Center for Creative Leadership: Why Games Belong in the Leadership Development Toolbox

For the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), game-based learning is not about adding entertainment to a leadership program. It is about creating the right experience to help leaders learn, reflect and apply new perspectives to real-world challenges.

CCL has pioneered leadership development for more than 50 years and works with leaders and organizations around the world. Their approach combines research-based leadership development with practical experiences, including simulations and experiential learning.

The game comes second

One of the strongest messages from the conversation is simple:

"The game is never the starting point".

CCL starts with the client challenge and the outcome they want participants to achieve. Only then do they consider which tools and experiences will best support that outcome.

As Chris explains, when designing a program, the question is:

"What do we want participants to be able to do when they leave?"

Actee becomes one of the tools that can help achieve that outcome.

This makes game-based learning part of a broader learning toolbox rather than an isolated activity.

From learning about leadership to experiencing it

Trevor describes how CCL's approach to leadership development goes beyond teaching skills and frameworks. Their focus includes vertical development: expanding leaders' mindsets and capacity to deal with increasingly complex situations.

Games and simulations can bring together three important elements of development:

• Heat experiences that challenge participants
• Colliding perspectives that expose them to different ways of thinking
• Sense-making and reflection that help them understand what happened

Instead of simply discussing leadership challenges, participants get to experience them.

They make decisions, encounter resistance, work with stakeholders and deal with uncertainty. Before long, the fact that they are "playing a game" becomes secondary. The scenario starts to feel like a real leadership challenge.

Creating productive friction

For experienced leaders, predictable learning is rarely enough.

Trevor explains that when leaders encounter situations where they do not know what to do, they often fall back on what they have always done. A simulation creates an opportunity to disrupt those patterns.

Participants encounter friction, competing perspectives and unfamiliar situations, giving them a chance to notice how they actually respond.

One of the insights Trevor has seen emerge from Actee simulations is particularly telling:

"I need to hear what my people are thinking."

Participants can discover that they have been assuming they know what others are thinking instead of asking and listening.

That is the kind of insight that can move directly from the simulation back into the workplace.

More than engagement

CCL also makes an important distinction between engagement and learning.

A game can certainly be engaging, but engagement alone is not the goal.

The real value comes when the experience creates learning and transformation.

Chris describes how participants often become deeply involved in solving the problems together. When a team succeeds, they celebrate. When they struggle, they debate. When someone sees a different way of approaching a challenge, the group learns from it.

These moments can build something that is difficult to create through traditional content alone:

"Confidence."

As Chris puts it, you can actually train confidence with a game.

The learning happens in the debrief

For CCL, playing the simulation is only part of the experience.

In many cases, participants spend more time discussing and debriefing than they do playing.

That is where unexpected learning can emerge.

Participants may suddenly recognize that they do not celebrate enough small wins. They may start questioning each other's decisions. They may discover that a behavior they use in the simulation is also something they use at work.

The facilitator helps participants connect those observations to their own leadership.

"The game creates the experience. The debrief creates the meaning."

Learning from each other

Another important part of the experience is the group dynamic.

When four or five participants sit around a table, nobody necessarily starts as an expert at the game. But everyone brings their own leadership experience.

They compare decisions, challenge each other and explain why they approached situations differently.

Chris describes this as a powerful way of learning alongside others who are also trying to improve.

The facilitator does not have to be the "sage on the stage". Instead, the facilitator becomes a guide on the side, creating the space for participants to teach and learn from each other.

Developing great facilitators

CCL applies the same experiential philosophy to its own facilitator development.

New facilitators first experience the game themselves. They observe experienced facilitators, work alongside colleagues who know the system and then move into co-facilitation.

This gives them the opportunity to understand the experience from the participant's perspective before they are responsible for creating it for others.

Even highly experienced facilitators continue to use the facilitator guide. Not because they need instructions on how to play, but because it helps them stay focused on the learning objective behind each part of the experience.

For CCL, great game-based learning is therefore not simply about having a great game.

"It is about preparation, facilitation, experience and reflection."

Why CCL chooses Actee

The conversation shows that CCL does not use Actee because games are simply fun or different.

They use it when a simulation can create something their learning objective requires:

A challenging experience.
A different perspective.
A moment of reflection.
A conversation that would not otherwise happen.
And ultimately, the confidence to apply something differently back at work.

For an organization as experienced in leadership development as CCL, game-based learning is not a replacement for proven leadership content.

It is another way of bringing that content to life.

"Because sometimes the best way to learn about leadership is to put leaders in a situation where they actually have to lead."

Listen to the full conversation

Hear Chris Beckert and Trevor Rosenberg discuss how CCL strategically integrates game-based learning into leadership development programs, what happens in the room when participants experience Actee for the first time, and why the facilitator and debrief are just as important as the game itself.