Have you ever tried to pull together a group of people with different objectives, values, and time constraints? It can be tough, especially when everyone’s eager to have their own ideas adopted. There’s a solution, though: a business simulation. In a business simulation, you take an abstract scenario—in this case, a business challenge—and give your team a detailed, make-believe environment to play through. By playing a business simulation, you can work through problems, explore new ideas, and build trust between team members.
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What is a Business Simulation?
Business simulations are in essence ‘serious’ virtual games that allow you to navigate through a particular problem, one that is normally related to one that the team could face at some point in the future.
These simulations let you practice real-world challenges and situations, from marketing and sales to leadership, finance, and operations, whilst of course protecting the business from making mistakes in the real world.
They can be simple games, where you’re just trying to increase sales and expand your reach, or they can be complex games, where you’re managing a company’s operations across the globe.
What are the Benefits of Playing a Business Simulation?
Business simulations have many benefits, not just for your team, but also for your company.
– Build Teamwork and Collaboration: Business simulations help build teamwork and collaboration. When you practice working as a team, you learn to think and act as one. You also get to practice communicating with each other and making decisions together, which are skills that transfer to other areas of your work.
– Build Trust and Respect: Another benefit of business simulations is that they build trust and respect between team members. By working through a problem together and talking through your ideas, team members get to understand each other. You also build trust by showing respect for each other’s ideas, skills, and insights—which, in turn, boosts team morale!
– Develop Leadership Skills: Whether you’re leading a team or playing a leadership simulation, business simulations help you develop real-world leadership skills. You get to practice setting goals and making decisions, delegating work and project management, and empowering team members with clear expectations and guidelines.
How Business Simulations Create Better Leaders
Today’s business leaders are constantly under pressure, juggling a variety of responsibilities, and juggling the needs and expectations of their employees, shareholders, and customers. To succeed in the modern business world, these managers must be strategic, analytical, creative, and decisive.
This pressure has caused leaders, at every level, to find new ways of helping them cope and thrive. It is therefore not a big surprise to hear that many are using simulation-based training to hone their key leadership skills.
Business simulations are a great way to train new managers and leaders, as well as the ‘old hands’ in any business. They foster a string of skills that are the key to excelling at any position: strategic thinking, analytical problem-solving, and social and emotional intelligence.
Statistics have proven that leaders who have used simulations become better managers, as they are better able to understand how their actions influence others, are more easily able to take responsibility for their decisions, and are more able to display and act with empathy.
How to Play a Business Simulation
There are a few ways to get started with a business simulation. The first is to choose a business scenario that matches your company’s challenges. The simulation needs to be ‘believable’, challenging and in order to ensure morale is boosted as far as is possible, winnable. In other words, there should be a way of achieving success, as long as all the team members work and think together.
Conclusion
Business simulations are a great way to boost teamwork, collaboration, and trust among team members. Managers are better able to deal with their day to day challenges, as well as in some instances ones that don’t come up very often at all. The main thing is that the ‘problems’ are ones that can’t be solved by one or two people, requiring that the entire team really work together.
You also get to practice making decisions that affect the organization as a whole, putting you in each other’s shoes and helping you understand each other’s motivations and priorities.
Playing a business simulation can be a lot of fun too. So if you want to know more, just how business simulations could help your company reach its goals, please contact Prendo.
