Leadership Development

The challenges leaders face in managing and influencing large groups of people within an organization have increased, as remote work shifted communication styles, and brought on new skill requirements for navigating digital communication. These physical barriers demand that leaders properly communicate with their peers and direct reports, interpret nuanced social cues during video conferences and remote collaboration, and lead with empathy. Skills like communication, self-awareness, decision making, active listening and adaptability are at a premium for people leading a dispersed workforce.

To help leaders rapidly learn and develop skills, immersive learning presents a solution. Immersive technology is delivering leadership training in a modality that is faster, more realistic and engaging, and more cost effective at scale than any other method. Given that people master these leadership skills with practice, placing leaders in immersive role play with virtual human characters simulates critical conversations and develops soft skills in real-time. Turning the power of immersive learning toward leadership development is the key to supporting leaders, and in turn, supporting the employees they lead.

"84% of employees say it is important to them to get training on soft skills, with leadership training the most desired."

- SHRM, 2022 Workplace Learning & Development Trends

Immersive Leadership Development Outcomes

Leadership training using immersive technology is proven to deliver better learning outcomes that other forms of training can’t compete with:

4x
Faster to train than in the classroom
275%
more confident to act on what they learned after training
3.75x
More emotionally connected to training content than classroom learners
4x
More focused than their e-learning peers

Accelerated Learning

Time to proficiency and learning in the flow of work are critical for leaders due to time constraints. Immersive learning content’s ability to teach people skills faster with longer knowledge retention helps leaders maximize training time and upskill as their roles change.

Confidence building

Leaders need to exude confidence and demonstrate mastery of their skill sets. Practicing skills through immersive learning is proven to increase confidence when acting on learned subject matter in the field.

Emotional engagement

Leaders need emotionally realistic training to prepare for the challenging situations they face on a regular basis. Immersive learning’s ability to simulate scenarios through virtual human role play helps leaders practice these situations in simulations that feel real.

See Skill Development In real time

Personalize training for your managers based on real-time skills data, filling skills gaps to help managers and executives in their journey of being amazing people leaders in your organization.

Better remote learning

With large portions of training moved to virtual modalities, virtual role play powered by immersive technology creates more engaging, realistic, and scalable training programs than video conferencing or e-learning solutions.

Measured skills improvement

Not only is immersive learning delivering an average of more than 20% improvement for skills practiced, it also offers a more tangible way to score and measure skills over time. This helps leaders pinpoint areas for improvement and track skill progression.

Use Cases for Immersive
Leadership Development

Immersive learning can be applied across leadership training use cases, giving leaders access an infinite number of realistic roleplay scenarios:

sample Use Cases:

Performance management
Influence
Conflict resolution
Negotiation
Communication
Leading change
Leading virtual teams
Coaching and delegation
Empathy (EQ)
Building trust
Digital acumen
Building partnerships

VR Leadership Training Module Examples

Check out theses examples of virtual reality leadership training modules to inspire your own leadership development programs

Virtual leadership

Learners will develop skills to build interconnected teams, while navigating through a digital first environment, and dispersed team.

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supportive leadership

Learners will be able to identify when an employee might be experiencing mental health challenges outside of the workplace.

Conflict resolution

Learners will learn how to de-escalate tension, maintain trust, and how to make next steps clear, actionable, and acceptable to all parties involved.

Leadership Development Powered by Talespin

The Talespin platform offers easy-to-adopt off-the-shelf learning content for common leadership and communication skill use cases, the ability to create custom role play simulations at scale, and skills data analytics to measure and track skills development.

CoPilot Designer
Talespin’s no-code authoring tool CoPilot Designer enables organizations to create custom virtual human roleplay scenarios for any leadership training use case. Leadership training content can be created faster and easier, and updated over time as learning programs evolve.
Explore Copilot designer
Platform Dashboard
The Talespin platform’s Dashboard offers skills analytics that enable leaders to see their skills development in real time, and organizations to track their leadership development programs at scale.
Explore Dashboard
Content Library
Talespin’s off-the-shelf content library provides leaders with easily accessible immersive learning experiences to practice key skills in areas like performance management, empathy training, and communication.
Content Library

Ready to Learn More?
See How Talespin Could Work for Your Organization

Frequently Asked Questions About VR Leadership Training Programs

What is Virtual Reality Leadership Training?
Virtual reality leadership training is an approach to leadership development that utilizes VR headsets and VR software to train leaders. VR leadership training simulations can be created for a range of use cases, such as:
- Giving effective performance feedback
- Trust building skills
- Virtual leadership skills
- Leading through uncertainty and crisis leadership
- Conflict resolution
- Supportive leadership
Other key leadership and communication skills
Read our blog post "Virtual Reality Leadership Training Use Cases"
Can I create custom VR Leadership Training modules?
Yes, Talespin’s VR training platform features a no-code XR content authoring tool called CoPilot Designer. CoPilot Designer allows you to create custom leadership training simulations without the need to code, animate, or have any VR specific technical skills—this enables learning designers, instructional designers, and other learning professionals to create custom VR training modules in which leaders practice soft skills training with virtual human characters.
Read our blog post "How Does A Custom VR Training Content Creation Tool Work? - Overview Of Key Features"
What distribution options are there for VR Leadership Training?
VR leadership training content created with the Talespin platform can be distributed across several learning modalities. Currently, our training modules can be delivered to learners on Meta Quest 2 VR headsets and via 2D browser streaming on Mac and PC devices.
Read our blog post "Distributing Immersive Learning Content: An Overview Of XR Devices, 2D Devices And LMS Integration For Immersive Learning"
How can I measure skills development for leaders using VR?
VR leadership training programs delivered with Talespin can use the platform’s Dashboard to track skills development. Examples of the data that can be collected and measured with our platform include:

- Individual learner performance within a specific learning module, including data on the application of specific skills taught within the module
- Historic learner performance for a specific learning module. Ex. Measuring improvement over time for a particular learning module
- Historic learner performance for specific skills. Ex. Assessing the application of empathy across multiple learning modules
- Learning module performance for a group of learners at a team, department, or organizational level. Ex. Analyzing a leadership team’s performance on a specific VR leadership development module
- Historic performance for specific skills for a group of learners at a team, department, or organizational level. Ex. Assessing a leadership team’s development of specific leadership skills over time
What is the difference between off-the-shelf and custom VR leadership training content?
Off-the-shelf immersive learning content simulates a range of situations and scenarios applicable to many industries. Similar to e-learning content libraries, off-the-shelf immersive learning content is ready to adopt, with no content creation required.

Custom VR training content on the other hand can be designed for specific training use cases, and can incorporate your organization's culture, values, or products and services.
Read our blog post "VR Training Platform Overview Guide - Talepsin"
Are VR Leadership Training and virtual leadership training the same thing?
VR leadership training is actually a type of virtual leadership training, or it can be thought of as one of several virtual leadership training modalities. For example, e-learning and role play via video conferencing software are other examples of virtual leadership training. VR leadership training is still remote like these other solutions, but takes a different approach as it presents learners with highly scalable, realistic, and effective VR simulations that teach leadership skills.
Read our blog post "Virtual Reality Leadership Training Benefits"