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A "Flight Simulator" to Identify Future Leaders?

Sat, October 26, 17:15 to 18:30, Shaw Centre, Meeting Room 104

Short Description

In this presentation, we will discuss new developments in evaluating teamwork skills, provide a demonstration of the latest technology (a virtual high-fidelity behavioural simulation) and share some preliminary results.​

Detailed Abstract

The term “high potential” employees (HIPOs) is used to describe those employees who possess the skills and abilities necessary for leadership advancement in an organization. The majority of organizations regard HIPOs as a source of a unique competitive advantage and have programs in place to identify and develop such future leadership talent.

Teamwork skills (e.g., lateral influence - the ability to influence without holding a formal position) are important predictors of leadership emergence and success and some organizations systematically gauge teamwork skills of their junior employees to identify future leaders among them.


If there were a way to evaluate teamwork skills accurately, quickly and easily, then HIPOs could be identified earlier – possibly even as part of the selection-and-hiring process.

Unfortunately, teamwork skills are challenging to evaluate and the existing assessment methods (including self-assessments, other-assessmentsand situational judgment tests) are not sufficiently effective and versatile. For example, self-assessments produce large response distortions (e.g., impression management, self-bias) and suffer from poor validity. Other-assessmentsare more efficacious, but are time consuming and suffer from rater bias (or in the case of Assessment Centres, can be prohibitive in terms of cost and time). SJTs measure procedural knowledge, rather thanskill itself and might be particularly poorly suited for individuals with higher propensity to experience anger, frustration and bitterness.

Recent developments in technology now provide an opportunity to develop virtual high-fidelity behavioural simulations for evaluating teamwork skills by immersing participants in a situation similar to real-life and evaluating their behaviour in a systematic, unbiased manner. While virtual high-fidelity simulations have been effectively used for some time to evaluate technical (hard) skills (e.g., flight simulations), in the area of interpersonal skills, virtual high-fidelity behavioural simulations have not been utilized – until now – because of the difficulty in simulating human interaction and “mimicking” human behaviour, as well as evaluating behavioural responses.

In this presentation, we will discuss new developments in evaluating teamwork skills, provide a demonstration of the latest technology (a virtual high-fidelity behavioural simulation) and share some preliminary results.​

Participants