Adding Gaming to Leadership Learning

[Music] Welcome to season 11 of the Leadership Educator Podcast, your source for knowledge and expertise on facilitating leadership learning. Caution it about leadership education. Want to expand your resource toolbox with practical strategies for teaching learning and program design? This is the podcast for you. If you haven't done so already, please hit subscribe so you'll never miss an episode. [Music] Hello and welcome to season 11 of the Leadership Educator Podcast. I'm Ben Jacobs, Professor of Leadership at Organizational Studies at University of Southern Maine. And I am Lauren Bologna, Assistant Professor of Instruction at Temple University. This season we're discussing specific instructional strategies that leadership educators can use to facilitate learning in their places and spaces. These might include academic courses as well as co-curricular programs. And doing so, we've invited leadership educators in our community of practice to join us to showcase some of the innovative as well as some of the old school approaches to teaching leader. Yes, we'll speak on strategies such as reflection, storytelling, team building, gamification, and improv among other approaches. You know we're going to totally have a good time this season. And of course, as always, we cannot wait to have these conversations. Today, I'm excited to welcome Dr. Joe lastly to the show. Dr. Joe is an Assistant Professor of Leadership and Organizational Studies at the University of Southern Maine, which means he gets to hang out with Dan all the time. He teaches courses on group dynamics, leadership development, and organizational learning, which means he's perfect to be on our show because that's where we live. As the founder of Game Nomic Leadership, he's developed a unique approach to leadership and learning by using games to help people understand themselves, navigate group dynamics, and explore how the world works. And our episode today will ask Joe how he uses games and gamification in his leadership course and his consulting practice. So hopefully our listeners who teach in the classroom can pick some stuff up and our friends and student affairs and training programs can also pick up some stuff. Our goal today is always for our guests to walk away with a few things to test on your own, as well as selfishly, Dan and I always come away with great ideas. It's one of the pros of doing this show. We get to hear firsthand from experts what they can share with us that we can apply to our classroom. We'll also make sure that any resources that we have are shared in the game notes. Yeah, and one of the things to know about Joe before we formally welcome him, as he's standing by here, so his dissertation was titled "An Examination of Gaming Environments in Dungeons and Dragon Groups." And that caught my attention at the 2019 ILA Global Conference in Ottawa. I did no Joe at the time at all, but I also did no Joe was on the job hunt at the time, because he had just successfully defended his dissertation or was within like a month of doing so at that time. And I saw him co-present on his work with an adjacent project, which was called Leadership by Deachos, the game-based approach to the Tina leadership, which was a lively demo of an interactive game he designed with a team for Latinas to explore their leadership practice through a bicultural lens. When that game employed this idea of Deachos or saying, or sayings, as a tool to understand how Bing Latina can be a leverage or a liability, and then he's done leaning in participants in that session, had opportunities to like discern what pieces of a bicultural identity that they might bring to what table. And I love that idea of the quote-unquote like the table, right? Because tabletop games is where Dungeons and Dragons happens, and a lot of the other types of work that Joe was involved in. And as we got to know each other, and eventually he ended up applying for an assistant professor job, and as we introduced him, he was hired and has been very successful as he's moving up the tenure track. But it was interesting to me about how he was using his skills as a Dungeon Master, and doing some group relations and group dynamics consulting work using tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons as the forum for doing so. Kind of during that time of getting to know Joe, we struck up a conversation and ended up co-facilitating a workshop at the 2020 ALE virtual conference, looking at things like psychological safety and group dynamics in the classroom and in other spaces. Last thing to know about Joe as he stands by, and we have officially welcomed him. He also recently co-authored a chapter titled Checkmate or Chance Games as a Strategy for Leader Development and the forthcoming book, Moving the Needle, What We Know and Don't Know about developing leaders that I had a pleasure of co-editing with my great friends Dave Roch and Scott Allen. Finally, welcome to the show, Joe. Hey, happy Wednesday. It's great to be here. It's great to have you. Yeah, I'm excited. So Dan just gave us all your business. He just told us everything there is to know. One thing though, I'm curious before we get into our topic today about how you use gamification and games and teaching and training, how did you get into games? Like, I think about myself in that I loved playing card games. My mom had three kids in the 80s and was always trying to keep us busy. So she gave us this card book and kind of was like learning everything. And so that was my intro to cards. I also played a little duck hunt for anybody that had an Nintendo in the 80s, right? But I'm curious, how did you get into games in the first place? I think like every human being, I played them as a kid. So, well, I'm also, I am a big geek. So that is another layer there to, you know, of course, I played cards with the family, but I also played board games and video games growing up by, I grew up in the age where I was a small child when Super Nintendo