How to Navigate in the 'Galaxy of Feedbacks'?

FLIGBY has been designed to give each player a continuous stream of valuable, multidimensional feedback during and after the Leadership Development Game. Let us recall that providing frequent, specific, and actionable feedback is one of the most important features of Flow-promoting leadership practices – as it is a crucial element also in most other contemporary leadership development themes and programs.

MULTIPLE FEEDBACK TO PLAYERS

The two dozen or so different kinds of #feedback given to FLIGBY players are of three types, if we use as the basis of classification the time when the feedback is given:?

• (1) Multiple feedback while playing the Game;?
• (2) A comprehensive, automatically-generated report on the strengths and weaknesses of each player’s leadership profile, sent individually to each player (as well as to his or her instructor/trainer) right after the Game; and?
• (3) Discussion with the player’s peers – during the debriefing sessions arranged by the instructor/trainer – on the reasons why some players have made different choices on key decisions than other players or the Game’s designers did.

Excerpt from the book, “Missing Link Discovered“:

1. Instant Feedback during Your Game-play?

The player can periodically or continually check the Game’s dashboard for instruments that show how the GM’s decisions impact the Flow state of each member of the management team, the “corporate atmosphere”, and the Winery’s profit potential. Each time the player manages to get someone into a Flow state, FLIGBY signals that the player has collected a Flow trophy, and each time the player’s decisions promote/enhance the environmental sustainability of the Winery’s operations, FLIGBY signals that a Sustainability badge has been earned. How many trophies and badges a player earns by the Game’s end (of the maximum possible numbers) is one measure of the player’s skill and they are inputs into winning or not the Game’s main prize, the “Spirit of the Wine Award.”

However, each player receives much more than quantifiable feedback! He or she will also obtain, continually and visually, emotional-reaction-based feedback from the members of the team as they respond with voice-tone and body-language to the GM’s communications with them and to the GM’s decisions affecting them. One characteristic of a Flow-friendly manager is that he or she pays attention to such type of feedback, as opposed to just continuing on his or her merry way, as many “bosses” do in real life.?

And that is not all! The player has the option of restarting a Scene, or the entire Game, discovering what the GM’s virtual team members’ reactions would be if the player made different decisions. What a learning opportunity, in complete privacy; something we can only wish for in real life, wondering, about “what if…?”?

And that is still not all! At the end of each of the 23 Scenes, Mr. Fligby, the player’s personal game and leadership mentor and coach, is ready to offer personal feedback.

At several junctures in the Game, the player will get a signal that FLIGBY’S Multimedia Library has a brief classic reading or video to guide the GM on the decisions he or she is about to make. Those resources provide intellectual-academic learning and reinforce the overall purpose of the course or the training program where FLIGBY is used. The player has the choice of making use of those aids or skipping them and possibly revisiting them later.

And there is, of course, the grand prize: the Spirit of the Wine Award. The player will learn only at Game’s end whether he or she has succeeded in earning that Award, a measure of the player’s success in skillfully balancing difficult tradeoffs, such as generating individual Flow, enhancing the level of corporate atmosphere, earning a satisfactory profit, and adequately protecting the environment.

How deeply a player wants to engage in playing FLIGBY is up to him or her, guided of course by the instructor or trainer (for example, by making certain readings mandatory). At the other end of the options, a player may play FLIGBY straight through, enjoying its decision challenges, and seeing where “gut” decisions are leading. Alternatively, the player can make use of some or all of FLIGBY’S “bells and whistles” by checking, or asking for and responding to, the multiple feedback available throughout the Game.

2. The FLIGBY report on your 29 leadership skills profile

One of the first steps in the development of FLIGBY was identifying the skills helpful for generating Flow, along with other typical management/leadership skills. FLIGBY’s 29 skills, the method of how each is measured during the Game, and how FLIGBY’s skill-set compares with similar (but slightly different) other skill-classification systems.?

Upon finishing the Game, the player receives a detailed, benchmarked report on his or her managerial/leadership skills, as well as areas suggested for further development. The report shows relative strengths and weaknesses within each individual's own skills profile. At the same time, each skill and group of skills is automatically also benchmarked against the average of the player’s cohort (for example, employees of an organization who played the Game at the same time, or that of a class whose instructor assigned FLIGBY).

In addition, instructors and trainers may request other, tailor-made comparisons with specified benchmark groups (e.g., by industry, age, leadership level), which FLIGBY’s service providers will assemble from the detailed (but anonymous) scores of the thousands who had played FLIGBY up to that point.

For those who might be interested in a SAMPLE report, explore here!

3. Quality Feedback via Expert Debriefing ?

Some participants always ask: “What should have been the ‘right’ choice to pick on certain key decisions?” Your expert instructor/trainer is given access to a “key”, called Private Guide to Key Decisions, with an explanation of the FLIGBY expert teams’ reasoning on each of those approximately 90 decisions to which certain skills were attached, based on Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow-based decision framework.

Debriefing sessions are always exciting and memorable as participants explain their thinking and reasoning on decision dilemmas, and debate each other. The additional learning is priceless: everyone will hear that there are numerous plausible and defensible ways to think about a problem or to react to a situation. Some differences will reflect varied cultural backgrounds (the instructor may emphasize); others can be traced to distinct personalities, shaped by inherited genes and individual experiences. Such discussions are bound to open minds, strengthen tolerance toward other views, and teach the importance of empathy with others (especially subordinates). Tolerance toward different views and empathy with others are essential skills in a Flow-based management framework.

Debriefing after the Game is a good opportunity for the instructor to convey another “wisdom” of the Csikszentmihalyi-FLIGBY ethical responsibility framework, namely, that good managers/leaders always accept and own up to the consequences of their decisions – foreseen or not – instead of finding excuses and blaming others for possible adverse consequences.

We highlighted and gave examples of the different kinds of feedback players automatically receive (or have access to) along the gameplay process: (1) during gameplay, (2) after the Game and (3) during the final debriefing session. See the three groupings in FLIGBY’s rich “Galaxy of feedback types”:

Illustration: The constellation of FLIGBY’s feedback system Source: Buzády et al. (2019). (here)

READ more on www.flowleadership.org

Compiled by Dr. Zoltan Buzady, Associate Professor of Leadership, Corvinus University of Budapest