If we do not have engagement, we have nothing. Simulations derive their strength through the power of Storytelling. A good story can engage any level of the audience as evidenced by stories such as the seven Harry Potter books which were popular around the globe with all ages, and they were long books. In the context of simulation, a good narrative simply needs to reflect the reality that the targeted participants face. A good narrative helps participants to see themselves in the story. This facilitates both the intellectual and emotional engagement that leads to impactful experiences to populate the experience portfolio.

At our core, human beings are habit-forming creatures and are therefore subject to ‘mindless’ decision making as we exhibit rote behavior, or if you are familiar with the Conscious-Competence matrix, Unconscious Competence. When it comes to leadership, which focuses on interpersonal and contextual issues, we can never be ‘unconscious’ about anything but must find a way to effectively Analyze situations or scenarios that we face and use Critical Thinking to navigate through them. Simulations provide an opportunity for deliberate practice around the Thinking that goes into decision making and establish muscle memory around the thinking as part of the doing.

One of the key benefits of simulation is that leaders have the opportunity to experience (and sometimes suffer) the consequences of their actions in a safe environment. Bad outcomes are a part of life, even when we make the correct decision, especially when we have complex stakeholder groups whose demands are exclusive of each other as is the case for leaders in K-12 Education. By experiencing the consequences of our decisions, leaders have the opportunity to build resilience to deal with failure, as everyone makes mistakes, but also the negative fallout that can accompany even the best of decisions. 

Good judgment comes from experience and good experience often comes from Bad Judgment (Chad Checketts). This is what makes Experience the Best Teacher and allows us to learn and grow. Simulations capture the flow of time and encourage a more system thinking approach to decision-making by leaders so that they can process what they have learned in a realistic context and exercise better judgment in the contexts they face.

When it comes to effective Leadership, the job is filled with context-driven issues. For Simulations, the challenge is not to just make people more comfortable with making decisions but to be comfortable making the tough decisions and solving the tough problems. It is when there is no good answer or when the best answer also has significant negatives associated with it where the real challenge is. Having insight into what the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ tradeoffs are may help to shed a brighter light on the decisions being made and help with better decisions or build resilience to deal with the bad. The Scorecard is essentially a Trade-off Report which provides students with insight into what the positives and negatives are or the costs and benefits associated with their decisions and they can use better judgment.   

Another way of thinking about the Scorecard is to view it as a tool for distinguishing the difference between what we fear and what makes us anxious. Theologian Paul Tillich distinguished them in his writings that “Anxiety is amorphous; it doesn’t quite have an object, it’s a state. And so, it’s harder to shake and no empowerment necessarily comes from it.” The job of the Educator is filled with anxiety-provoking circumstances, situations and stakeholders. The challenges are daunting and sometimes overwhelming. The opportunity with Simulations and the Experience Design process is to name the things that we are afraid of and that cause anxiety. As Tillich writes, “Fear is of something, you can name it and face it, and in the facing of it lift your morale, show yourself what’s in you.” The Simulation is around anxiety-provoking Problems of Practice and the Scorecard is an articulation of the specific elements and consequences that we are afraid of and that cause the Anxiety. The Simulations provide a safe space to provoke anxiety and also name potential things that we fear. In this way, participants can face those things and develop mitigating strategies where possible. In addition, by facing the specific elements they fear, the Sims help to break the grip of the anxiety so it reduces its power to paralyze. This has the dual benefit of helping to improve decision making, and maybe even more importantly, enhance wellbeing. Especially during our current circumstances, this kind of experience can help educators to break down generalized anxiety into specific fears and deal with them courageously.

A Simulation approach provides the opportunity to focus on what makes a best practice a ‘Best Practice’, and therefore establish learning with greater impact. By capturing the experience of the practitioner, there is the opportunity to put the practice into a context and allow other leaders to interact with it. What goes into the experience is going to be more along the lines of the best thinking (why and when) rather than the best practice (what and how). What we want to know is when the best practitioner made a decision, what were the alternative paths that he/she could have taken, and what would the consequences have been of those alternatives. This helps to manifest the judgment and critical thinking required to be effective. The outcome of this approach is a decision tree that enables other leaders to experience the thinking behind the best practice and play it through themselves.