came out and then that was kind of a thing. And of course, being a geek and playing games all throughout my life. The story of getting into that for leadership was kind of an ODA moment because, you know, I had, I had been working in student fairs actually playing social deduction games for hours every weekend with students. They would come, you know, 30, 40 students for hours on a Friday night or a Saturday night every weekend for a whole semester just because they wanted to, you know, stay up late playing these games. And I was facilitating them because I liked facilitating them, but I also liked facilitating group dynamics and student development. So those things were just all happening, even though that wasn't the reason that we were gathered because that was kind of just how I saw the world. And I started to realize that other people don't see those things as the same thing. They see those things as very different worlds actually. And then that happened again when I was in my PhD program. I realized that because I gave a presentation in my first semester, like, you could choose any topic you wanted just to practice, you know, whatever I talked about games and leadership and group dynamics and in tabletop role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons and someone like classmates who are not geeks or gamers were like, I think you have something there. And that kind of was a cue to me like, wait, other people think that this, there's something here because maybe I should, maybe I should cross the streams as we say in the 80s. It sounds like you felt like you're stealing money a little bit like, wait, no, this is part of what I can do. I totally it does not feel about podcasting sometimes like, oh, you want me to talk to people about like leadership stuff? Okay, twist my arm. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly that kind of a thing. So, and of course, no one had studied or developed things at least 10 years ago now, which is kind of weird to think about. Yeah, I mean, it was such a novel idea. I mean, I was similar when I, when I, you know, saw you at that presentation and was, you know, just like, noodling on the concept as a watching you all present. I was like, this is like, you know, it's just one of those things where it's like, it's right in front of our face, right? And I think about, well, I only played D&D like one time when I was in middle school. I remembered the experience really, really well. And also thinking about, I mean, I, I spent more time playing video games and tabletop games when I was, of that, of that age. But we, we would play a lot of games that would have like multiplayer. Like I remember you mentioned SNES, the Superness and so like I remember, a friend of mine had the like extension thing where you could plug in like four controllers. And we had a couple games that had like multiple characters that were going on quests and, you know, you're fighting, you know, characters and whatever. But like, we, you know, you get to know a lot about your friends about how you can team up and, and either, you know, achieve these quests or beat the bosses or, you know, move through the levels or whatever or, or not, right? If everybody's at each other's next, maybe you all are great team. We could have should have had you come in and, and intervene with us and, and debrief some of those more tense sessions that we have. But, but we, but I digress. So Joe, one important things I want to know before we get in the deeper into this is, so how, how would you define or describe as we think about this in the context of leadership development and training in education, these concepts of like games and gamification as well as how they, how they differ. Yeah, that's an excellent starting question. It goes back to the like, there is like a new element of like us discovering this and it's not like people haven't been using game based learning or gamification for a really long time when there's lots of research and different sectors about that. So it's not that those things are totally new, but I'll try to define how what I'm doing is that I think a little bit unique or I've been told is a unique to so. The word gamification in education, which this audience is probably a lot more familiar with has a couple different definitions. a simple one is just using game design elements to accomplish some other educational goal, like increasing engagement or motivation or matching learning challenge with skill level, those types of concepts from game design applied in some other contexts. Even if it's a software platform like Capitica where you can set your goals and the, it's kind of like you're on a quest to complete your goals kind of. And then game based learning, using games as a learning activity, there's like a spectrum that I've discovered in working and getting into this of like some people design games as the learning activity. Like the learning thing was first and then we created a game about it, like flash cards or those kinds of things, right? And what the boundary of like what's a game gets really blurry then at a certain point is like life is a game, right? School is a game, right? You could just do everything as a game and that's helpful. You know, there are motivation things that I think where it gets tripped up is that extra intrinsic and extrinsic play. So, you know, play is really an intrinsic thing and when we're being, when we're trying to shape something else, then that becomes extrinsic and that the research on gamification and education shows, that's kind of where it, that's where it falters. You know, the leaderboards are actually counterproductive because only the top two people start trying hard and everybody else quits because they're not going to win kind of a thing versus I'm playing for plays sake and using a game that way. So, and then there's people have been finding out games like Dungeons and Dragons in its leisurely form has these benefits to yourself and to your life. They're not always