MGMT 652 Leadership Simulation: A Story about Potential
Lately I’ve come to realize that there can be a strange difference between knowing and believing – that faith arises out of a different facet of humanity than knowledge. For years, I knew in some way that I deserved the good things that seemed to serendipitously enter my life but I couldn’t rise above my own insecurities to believe it. Instead I cowered in the shadows of self-doubt, afraid to accept my own light and though I have made marked progress in this area – I feel that I have only begun to experience the warmth that belief in oneself can bring. On that note, I want to tell you a story about POTENTIAL.
This whole metaphor reminded me of how I have experienced simulations thus far. They are these magnificent learning tools full of potential, yet seemingly unaware of their capacity for reaching the masses and literally changing the way that we educate. The world KNOWS that simulations have potential, but do we BELIEVE it? I’ve been lucky enough to experience it and believe it from the first time I ever tested a Learning Lab application – completely lacking knowledge of investment terms & strategies and possessing nascent technical skills, I plunged into the world of the Online Trading and Investment Simulator (OTIS) and thought to myself, wow this thing has possibility! Little did I know that OTIS and I were destined to become friends and that my knowledge of simulation potential would grow into a solid belief of what they can do for education.
Several years after the experience with OTIS, I have now witnessed that simulations can not only change a class session, but they can also change an entire curriculum and can have an educational impact reaching approximately 850 MBAs! Conceived by Professors Nancy Rothbard and Sigal Barsade, developed by Forio, and carried through successfully by a number of different Wharton departments (including the Learning Lab), the Wharton Teamwork and Leadership Simulation (WTLS) for Management 652 changed the idea of simulation scale and magnitude at the Wharton School. Equipped with approximately 180 laptops, 288 lab computers (for each wave of students), 288 headphones, and at least 120 Wharton employees, and almost the entire Forio technical and support team – the four day simulation was an overall success and an example of realized potential.
A little bit about the simulation:
“Through a business simulation that has been written by Professors Barsade and Rothbard and designed especially for Wharton students, we [the teachers] will cover both theoretical and practical aspects of leadership and teamwork. In this class, you [the students] will take on the role of a senior management team and in doing so learn how to negotiate with and influence other team members, make team-based decisions, and deal with group dynamics and organizational change – all as part of running your organization.”
Because of the purposely ambiguous nature of simulations, I cannot offer details about the simulation’s storyline or the details of the daily activities in each round – but I confidently say that I witnessed intense engagement. The students truly assumed their roles in the organization and really got into character – often crafting back stories about how their organization started, even though it wasn’t required. I even heard a group tell a tale demonstrating the closeness of their company: “Two members of our senior management team are actually married – that’s how close our company is.” I witnessed imagination, creativity, and teamwork and found it fascinating to watch as each group seemed to have an internal leader emerge as the four days of the simulation progressed. Not surprisingly, the leader often seemed to be the person who believed the most in the potential of his/her company and his/her teammates.
As a Psychology major, I saw countless potential for personality studies through the daily surveys and questionnaires that the students answered. I also enjoyed (which I enjoy through Learning Lab applications as well) the experiment-like nature of running a simulation. Perhaps WTLS was even more experiment-like than most simulations in that it was the first time carrying out such a large scale simulation project. Running a simulation is also much like an experiment in that it is laden with a multitude of variables and random events that slightly alter the experience of the students from one classroom to the next. After the simulation finishes, there’s usually a debrief session in which the true goals of the simulation are revealed. I sat in on a debrief class after one of the WTLS test runs and I learned all about more concepts that pique the interest of a former Psychology major. There is a lot to be learned about the potential of the human psyche by analyzing the way that people lead and work together as a team.
Although The Wharton Teamwork and Leadership Simulation may have been designed to teach teamwork and leadership to the students, I think every single staff member involved in the process learned valuable lessons in those areas as well. Some emerged as leaders themselves – either by putting in extra work hours/effort to ensure the success of this inaugural simulation (I can think of a few people who deserve recognition for this!) or by signing up for a highly involved role. There were lab leaders, lab support, classroom technical support, network connectivity monitors, software installers and testers, crisis response teams, classroom support/food/logistics/supplies, business and simulation experts, leadership fellows – needless to say WTLS was a huge group effort. It was at once a bit scary yet extremely liberating to be a part of such a large undertaking and interacting with colleagues from different departments in a way that isn’t usually done on a daily basis at most universities.
I want to include a quote that I read about teamwork in the Pfeiffer Book of Successful Team-Building Tools by Elaine Biech (2008) because I think it describes something that both the students learned as well as the faculty and staff that made the event successful:
“Probably the key advantage of teamwork is a better end result. Organizations find that teams can be more responsive to the changing needs of the marketplace. Teams can be closer to the customer’s needs, more informed about advanced technology, and faster to respond than traditional hierarchies.
A team working together has more and better input than individual’s working alone. If everyone who works and in the process is involved, it is less likely that steps will be missed. This results in better ideas and decisions and higher quality output.”
Those words speak to the success of the teams, but what about the people who rose as leaders through the entire experience? Taken from Volume IV of What works, what matters, what lasts by Alexander and Helen Astin from the University of California (2007):
“We believe that leadership is a process that is ultimately concerned with fostering change. In contrast to the notion of ‘management,’ which suggests preservation or maintenance, ‘leadership’ implies a process where there is movement – from wherever we are now to some future place or condition that is different. Leadership also implies intentionality, in the sense that the implied change is not random – ‘change for change’s sake’ – but is rather directed toward some future end or condition which is desired or valued. Accordingly, leadership is a purposive process which is inherently value-based.
Consistent with the notion that leadership is concerned with change, we view the ‘leader’ basically as a change agent, i.e., ‘one who fosters change.’ Leaders then, are not necessarily those who merely hold formal ‘leadership’ positions; on the contrary, all people are potential leaders. Furthermore, since the concepts of ‘leadership’ and ‘leader’ imply that there are other people involved, leadership is, by definition, a collection group process.”
In essence, everything that I have just said culminated into a story of realizing potential: recognizing one’s own potential, recognizing the potential of teammates, recognizing and then taking action on the potential of an idea (as Professors Barsade and Rothbard have done with the simulation), and recognizing potential of the tools in an environment that can lead towards success (such as using simulations for education).
The funny thing about potential energy in physics though is that it really means nothing unless it becomes kinetic energy, and kinetics implies some kind of motion – the same way that “‘leadership’ implies a process where there is movement”. The actions of everyone involved in the simulation took something with potential and transformed it into a movement that not only taught the value of leadership and teamwork, but it demonstrated it.
