A Leadership Game You Have Never Seen Before
Contribution by: Bence Peter Biro
FLIGBY, our flow-promoting leadership development serious game has been designed with the purpose to make you a better leader. The biggest scientific contributor to this simulation game is Prof Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, psychologist, researcher and author of numerous global best selling books, most notably Flow. Csikszentmihalyi is also the founder of the new scientific area, that of positive psychology – an approach on studying the fundamental question ‘what makes a life worth living?’, by use of scientific method, and it is a reorientation of psychology instead of focusing on negative, mental illnesses.
FLIGBY has enormous success all over the world: it has won the Gold Medal of the „International Serious Play Awards” in the category of Corporate Games in 2012. Most recently in Fall 2018, Dr Zoltan Buzady, our Research Director also won a Champion Award with FLIGBY: “Pedagogical Innovation”.
We have asked Bence Peter Biro, trainer and self-improvement specialist (brief bio below), to provide his independent feedback about FLIGBY and its potential. His review is in line with the comments and observations which we constantly receive by the many people who played FLIGBY so far. He writes:
I let me report to you, that FLIGBY is a really unique and great leadership and business game.
After completing the whole game process of about 7 hours – from start till the end- I have received an individualised, one-to-one, FLIGBY debriefing and coaching sessions by Dr. Zoltan Buzady, your Flow-Leadership Expert. Based on these personal and professional impressions I have now compiled for potential future player my suggestions to whom I recommend FLIGBY, as it is really not a game for everyone.
This is Not For Everybody, But It Certainly Is Superb For 10 Professions!
Although FLIGBY is a great and contentful game for every curious person, I would not recommend it to every profession. If you agree that your time is the most valuable asset of yours, you might find that other courses and programmes might be more relevant for your concrete professional development such might be the case if you need to grow in some technocratic dimension.
But, as an expert in the field of personal and leadership development training, with some years of experience, I have collected 10 professions who can benefit the most out of this masterpiece of modern adult learning. If you work in any of these areas, you absolutely need the FLIGBY Game experience. It enhances your people skills, your leadership perspective and will give you the insights about how to create a work environment in which Flow can become reality for you, your team and the entire organization!
And the best part is that you can learn through playing instead of reading complicated scientific studies.
If you recognise yourself in any of this industries then you might just have found the absolute tool to get to the next level of your profession!
1. Company Owners and Business Leaders
If you are a business owner or in charge to lead a business unit, FLIGBY has been specially created for you! In this training-game, your job is to run an imaginary business (a Californian Winery) and lead a low morale team to achieve extraordinary results. As you are playing this game you are going to meet most of the challenges which typically accompany any real business, but you do not need to handle the full responsibility of making mistakes, because of the game milieu. You are going to meet uncertainty, problem-solving, and decision-making dilemmas.
This way you can test multiple ideas and opportunities in a safe environment and you can have enough time to think through every strategical decision and analyse your thinking mechanisms calmly. If you practice it in Fligby, it can help you enhance your business performance later on in real life.
Throughout the game, you are going to come across many screens like this. In these decision situations, you need to choose from a limited number of options. It is almost sure that there are going to be instances in the game in which you are not fully satisfied, but still – you will chose, just like in real life, the one which is the least wrong in your judgement and experience. This means that you are going to learn alternative ways of management thinking, and you can learn to accept the unpleasant consequences and resulting feelings of your decision dilemma, but in a safe, gaming environment.
You are also going to learn the fundamental mechanisms of Flow, which has also been the secret of the astonishing success of the 1993 Super – Bowl winner team, as their coach Jimmy Johnson said so.
If you are on the top …
One of the hardest parts of being a leader emotionally is that you receive an extremely little amount of feedback about what you are actually doing and deciding as a leader. Whether you did a good or bad job, everything is your responsibility to measure and to judge. FLIGBY game gives you constant feedback, after each and every decision your take you see the immediate result on various dimensions and a mentor tells you how to improve. Thus, it helps you to learn how to give great feedback to your own employees, which can make them flourish at your workplace.
… get YOUR Bonus!
If you want the best for yourself, you can get individualised coaching sessions from the trained and certified FLIGBY experts after completing the game. This means that you do not only play the scientifically designed leadership game, but also have a real-life coach and trainer, who can answer every question of yours, can give you much deeper understanding and a more personalized feedback than the game in itself. This is the real professional growth potential and provides a huge learning synergy. During these face-to-face sessions, you can review and explore the analysis of your top 29 leadership and management skills and enhance underused capacities. This new knowledge should help you to make your business grow by building on your real skills and strengths!
A great bonus, isn’t it? Multiplying your long-term business results, having better leadership skills just by playing a game and talking to a friendly coach.
2. Human Resources Specialists
As an HR professional playing FLIGBY you can learn how to turn around a low morale work environment into a motivated, strongly bonded team. You also receive information on how you can help people to get in Flow, and how you can find the best qualities and strengths of your colleagues. Also, if you work in this professional sphere, you sure know that one of the most valuable knowledge you might poses is self-awareness. This game is going to be an amazing opportunity to reevaluate your deeper thinking systems, motives and double check how you make decisions. You are going to receive a lot of feedback. If you are aware on what feelings you experience throughout the scenes of the game – there is no pressure to rush, and perform perfectly, as this is a just a training game – you can gather tons of information about yourself. Especially if you work with a certified FLIGBY Coach on your side.