guaranteed. It's not the same experience every time. All of that kind of stuff because there's a lot of other things that go with it, but games as a leisure pursuit have other benefits and so that's the kind of spectrum of play in games in the classroom for classrooms design and then using it as inspiration for other things. You know, there's so much to unpack there. It makes me think about this conversation. So, Dan and I always, before we jump on, we always say kind of how how are the husbands, why's how are the kids? And one of the things we keep coming back to is like our kids in parallel play and Dan talks about his wife's work a little bit and I talk about how my son will invite like 35 other 12-year-olds and they'll be playing 12 different things and now with each other, but that's, you know, it satisfies them. It looks different. You know, when I was a kid, we were chasing each other around and we were engaging and talking to each other and they just played differently. And so it feels like in defining games and gamification, you've given us a lot to think about like what are the boundaries? Do we do learning first or game first? Is it intrinsic or extrinsic? Extrinsic? Extrinsic? You know, leisure versus competitive. It makes me think how then do you go about like finding resources for like deciding even what to do? I mean, I know we're going to talk a little bit about logistics, but you know, my first thought is like how do you sit down with all these parameters and start designing activities for play? Yeah. Well, and add another one to the list is that the different we separate play and work, but it also plays just as much as kids do. Actually, it just looks a little bit different and we have a chip on our shoulder about calling it that, but that's for that's a whole different podcast. So in terms of like how do I sit down and get started with it? It's all very context dependent. It, you know, so is it like El Rio de Dichos that Dan was mentioning earlier? Okay. We have a particular purpose for why we are working on this project. We want to design a experience that is developmental, focus on the particular content and the experiential dynamics of Latina identity, development and leadership context and organizational leaders. And so we kind of do a very, what is very similar to a traditional game based learning. There are many books out there about how to do game based learning, quote unquote, the right way. You know, start with your learning outcome that becomes your game object objective and then design around that. I think that and so in that context is okay, we're designing this workshop with a game is to fill us facilitate an experience. It becomes an experience design. He's a lot of game design things, but I also use a lot of adult development design types of things in that context. If it's you know, a consulting program using a tabletop role playing game to cultivate certain team dynamics, then that's a different purpose. I'm not designing a game around content. I'm designing a process for people to engage in or the action research that I conduct about that both uses and looks at tabletop role playing games as a form of leadership development and team identity development. And so we sit down with very different goals or intentions. I'll even call them. They're not really goals yet. Sometimes we have to identify goals there. And then it may be it's a game design process. Maybe it's a group dynamics, you know, presence and sensing the emerging dynamics kind of problem. I think that's another kind of a key takeaway that I is consistent for me is that learning is a process, not an outcome. We will have learning outcomes in training contexts or in classroom contexts, but the learning itself, that's an indicator of learning, but the learning itself is a process. Feeling with every question I have about eight more questions that comes up, which is wonderful, which is great. I will jump back a little bit though. You talked a little bit about the introduction of gamification like in your PhD program. When you got hired to teach full time, how did you start using it in your in your classroom? Like for your own students that, you know, you were the assigned course instructor, the assigned faculty member. Well, a couple different ways. There are a couple of games that I have that are about specific topics. That's more traditional game based learning kind of thing like the content is what the game is about versus the experience I have playing the game tells me something about myself. Like those are very different types of learning there, but I have a couple of games that are about leadership topics or like conflict resolution and what are the five styles of conflict and how do you activate them to go through the process of mediation, those kinds of things. And use that in a training context as well. But also I've been able to teach two classes that are more or less about the games. So one is an intro to game design course, which I use project based learning because they're designing a game in teams. And so they go through the whole process of learning about design thinking concepts and the challenges that teams have when they need to diverge and converge around different ideas and how to actually do brainstorming and design thinking is about minimum viable products not having the finished thing before you go to testing and all of that. So they are learning about team leadership and design thinking and distributed leadership in teams just as much as they are trying to design a game in that context. But the game becomes the object that they're working with and then they have these different levels of learning because what they're doing in their game mirrors what's happening in their group dynamics and it's all really fun to kind of coach them around that. And then I also did teach a course that was about designing games for leadership development. It was just taught at one semester as a special topics and that was one in which we learned about