Developing teamwork as one of the leadership competencies through escape room

Sina Alamdari, Saina Moghadasi, Ebrahim Alizadeh

Problem Statement

Developing students' capacity for effective leadership in a global society is currently at the forefront of higher education research in developed countries such as the United States (Rosch & Schwartz, 2009). To have a society with cautious and wise leaders, developing leadership skills in students is a necessity of today's society. The development of competencies in students has existed since 1936, that is, the beginning of education, in the United States, and Harvard University was the first university to develop leadership competencies in students (Mozhgan, etc. all, 2011). The first efforts to develop competencies and skills began when the United States Army during World War II needed to train a large number of people to act in different positions (McCowan, 1998). "Leadership" was one of the competencies that was noticed in 80s. The reason lies in the fact that while management is linear and assumes particular inputs and outputs, leadership involves people (Maxwell, 2019). With the recognition of the importance of leadership in society, today we are witnessing an increasing number of researches in the field of leadership, especially in the field of methods of developing leadership skills in different societies, including students and managers. Leadership competency is “knowledge, value, ability (skill or motivation), and behavior that lead to the outcome of effective leadership” (Seemiller, & Murray, 2013). In this context, Seemiller and Murray (2013) have systematically identified 60 leadership competencies in students, which are categorized into 8 general categories. These categories are: learning and reasoning, interpersonal interaction, civic responsibility, strategic planning, self-awareness and development, group dynamics, communication and personal behavior. One of these 8 classes is: group dynamics, which has 4 competencies under its category, one of which is "group development". Team development refers to the process by which members of newly formed work teams learn about their teammates, define each other's roles and responsibilities, and develop the teamwork capabilities needed to coordinate their efforts to function effectively as a team (Manges, etc. all, 2017).

There are many ways to develop leadership competencies in general through group development in particular; Among these ways, we can mention the 360-degree feedback and the coaching method. But a technique that has gained attention in the last decade, especially since 2012, is the use of educational escape rooms to develop competencies. Since 2012, the educational escape room has been used to develop competencies in different communities such as students and college students, as well as in different domains such as English language teaching (López, 2019), nurse education (Edwards, 2019) and leadership competency development (Egan et al., 2021) has been used.

“Escape rooms are live-action team-based games where players discover clues, solve puzzles?and accomplish tasks in one or more rooms in order to accomplish a specific goal (usually escaping from the room) in a limited amount of time” (Nicholson, 2015). The use of escape rooms to develop competencies is increasing for several reasons. First of all, new technologies have made it possible to pursue virtual or digital escape rooms in addition to in-person escape rooms that require the physical presence of players. As a result, the limitations related to the remoteness of the subject or quarantine are manageable (Arpin, 2021). And secondly, the escape room is a fun experience that increases motivation, enhances learning, and strengthens teamwork and communication skills (Veldkamp et al., 2020).

Egan et al.'s research is one of the few studies that has focused on the development of leadership competencies through escape rooms. By examining this research, it is possible to understand the relative effectiveness of the escape room in the development of the 4 main competencies of this research (i.e., advocating for a point of view, verbal communication, conflict negotiation, and listening). Of course, this research has limitations that include three areas: research design, data collection, and research focus. One of the other weaknesses of this research is that there is no method to follow the stability of the effects of the escape room in the long term. The participants of this research include students who participated in the research based on their own choice and merit expressed in the previous conference. And since this sampling method is limited to a specific society, it is not very capable of being generalized to the whole society (Egan et al., 2021).

Medical schools are also recently using escape rooms to develop leadership skills and group dynamics among medical students. In this regard, Wu et al.'s research can be cited as an example. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the escape room makes students use each of the five medical school leadership competencies (i.e. leading self, communication and influence, problem solving, teamwork, systems thinking). After finishing the game, the students were asked about the effectiveness of the escape room in using the five leadership competencies, and 58% of the students reported that the escape room led to the use of all 5 competencies in the game environment, and 100% of the students used more than 3 competencies. The research concludes that the escape room activity provides a non-traditional experiential learning opportunity that fosters constructive interactions and leads to the observation of unique leadership skills and styles in individuals (Wu et al., 2018).