3. Work and Organisational Psychologists (And their Students)
If you are a psychologist or organizational developer, you must have studied about the legendary scientist, Prof Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, of course. With FLIGBY you are able to see his creation and test it with your whole engagement in a playful way. You are going to practice how to help your colleagues into the mental state of Flow, and you will see how it affects the whole company. You can test how to shift the team’s low morales to high, as well as you can try out how it feels in the General Managers shoes. FLIGBY is going to be a great tool of yours to find out what you are the best at, what business skills you possess in a playful, but serious way, as well as finding the same about your colleagues. FLIGBY is an ideal tool for you to train your own clients about the dynamics of Flow in Leadership.
4. Corporate Trainers
If you work as a trainer in the corporate field, you must have already or you are going to meet situations where you have to deal with hard-to-manage people and big egos. FLIGBY helps to develop a better understanding and skills base on how to can handle conflicts and low morale. As your sphere is similar, I encourage you to read the 3rd title, above, describing briefly what you can expect from FLIGBY.
5. MBA Students and Future Leaders – “Who Wanna Create”
Business schools should have this game as a required class. There are many successful courses delivered with FLIGBY at various universities around the globe, all with great student responses and course evaluation results. FLIGBY might be your students’ first encounter with complex business problems, the dilemmas arising when running a company, and what it takes to handle conflict between complex people. If you help students or MBAs to experience FLIGBY before they re-/enterdo real business, they will achieve better and with greater confidence, learn the psychology of Flow in a business environment, and they also get all the benefits mentioned above by the time they start their own business or enter a leadership role.
6. Business People – Who Have to Deal With Low Morale And Difficult Personalities
FLIGBY kicks off the game with a meeting of the whole management of Turul Winery, which you, the player, will be in charge of for a season. The whole group is sceptical, frustrated, angry, dissatisfied. By the end of the game and your period as interim manager, it is your decisions, which can make this team a happy and deeply satisfied team who perform greatly in their field. This game can help you learn the methods to make it happen. Obviously, it is a worthy experience that you can use in other areas of your life, not just inside the game.
7. Teachers & Educators
Have you ever experienced that your students feel frustrated or anxious? Have you ever been to a class where students were bored and were playing on their phone? Surprisingly but FLIGBY is an ideal way for you to understand the principles on how you can make your students fall into a magical state where time disappears and they are fully engaged in your class and enjoy learning!
What is more, you also learn how can you give various types of feedback and in the most useful ways. In this game, you also learn alternative ways of thinking which can help you to bond with your students even more. You are going to discover new ways on how you can raise the morals and motivation of people, which is essential in a scholar atmosphere too!
And the best part is that you do not do this by reading another boring theoretical book, but playing a game which feels like real life!
8. Politicians (and to be politicians!)
Politicians are the people who have the highest responsibility in terms of running a well-performing team and communicating in a way that makes everybody satisfied. FLIGBY is a realistic game where you can test your people skills and receive feedback on how you can get even better at it. You face uncertainties and unexpected challenges of running a business, which you are most likely to experience in your political career, too. It may not be the same problems with the same details, but similar enough so you can deal with your upcoming ones more prepared mentally when meeting them in real life.
9. Social, Spiritual & Religious Leaders
As a spiritual leader, you have a great responsibility in terms of helping your followers to recognise their inner gifts and values. This game can help you improve your negotiation skills, people skills, empathy, and most importantly: helping others to discover what skills and strengths they have, how to make their lives more meaningful through experiencing more Flow! If you learn these concepts, it is inevitable to be able to create a deeper connection between your followers and your message.
10. Power-Sales People
As a salesperson creating rapport is one of the most important parts of your job. If you understand what motivates a person you have a much better chance to sell them. Fligby helps you uncover the deeper motives of the complex people. Through the game, you can learn how to motivate them and persuade them to perform better than ever before. Can you imagine what this skill could give you in a sales environment when talking with a regular prospect?
Conclusion
FLIGBY can help you have better negotiation skills, get better in change management, have a greater influence on your environment, you can be a better conflict resolver, more successful leader, get better at team building, have better problem-solving skills, and much more! With this game it should be easier for you to accept unpleasant feelings arising from decision dilemmas when running a business, you receive more self-knowledge, giving and getting feedback, and learn alternative ways of thinking strategically and critically.
As a Harvard study emphasizes,
interpersonal relationships are one of the most rewarding moments of life.
This game can help you navigate better in this area.
So if you work in one of the 10 fields, or you simply want to try out Fligby, this is your time.
If you want to explore our global-award-winning leadership development serious game out click here.
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Bence Péter Biró
Is an author, trainer, and founder of the ever-growing self-improvement site specialising on 20-30 years old: Fulfilled.hu. He is a frequently invited speaker in the corporate sphere on the topic of self–improvement featured on TV, radio shows. He learnt in Los Angeles from internationally recognised experts and is a final year psychology graduate. You may contact him via birobencepeter.com, or via Fulfilled International. Please checkout his LinkedIN profile here.
Zoltan Buzady, Director of the ‘Leadership & Flow Global Research Network’, Corvinus Business School / Aleas Simulations Inc.