game based learning and game gamification and types of things. But then we developed a role-playing game adventure for a particular like learning leadership topic that they wanted to design. So those are some of the ways that I've used games as a leadership learning tool. Yeah, thinking about those, is there one or two that jump out as your favorite learning activity that utilizes either games or gamification or one or two that you know that your students love and I guess the friend that would be like, I can't wait for week five because I know I get to facilitate this game in my class, you know, I guess again, a couple of other ones that students are like, oh my gosh, like you see it come up and you're like teaching you vowels as being like that that like, you know, amazing class experience that resonates with students. Well, my favorite is the leadership tabletop role-playing games. So the lead RPG is I call it and kind of my team calls it and that has been hard to do in a classroom setting especially with the enrollment being the way that it has been students are only taking required courses and part of what makes the lead RPG in its like fullest form and has many versions. My favorite is just the depth and comprehensiveness of the leadership development. It's this, you know, think of all those special experiences you've been a part of where groups of people came together and they were transformative for the individuals but also greater than the sum of their parts and you build over a time you get to come back, you know, whether it's in a retreat format or if it's something that goes, you know, every week or every other week for several months, those type of experiences where you get to build in the whole process of getting into it and learning the kind of, I don't know what I want to say, the introductory kinds of things, the base level kinds of things but then the ability to reflect over trajectories of change over time and like what stories are getting told by the group both in the game narrative that they're creating and in their group as a group of players and how has the group kind of bonded through that process and then also developed their own different norms and behaviors that they may not even see like on the surface because they become habitual around saying yes and or creating space or having versatility in the way they show up in their role and that applies to being a character in a role playing game and it also applies to how you show up in a classroom or professional setting and a lot of the group dynamics work that I do with students is about this is a class and this group project matters and you always show up the way you show up at work. So what is a different role you would like to try on for this particular group project and because it's about group dynamics we have readings and resources about roles and how to experience that kind of a thing but that's the kind of thing you get to do over time with a bigger program. You know I love that you shared that because my favorite thing about teaching group dynamics courses is the shop and all students go through when they realize that like people don't play well at work either. I'm like you know the kids you struggle with in class you know they get jobs and in some cases they're your boss so figured out with me or figure it out when you get to work and you know and they're bigger ramifications of it right. I love hearing kind of the different ways in which you talked about you know integrating it into your class and like the different activities. I thought I was doing it because some of my classes I had them put together Legos to talk about how well they built their group experience. I say here put these Legos together and inevitably someone says oh I've never even worked with Legos and they're the loudest person leading the charge and I was like a lot of listening to them and they've never put together Legos and it's like light bulb moment and we talk a little bit about it. It's something as simple as Legos but to your point like the inner activity in the games and almost like the distraction a little bit can help you know surface so much in terms of the learning process you talked about. I'll say this one other thing I always struggle with is the cost of gamithic you know there's a great scenario that one of my colleagues does but she's trained in it and she's figured out you know how to get students access at a lower cost. I know I'm very cost conscious because a lot of my students you know can just barely afford to be there let alone additional fees and and costs and things like that like I always administer flifton strengths and usually I'll buy a student a code because they just don't have access to it and I don't want it to be prohibitive for learning. What's some of the opportunities you face but then also what are some of the challenges that you run into in incorporating games into your team? Yes well the overhead whether it's cost or the amount of time it takes to prep right like because I mean at this point I can show up with with the discussion guide that I've used many times and I can run that very successfully and at a very expert level and those types of things but if I'm designing a game or running again even running a game I run before the amount of preparation is a lot and I think a challenge in all game based learning is the learning curve of learning how to play the game can get in the way of being having enough time to play the game and then because we live in this industrial complex of education it's like you have two and a half hours and that needs to be productive and we define productive as like beneficial to the economy you know in some sort of way and you can define your outcome when you got out of it and every minute was used and it's like no like if you spend three hours and you get lost in the in the time there and you're really playing you might not be able to point to like eat every minute of that resulted in this learning kind of a thing and especially