Does your team have the right stuff?
What happens when you stop selecting teams and leaders on exams and interviews only?
Why, using a full-test simulation for leaders and teams will really show you if they have got the necessary power skills for the job?
Interview after interview, you guys hone the questions. Validating CVs. Looking for gaps in their stories. Checking for misalignment in dates. Following up references. Maybe you throw in some questionnaires, EQ, IQ.
It’s like completing the highway code test only as a means to validate your skills in driving. It doesn’t make any rational sense.
Yet job after job is selected like this.
Nobody really knows what your abilities are like until you actually hit the road.
It seems like a recipe for a disaster.
Imagine if you really selected drivers only by a code test.
That’s the damage inflicted on organizations.
High-performance leadership, teamwork, problem-solving creative thinking skills cannot be validated by a question.
Asking someone in an interview if they are a creative leader… followed by a trite response and some examples of how they were creative.
Seriously. It’s as much use as chocolate fireguard; it melts on first contact with reality.
What would happen if you took your potential recruits and put them through a full test simulation for leaders and teams? What if, instead of asking questions, you could actually see leadership and teamwork in action?
Well, I guarantee you will get a different picture than the one you would have got in the interview scenario.
How?
Well, for starters, you would see if they could walk the talk.
The simulation is a multiplayer video game for a team of five. It is a heist scenario. Your mission is to lead your team to steal a special object hidden in a secret underground laboratory. You have been given a set of briefing documents and intelligence on the job in hand, but you don’t have all the necessary information, and you are operating under a time pressure. You are working with a team you have never seen before; their characters all have specialist skills, and you are going to have to work cross-functionally. The simulation workflow is an in-depth set of 40-plus challenges and puzzles that increase in difficulty as you progress through the scenario.
You have twenty minutes to assess your brief and create an action plan.
Then you have to leave the command vehicle.
And you are on; Action!
Think mission impossible.
Your first challenge is finding your way into the target building. You have to disable the security systems and hack into the CCTV systems to grant your planner camera access.
Seems fairly straightforward.
Yup.
And team after team fail.
Seriously.
It’s not their fault.
What’s at fault is their education and training.
We have seen board leaders, executives, coaches and esport teams fail.
Why?
You mean, why do they fail?
Yeah.
Primarily because no one has any real experience of working in a real team.
Attending meetings, taking part in committees, training courses, MBA’s, PhD’s, management experience, senior management experience, leadership roles has left them actually ill-equipped to working in a team.
I kid you not.
For example, the first obstacle you meet is learning how to track, avoid, and warn your team members of a patrolling drone. A full executive team responsible for a billion-dollar business failed to make even a dent in strategizing how to solve this problem. They lost it with us; they told us the simulation was too difficult. They could not communicate or collaborate.
Seriously.
It would have made you weep to watch.
Yet — and this is the secret — if they had persisted, if they had learned to actually read the environment, they would have overcome the challenge.
And this is the important message: in the simulation, the obstacles reveal the true character of the participants. But at the same time they also condition the acquisition of new skills. The game-flow actually creates a new team culture focussed on solving problems, creative thinking, risk-taking, and trial and testing. The team learns to experiment. And failure leads to laughs and learning. Error does not lead to blame. Getting it wrong, turns into fast prototyping. The simulation, a video game, creates and trains the participants in Lean Start-up skills. Learning to create MVP ideas. Test them. Back to the drawing board. Challenge your emotions. Work under pressure. Open closed minds. Improve communication protocols. Goal setting. Working on the same page. Making plans.
A simulation does all that?
Yup.
So, why don’t companies use simulations?
They’re still stuck in the dark ages using Stone Age tools in the 21st century.
Nooooo!
I kid you not.
Hierarchical command and control structures are a game-plan still used by governments and corporations.
News flash:
It’s outdated.
Premier division organizations operate a team of teams, a networked teams game-plan. Their game play is that empowered teams can respond quickly to change and adapt to new challenges successfully. Downtime is minimized. Speed equals competitive advantage.
Team members are more engaged. Working together becomes fun and purposeful. (Josh Bersin, Irresistible, 2022.)
Okay, so let’s re-imagine.
What happens if you used the simulations to recruit, test and train teams and leaders? What changes would this bring about? It means you could see the skills gap straight away. It means you could train your people in the vital skills necessary to navigate the chaotic headwinds facing organizations now and in the future.
With competitive video games using esport team scenarios, you could train and deploy learning at scale. Cloud technologies and mobile gaming mean that full-test simulations will become more and available to organizations that are forward-thinking.
The right stuff is used by air force and astronaut communities to describe the qualities required to be best in class. It is a set of skills and mindset focused on excellence.
Does your team and leaders have the right stuff to create a high-performance culture?
Have a look at our CinQ full test simulation for leaders and teams: