In August, Betsy wrote a post on the potential of virtual worlds for leadership development.  In that post she mentioned the benefits and opportunities available for leadership development in game-based virtual worlds, such as World of Warcraft, and non-game virtual worlds. She mentioned visualization in virtual worlds as one aspect that can enable leadership training through behavior change and “stickiness” of behaviors. In addition to the benefits of visualization, there are other features and uses of virtual worlds that I believe also lend themselves to developing leadership behaviors in virtual teams. In this post I add to Betsy’s discussion of leadership development in virtual worlds and cover:

• Interactivity and physicality as additional useful features of virtual worlds for leadership development
• The use of games to leverage these features for leadership development.

Interactivity & physicality in virtual worlds
By definition virtual worlds are interactive environments. This natural interactivity and the highly social nature of virtual worlds is one feature beneficial to leadership development. Much like standing in a party or crowded conference room in real life, it is difficult or somehow awkward for one to venture into a virtual landscape and not interact with other avatars in the area. In the virtual world, people tend to congregate where others are because of which meetings and discussions are quite common. Examples of this can be seen in World of Warcraft and other multi-player games in which players tend to congregate in cities or create areas especially for trade and interaction.

The social nature of virtual worlds allows for peer-to-peer education to take place. In other words, while interacting casually in the virtual world, users can ask each other questions and can receive immediate responses from other users. This leads to scenarios in which users are continually trading roles between leader and follower/educator and learner as users ask for and receive help or informal education. This naturally occurring social interaction also leads to what is known as situated learning, whereby the learning environment has meaning to the learners and what needs to be learned. For example, rather than sitting in a conference room hearing a lecture about effective leadership, a virtual world leadership training could take place in an environment similar to where one will be working and can be carried out interacting with real people in real time and trying out different roles. This could be done through specially designed games in which team members could take leadership responsibilities (see below).

Another feature of virtual worlds that can lend itself to leadership development is physicality and the ability to create and re-create visual identities within the world. In worlds such as Second Life, this would allow users to perhaps more comfortably try out new behaviors or roles that they may not have the opportunity to try or are too uncomfortable trying in the real world. If the other people in-world don’t know someone in real life, it allows people to create identities that are comfortable for them and that they feel gives them some psychological or physical advantage. Practicing with these identities can potentially lead to behavior change in the real world.  For example, if a person in a leadership training seminar suffers from insecurity in interacting with others assertively because she believes her height is a hindrance, for example, she can create an avatar in the virtual world with a taller stature. This takes us back to the visualization aspect that Betsy discussed previously and the “stickiness” of behaviors. With a taller avatar, the trainee can stop focusing on her height and focus more on the behaviors she would like to exhibit with others. As her confidence in her leadership capabilities develops, the focus on her height in the real world should be diminished.

Using the physicality feature in virtual worlds can potentially be taken one step further. A recent New York Times article discussed research being carried out in which scientists were able to create the illusion that subjects had taken on the body of someone else using immersive technology. Role-playing has long been used as a technique for creating empathy or helping people see situations from new perspectives. This “body swapping” technique adds a whole new physical dimension to traditional role-playing exercises that could eventually be used to allow leaders not only to try out different behaviors, but also to understand their behaviors or experiences from various followers’ points of view.

Games as a tool for leadership development
One way to leverage the social and physical features available in virtual worlds for leadership development is through specially designed games. One recent game development and research project (see the full paper here in pdf format), carried out within Second Life, gives great insight into how games can be used by virtual teams to overcome team challenges and promote leadership behaviors amongst team members. The designers were able to develop games that encouraged identification with one’s teammates and team goals, positive relational communication among team members, and the trying out of differing roles within the team. The games all required team members to discuss and solve problems with each other through the manipulation of visual puzzles, all similar to team building games that might be played in face to face leadership and team building seminars. This preliminary work shows great promise for using virtual worlds to overcome some virtual team challenges and develop virtual team leaders.

There is still much to be explored in leveraging virtual worlds for leadership development. However, it appears that games may be a fruitful avenue to explore because they enable visualization, interactivity and physicality, all of which are likely to promote leadership development.