'Challenge' - our dynamic leadership and motivation game

The special benefits of "Challenge"

• Participants are always astonished at how amazingly realistically this simulated leadership game reflects the management and communications structures in the client's company. Consequently, "experiencing" Challenge itself and the video document shown after the game produce a lasting learning effect.

• The simulated game covers several management echelons and portrays the consequences of leadership conduct by managers in a very realistic way: As in real life, the consequences of misguided top-down communication or ambiguous agreements make themselves known in Challenge and can be examined in the evaluation phase with the help of the video recordings.

• Challenge has a high "lock-in effect": The challenge of successfully completing the orders in the business process means the participants become engrossed in the underlying seminar topic, which can be conveyed extremely intensively but almost incidentally.

What happens with "Challenge"?

The starting point for Challenge is a business unit organized into several hierarchical levels. The highest management level is division management, followed by department managers and group managers. The departments and groups have numerous employees. The different sections of the business unit are housed in various premises on a decentralized basis. The departments and groups must process numerous tasks and perform different functions. With this background established, the company receives a major new order from a key customer; fulfilling this order requires a specific contribution from all technical departments and groups.

Processing the various orders requires both division-wide and also intra-departmental communication. The intensity, quality and style of communication are essentially determined by the managers, but also by the employees, whose own conduct comes into play. Challenge therefore spontaneously reflects the actual leadership and communications structure experienced within the company. The effects this leadership and communications structure has on the motivation of all parties and on the quality of the work produced is experienced in the simulated game and is consciously highlighted during the ensuing video analysis.

Areas of application

The simulated game can be analyzed from various viewpoints:

• How do the leadership styles portrayed affect staff motivation?

• How does the respective level of motivation impact on the quality of products manufactured?

• To what extent does the leadership conduct portrayed correspond to the stated leadership claim?

• How do the interdepartmental consultation and understanding processed pan out?

• How does the position of employee, department manager or division manager assumed in Challenge affect an individual's perception process?

Based on the above, the training objectives and subject focuses can be formulated from the following viewpoints:

1. Leadership style and employee motivation:
   Training objectives focus on the leadership conduct portrayed. Challenge makes it possible to track particular leadership conduct affects employee motivation and how this in turn affects the quality of the products of their work.

2. Interdepartmental teamwork:
   Similarly, the analysis can focus on interdepartmental teamwork. Challenge vividly shows how consultation processes pan out between departments, what consequential errors inaccurate agreements or a lack of agreements can produce and how this can trigger a domino effect.

3. Information and Transparency:
   Training objectives can also focus on the forwarding of information and transparency. It is possible to track what information is sent and how, how it is passed on / arrives at its destination and what effects this has on the subsequent work process.

Please contact us if you are interested in organizing our "Challenge" simulated leadership and motivation game at your company.