when when I'm doing like coaching and group dynamics like group process consulting kinds of things it's like I can tell people at the end like this is what we did today to make the learning objective more clear you know as an education practice and it might be weeks later it might be months later after the course is even done where they have the aha moment where it actually sinks in because it's experiential you know games are real experiences that we have they're not necessarily separate they provide us the illusion of being this a little bit of an escape this some separation from I'm in this context now I'm not in my work context or my student context so I can play differently and tell people where to put the legos you know kind of a thing but they are real experiences that we have how so I think that the overhead and just trying to fit it into educational mindset it has to be a learning activity it's not a game it's a game as a learning activity and then people have all these assumptions about well there should be a defined outcome and it should generate the same experience every time and that's just that's not how coaching works that's not how group process consulting works but those are valuable leadership development like benefits you know I love that you say that but also I feel like you have an ally because when I introduce myself the first week of class I share my values and one of my values is humor and I say you know we can have fun and learn at the same time and I'm like I don't want to be bored so I'm going to be in here trying not to board you too but to your point I feel like if it's not this like this like Netflix movie you know idea of what teaching looks like people feel like they can't learn and I can promise you that we probably both had students who we we've said you know funny things to about leadership that they retain more than you know the definition of leadership or you know what the social change model is like not knocking it but just you know what I'm saying like sometimes I hear those things and it's like that's the key to helping them remember some of those things and ultimately that's our goal how are they when they're not in class and then a controlled environment how are they enacting and engaging with other people in a way that's moving the needle forward or making posthumous social yeah those are great points though and I'm curious Joe like you know you you dropped a lot of knowledge on us so like imagine I am you know a leadership educator or I'm working to student affairs or I'm a trainer just you know I'm thinking about using games and gamification like what what are some of the like foundational things listeners should know about implementing one of these approaches like what are the first steps people could take to start using it in like a class or a workshop why don't I I'll say as a starting point for as a for a leadership educator wanting to start using games right as is know what you're why like what your what's your purpose right maybe that is starting with the learning outcome as much as I you know cringe a little bit at say that but like maybe that is saying okay this is the learning outcome that we're designing around and then you have all these other questions that you that'll come up that you'll need to answer but you'll be able to answer them if you know why you're doing it in the first place because if it's the content that really matters then that's the kind of game or the kind of experience that you're going to designer you know my preference is for the dynamic experiential process oriented kinds of learning that we do about ourselves in the way we operate in groups but that doesn't mean that there's not value in saying no the content on the cards is what we're learning about today it's not about dragons and adventures and we happen to learn about how we respond to challenges is a process in that thing it's also about the seven seas are on the cards and we're rolling the dice and you know like it's a different kind of thing but if that's what you're going for you kind of need to start there and then you're it's gonna it takes a lot so make sure you're genuinely interested in doing it and you're gonna have fun with it as much work as it's gonna be because it's going to be harder than just and not that learning design isn't already a ton of work as teaching is is a very hard profession but it is it is harder and more work less in planning for that kind of learning than it is to have a discussion in class or great some reflection questions or or even to just lecture which I don't do but those are all much more tempting and easier preps yeah yeah I mean like just to kind of I guess expand on your idea of like as much as you said it pinned you to say starting with the learning goals right and but that that is backwards course design right and so like if if you're just trying to see if your learners know that you know green leaf and servant leadership go together you can use a kuhu right like we're just talking about foundational knowledge here but if we're looking at for application evaluation synthesis like higher levels of learning or like to your point around like okay I'm actually really interested in how these students work together and having them learn about group dynamics and debrief and and and reflect on these types of things and we're talking about aligning different types of game based activities with different types of learning goal are there any resources that do a good job of suggesting like and I don't know the answer to this question at all I'm curious of or maybe is there an opportunity for that you know when I think about like okay you know I mean you know like a catalog of you know these types of things or at least some resources that you've come across that you know educators you're like okay you know here's some good games and a line with this topic or these you know sets of learning goals other than like just using AI to try and you know create something for you there are