Posted by Peter Mennes.
What do children do on the playground? In a safe environment, they play tag, hide-and-seek, romp in the sandpit. While playing, children develop cognitively and social-emotionally, among other things. Great for the future leaders in the schoolyard, but for today’s managers?
In this day and age, is competence-based training still the tool to develop today’s population of managers? Are managers themselves still waiting for traditional skills training? Is it still up to date? But how do you ensure that this population develops quickly and professionally?
By learning by experience and experimentation, because we remember:
- 10% of what we read
- 20% of what we hear
- 30% of what we see
- 50% of what we hear and see
- 70% of what we experience ourselves
Especially for Capgemini, Kenhardt developed the business game ‘ArCCChitects‘, a two-day high-impact simulation in a real-life context, aimed at the professional behavioural development of people managers. An environment where it is OK to make mistakes and learn from them, an experience that really enters.
First, personal development points were identified by using good diagnostics. Next, joint development points were analysed from current behaviour and experiences. These results were combined with the spearheads for people leadership within Capgemini and linked to their core values ‘transparency’, ‘accountability’ and ‘trust’.
Our intensive coaching during this dynamic two-day session ensures that this intervention goes beyond feedback on skill level alone. Indeed, in feedback rooms where participants literally stepped out of the game for a moment, they also sought deeper feedback and talked about personality and motives in relation to their people management role. ‘ArCCChitects’ acts as a mirror for the participants; the game shows what they do and how they do it.
And schoolchildren? Yes, they do the same thing in a nutshell: observe, experience and experiment… So yes, a business game really is a serious playground for managers!