve their skills, behaviors and performance effortlessly, providing them a safe environment to complete conversations with authentic characters, who have their own personality and needs, and giving them the opportunity to make mistakes and try as many times as they want with no consequences on others.

Did you find this article interesting? Then, to know more about this subject, don’t hesitate to read our article (“8 Ways your skills will improve by practicing on Digital Role Plays”).

You want to go into the learning theories more in depth, then Learning Theories supporting SkillGym methodology was written for you.

If you are interested in our work and approach, book a 1-hour discovery call here.

Written By

Anne-Laure Blanco

I love to turn life into pedagogical stories. My challenge is to make storytelling as powerful as real-life experience. For a real immersive User Experience.

Contact Anne Laure