and the names are escaping me at the moment which I feel I'm scared about because there are like this is the book about game based learning in the class you've got thing and so you could probably google it find out but I wish I could verify the name for you right now and I'll also say in terms of literature class at all 2015 kind of outlined like the different types of learning in games and those kinds of things the game based learning And then there are some associations that are really helpful. So the North American simulation and gaming association is, there's a lot of people who are all into this kind of thing there. And there are other resources that go with that too. So I'll stop naming them at the risk of alienating the wrong ones. - Yeah, I know that there was that, I know that you contributed to and we had John Egan and John Banneron a couple years ago to talk about their new directions for student leadership issue on games and leadership learning. And you wrote a couple articles, I think, for that one. And so I have always known, you know, anytime that I got any win that anybody was doing work where there was some intersection of game-based learning and leadership development. I was like, well, I've been met Joe. He might be a good person to, and you can tell me privately whether that's been good or bad for you, Joe, like Jesus, damn, more work. But, you know, I've always, you know, appreciated the opportunity to make sure that people know about the work that you're doing and be able to contribute to some of those forums and the development of some of these new resources. - You know, that's been very, very fruitful. So thank you for all of that. - You know what I love is one with the whole internet thing. We can always add it to our show notes, any recommendations that you have. So if you cannot remember off the top of your head, we will absolutely list them in our show notes for our audience. 'Cause we think that it's important to not just talk about this, but to also have resources and ideas. I know I'm someone who gets excited or gets stimulated from these conversations. And I'll go back in and I'll say, "What am I trying to teach and what do I have access to?" And sometimes I'll go into, you know, the, like, the activity books, and I'll take a couple of ideas and put it together just to get creative. And then to your point, I think you said earlier, you kind of have the discussion guide. I always have like an idea, but in some cases, what I think works, works, and in other cases, sometimes it falls flat, but there's still some takeaway. I think for students, it's really about like the debrief too. Like I would focus so much on the directions and instructions. Instead, I know more recently, I focus on asking really great questions, 'cause it didn't really matter what we did, but it mattered how did they process it and tie it all together. So I told them, you can't just choose groups in class by pointing to the person sitting next to you. And I would put them in a group, had them fail miserably, and I'm like, well, how did you choose the group? And did you talk to each other about the group? And no, you didn't share who was good. And it's like that last more than any lecture, like you said, that I could go through and say, here are the steps to conjuncting a group or team effectively. Like they just appreciate that more. But I also think too, sometimes it just comes with expertise. I've been teaching my group dynamics class for 12 years. And sometimes it's just as you're going, reflecting yourself and saying, what worked and what didn't work, and what are some things that I can do differently. And just really being open to learning, the same learning you're trying to get your students open to. So this conversation has been great, Joe. We appreciated having you here. I also sensed a little bit of like a rebel spirit when you started tap-biting the learning outcome, but I was like, oh, my people, I love them and, maybe we can break some of this up, right? I love that. We're grateful for your knowledge, the activities you shared, and just your time today. And we hope that you have a great spring semester. Thank you again, virtual. - Yeah, thanks for having me. This was fun. (upbeat music) - You connect with leadership educators virtually. Please follow us on social media. Search the Leadership Educator Podcast on LinkedIn to find our page. And find us on Twitter at lead educator pod for episode release information, show notes, and upcoming events. You can connect with me on Twitter at Dr_Leadership. And Laura is at M-R-S-L-A-U-R-J-B. That's Miss Laura J-B. You can find the episodes where ever podcasts are available. We also encourage you to please subscribe at leadershipeducator.com and rate us five stars. That's the more you rate us, the easier it is for others to find us. - We'd like to thank the James M. Cox Jr. Institute for Journalism, Innovation, Management, and Leadership within the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. The support was facilitated by Dr. Keith Herndon, William S. Morris, Chair, and new strategy and management. - And our wonderful theme music was composed, performed and mixed by Dr. Matt White, Trumpeter, Composer, and Associate Professor, and Chair of Jazz Studies at the University of South Carolina. Check them out at mattwhitejazz.com. Matt, thank you so much for sharing your musical genius with our audience. - And finally, we are grateful for the support of two professional associations that are destinations for leadership educators, the Association of Leadership Educators, and the International Leadership Association. ALE, which funded the start of the podcast, continues to promote our mission of continuing conversations with leadership professionals. Check out all that ALE has to offer at leadershipeducators.org. The Global Reach of the ILA has helped us to expand our relationship beyond our original borders. Check out the ILA's programs and resources at ilagglowballnetwork.org. (upbeat music)