Facing Crossroads in Your Career: How DEVELOP and its game-based assessments can give directions

Originally posted: Friday, 13 October 2017, by Simone A.W. van Noord and Alec W. Serlie, GITP BV, The Netherlands, on develop-project.eu

DEVELOP offers a personalised learning environment for employees seeking to redirect, design, or further build their career path. Sometimes it might feel like you’re at a crossroads when it comes to your career. This DEVELOP platform will provide tailored advice in choosing the right path for you to take by offering a mix of instruments, such as game-based assessments, which measure your competencies.

The online DEVELOP environment allows you to set your own career goals, such as moving upwards within the organisation, finding out whether you should change jobs based on your competencies, or dealing with more responsibility in your current job role. No career plan to achieve these career goals is the same, because each of us has a unique personality, ability, set of competencies and social capital.

DEVELOP relates job roles to eight transversal competency clusters (i.e., the Great Eight): 1) analysing and interpreting, 2) creating and conceptualising, 3) organising and executing, 4) enterprising and performing, 5) leading and deciding, 6) supporting and cooperating, 7) interacting and presenting, and 8) adapting and coping. These eight competency clusters serve as a hub between different types of job roles; participants are shown their actual proficiency level and their potential.

The leadership game focuses on the “leading and deciding” cluster and assesses the participants’ proficiency level and potential in a fun, immersive and sound way.

The game is based on the Quinn model with two dimensions (control vs. flexibility and internal vs. external) that form four quadrants: 1) human relations, 2) open systems, 3) rational goal, and 4) internal process. The participant faces all kinds of situations that can typically occur in the workplace. They need to lead their team through these tough challenges by selecting answers that reflect the way they would respond in real life. True agile leaders show a balanced mix of all four quadrants and select the right answer the situation asks for.

The game makes a distinction between intention and behaviour; the survey at the beginning captures intention, whereas the actual game captures behaviour. These two components help in determining someone’s leadership proficiency and potential. With this insight, players can go back into the game and experience what alternative reactions lead to. They are helped by an e-coach who comments on the game player’s actions and makes suggestions for improvement.

The game also gives insights into other components of the leadership competency, such as risk factors, which may occur when under pressure.

The results of this leadership game will feed back into the participant’s personalised learning environments where they can see how their competency profile lines up with their career path and goals.

To gain a more in-depth understanding of the leadership game, read the whitepaper “The Leadership Game: An effective and fun way of assessing and developing agile leaders”.

To hear more about the making of the game, watch the webinar on “Assessing and developing agile leaders”.

Find related articles on Game-based assessment in our blog.