Another research that deals with a problem similar to the current research is a thesis entitled "The Effectiveness of digital escape room games to deliver leadership training". The researcher developed a computer game, in which the participants have to solve puzzles and challenges in virtual space to learn the situational leadership model. The situational leadership model is based on the principle that there is no such thing as a "best" leadership style. Effective leadership depends on the desired task, and the most successful leaders are those who can adapt and coordinate their leadership style with the level of maturity of the person or group that is to be led or influenced by him. The results of this study showed that " digital escape room game is an effective way to deliver leadership training based on learner satisfaction, learning acquisition, and behavior change data”. Of course, the researcher addresses his limitations in research: " Limitations for this study included low participation (due to recruitment practices), retention, and the global pandemic” (emotional and mental health impacts and not having the “emotional capacity” to take on tasks that were generally outside of their immediate scope). Due to the low participation and retention, the findings of this study may have challenges with generalizing to the broader conclusion that escape room games are effective” (Arpin, 2021).

Due to the lack of research on the use of educational escape rooms, there are many uncertainties in the effectiveness of escape rooms for the development of competencies, including leadership competencies. Despite many searches in international scientific databases with keywords such as "development of leadership skills", "educational escape room" and etc, only three studies were found in this field. For this purpose, the aim of the upcoming research is to act as much as possible to resolve the ambiguity of the nature and effectiveness of educational escape rooms. The main question is "Can escape rooms be used as an educational tool to develop leadership competencies including teamwork (in this research) in Iranian society?"

This text is only the problem statement of my article. The full version of the article will be posted here once published.

Resources:

Rosch, D. M., & Schwartz, L. M. (2009). Potential issues and pitfalls in outcomes assessment in leadership education. Journal of Leadership Education, 8(1), 177-194.

Mozhgan, A., Parivash, J., Nadergholi, G., & Jowkar, B. (2011). Student leadership competencies development. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 15, 1616-1620.

Lyle M. Spencer Jr., Signe M. Spencer (1 March 1993). Competence at Work: Models for Superior Performance. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Manges, K., Scott‐Cawiezell, J., & Ward, M. M. (2017, January). Maximizing team performance: the critical role of the nurse leader. In Nursing Forum (Vol. 52, No. 1, pp. 21-29).

McCowan, R. J. (1998). Origins of Competency-Based Training.?Online Submission.

Rydenf?lt, C., Borell, J., & Erlingsdottir, G. (2018). What do doctors mean when they talk about teamwork? Possible implications for interprofessional care.?Journal of interprofessional care.

Egan, J. D., Banter, J. N., & Sorgen, C. H. (2021). Assessing Escape Rooms as a Teaching Strategy for Leadership Competency Development.?Journal of leadership Education,?20(1).

Wu, C., Wagenschutz, H., & Hein, J. (2018). Promoting leadership and teamwork development through escape rooms.?Medical Education,?52(5), 561-562.

Arpin, R. A. (2021).?The Effectiveness of Digital Escape Rooms to Deliver Leadership Training: A Mixed-Methods Study?(Doctoral dissertation, Franklin University).

Seemiller, C., & Murray, T. (2013). The common language of leadership.?Journal of Leadership Studies,?7(1), 33-45.

Veldkamp, A., van de Grint, L., Knippels, M. C. P., & van Joolingen, W. R. (2020). Escape education: A systematic review on escape rooms in education.?Educational Research Review,?31, 100364.

López, á. G. (2019). The use of escape rooms to teach and learn English at university.?Research, technology and best practices in education, 94-101.

Edwards, T., Boothby, J., & Succheralli, L. (2019). Escape room: Using an innovative teaching strategy for nursing students enrolled in a maternity clinical course.?Teaching and learning in nursing,?14(4), 251-253.

Nicholson, S. (2015). Peeking behind the locked door: A survey of escape room facilities.