Flow, Leadership and Serious Games: A Pedagogical Perspective. By: Zoltan Buzady Ph.D., Central European University Business School, Hungary.
Overview This special issue of the ‘World Journal of Science, Technology, and Sustainable Development’ focuses on new, computer-based and/or online learning tools with the aim to present current trends and innovations to professionals, consultants, instructors, and academics. The author of this contribution is a researcher and professor of leadership, who has encountered a truly innovative leadership development simulation game – FLIGBY – the features of which will be presented here.
Its relevance for management education is grounded in its scholarly background: the theory of Flow, a core concept in positive psychology. Its relevance for practitioners in management and training is rooted in the way this serious game helps players to transpose abstract, theoretical concepts into daily management practices. Roots in Positive Psychology. Flow, Leadership and Serious Games: A Pedagogical Perspective – Part 2 – Leadership & Flow.
By: Zoltan Buzady Ph.D., Central European University Business School, Hungary.
Part 1 Combining Flow and Serious Games A detailed market study prepared by Learnovate Centre identified the state-of-the-art use of serious games for learning in the corporate sector (Donovan, 2012). They report an uptake of such gamification and list the following application areas of serious games: supporting Marketing/Sales function,supporting Recruitment function (such as via Facebook games) andsupporting Training function in finance, corporate responsibility & sustainability, hospitality/etiquette, skills development (building IT networking structure) and the support of new hires. Leadership development applications are not mentioned in the comprehensive survey.
The concept of Flow is highly applicable to various types of interactive learning, playing and gaming as well as serious gaming as recently described by Kaye (2016). But the interest of Prof. The newcomers and Pros. Flow, Leadership and Serious Games: A Pedagogical Perspective – Part 3 – Leadership & Flow. By: Zoltan Buzady Ph.D., Central European University Business School, Hungary.
Part 1 Part 2 Serious Gaming Technology Enables Blended Learning Pedagogy Our aim in this contribution is also to tell the reader our experiences about using this particular serious game as a blended learning tool for effective training and development of Flow-based leadership and management skill (Marer et al., 2015). Our observations were gained during numerous corporate training and university courses with 10,000+ participants in various locations.
For an effective, meaningful and yet entertaining leadership development process we recommend to follow 4 plus 1 optional phases or stages when using FLIGBY as a training tool. 1. This section contains information for instructors and trainers who plan to adopt FLIGBY in a course or a training program. Personal preparation by the instructor: The instructor herself or himself should be playing FLIGBY first, completing the Game. 2. At the end of each scene, Mr. 3. 4. FLIGBY’s Leadership Skillset. The mission of the serious game FLIGBY is to identify, measure, and help develop leadership skills that, if applied, would help create a Flow-promoting work environment.
At the Game’s end, FLIGBY provides an individual report to each player on his/her skillset, with a range of benchmarking option available. FLIGBY develops 29 management/leadership skills identified by Prof. Csikszentmihalyi and the architects of FLIGBY to measure leadership and management capabilities and potential. A key conceptual contribution of FLIGBY’s design to the academic and applied work on leadership is the identification of those leadership skills that are particularly important for helping to generate and maintain Flow at the workplace. The elements of the FLIGBY Leadership Skillset are explained in details here. All five major skills categories in the ECQ system are well covered by the 29 FLIGBY skills: Comments comments. FLIGBY’s Leadership Topics – Leadership & Flow. Leadership or business simulations are dynamic computer-based experiences, allow to practice personal and organizational strategies in a risk-free and motivating learning environment.
They are highly effective in building critical capabilities needed for managing complex situations and organizational challenges. FLIGBY, Prof. Csikszentmihalyi’s official leadership simulation program, was developed to build a broad perspective on critical business interdependencies, like strategic thinking or managerial skills needed to make modern organizations/networks sustainable successful. Although FLIGBY is Flow-based, the managerial challenges and the options it presents are fully compatible with a wide range of leadership theories, enhancing them all.
FLIGBY is a much more effective teaching tool than any case study can be because the story unfolds in response to the player’s actions in dynamic and ever-more-complex ways. Comments comments. Book Review: Missing Link Discovered – Leadership & Flow. MISSING LINK DISCOVERED by P.
Marer, Z. Buzady, and Z. Vecsey Review by B. Gourley So, you’re a leader and you’ve experienced Flow. That’s where FLIGBY comes in, and the Missing Link Discovered book is a companion to FLIGBY. As this is a review of the book and not the FLIGBY game, I won’t talk much more about it beyond this paragraph. I’ll now clarify what I mean by the book being “a companion” to the FLIGBY game. The second part (Ch. 4 through 8) introduces the game, situates it in the context of serious games (those for which entertainment is a secondary concern), and discusses the topic of feedback in great detail (Note: feedback is a crucial issue because delayed or inadequate feedback is one of the major reasons that people have trouble achieving Flow–particularly in a workplace setting.)
While the first two parts of the book are relevant to FLIGBY players and non-players alike, the last part is targeting professors, corporate trainers, and researchers. Comments.