At JAM People Consulting, we’re always exploring new ways to help leaders not just talk about development, but experience it. Our latest innovation, immersive leadership simulations, does exactly that.
What is a leadership simulation?
Rather than learning in a classroom through taught information, leaders are placed inside a live business scenario. They work as a leadership team navigating complex, ambiguous challenges with competing priorities.
The simulation we recently ran with a Financial Services client was built around a fictional organisation facing:
- Strategic decisions about where to invest for growth
- Cultural tensions across teams and geographies
- Stakeholder pressure to deliver on both profit and purpose
In real time, leaders had to balance commercial outcomes with collaborative behaviours, all while the clock was ticking.
What we observed in practice
As practitioners, what struck us most was how quickly patterns of behaviour emerged:
- Default styles surface fast. Under time pressure, leaders quickly reveal their natural tendencies, whether that’s diving into detail, pushing for consensus, or seeking to take control.
- Collaboration vs. competition. Some leaders instinctively protect their own area; others lean into shared ownership. Both have consequences for trust and decision-making quality.
- The feedback lands differently. Because peers and observers can point to specific choices made only minutes earlier, the feedback feels tangible and actionable, not abstract.
The lessons for leadership development
From this simulation, three big lessons stood out:
- Psychological safety is everything. The quality of peer feedback depends on leaders feeling safe to experiment and reflect. Setting this up well makes the difference between shallow commentary and deep behavioural insight.
- It’s not about “winning” the case. The richest learning often comes when teams don’t get the decision perfectly right, but instead see the unintended consequences of their choices play out.
- Transfer is immediate. Leaders often leave the room saying, “I can see myself doing that back at work.” That self-awareness in the moment is what sparks real change.
Why it matters now
In Financial Services, as in many sectors, leaders are grappling with high levels of complexity, scrutiny, and change. Traditional leadership programmes can feel too slow or theoretical. Simulations cut through by creating a safe space to practise high-stakes leadership in a way that feels authentic, challenging, and energising.
For us as practitioners, it reinforced the power of learning by doing, of building clarity in the noise, and of enabling leaders to see and shift the ripple effects of their behaviours in real time.
Let’s chat about how this could work for your leaders
If you’d like to explore how immersive leadership simulations could develop your leaders, helping them practise critical behaviours in a safe, high-impact environment, we’d love to talk. Get in touch with us here to find out more.