Corporate leaders are often tasked with thriving in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

Well, not literally, but a difficult economy often leaves leaders questioning their career choices, especially when there is a supply of essential services and products involved, along with the preservation of livelihoods. Running a corporation is all fun and success until unprecedented challenges come home to roost. Worse still, some of these challenges are beyond the leader’s control and can leave a company wallowing in losses and even debt.

So, how can leaders salvage a sinking company? How can they ensure that the company maintains its winning ways? How can they shield their corporation from destructive external forces? Lastly, how can they thrive in the middle of a crisis?

If you can answer each of these questions, you are on your way to success.

Leadership Development

Hiring managers are in charge of sourcing the ideal leaders for a corporation. The human resources (HR) department often handles the extra training they need to boost capabilities, mend skills gaps and adapt to a new working environment. Then, these highly qualified leaders set about creating a new order and aligning the corporation to the strategic initiatives they believe will play a central role in restoring the company back to winning ways.

But first, new and incumbent corporate leaders need to develop their skills. A skills upgrade goes a long way in resolving persistent issues, encouraging new and viable ideas, and navigating the corporation through challenges. Plus, excellent leadership skills aid in the management of the various departments in the company, leading to an increase in productivity, a highly motivated workforce, and a spike in the quality of products and services delivered to clients. All these factors culminate in a happy client base, which rewards the corporation with increased sales and high profits.

Simulation-based leadership development ought to be specialized to address the immediate needs of trainees and the corporations they work for. It is evident that these trainees excelled in college, demonstrated leadership studies and were subjected to a rigorous recruitment exercise — which means that they are already packed with basic and advanced leadership skills, plus hands-on experience. However, they need additional training, customized to help them polish their capabilities so they can meet and exceed the needs of a dynamic workplace in a competitive 21st-century corporate playground and, the most challenging part,  impress a difficult pool of clients with a wide array of options to choose from.

So, how can you harness business training simulations to handle leadership development training and give your leaders world-class leadership skills? You have to come up with a systematic approach to this process, identify skills gaps and seek seasoned trainers who employ leadership development simulations and relevant simulation models.

Identifying Missing Skills

The trainers you hire are versatile professionals who can go in blind and still manage to squeeze as much juice out of training as possible. They would, however, appreciate some help from you, through the identification of skills gaps and areas of weakness among your leaders. This process will help them understand your corporate leaders and the challenges they are facing, putting them in a better position to create a customized training course. Targeted training is not only more efficient but also addresses the most pressing issues among your leadership team.

Finding Trainers

Search diligently for seasoned, industry-specific corporate trainers — the kind who are tried and tested, with a proven track record and credibility. Training costs money, and you need to get every penny’s worth, especially in the current economy. The right trainers will leave your company with effective leaders who are optimally equipped with the skills they need to steer the organization to all its goals.

Using Realistic Models

Gone are the days when corporate training consisted of seminars using lectures and workshops as the main instruction methods. Every corporate trainer worth his or her salt uses business simulation models to impart trainees with the skills they need to conquer the 21st-century corporate world. In many cases, business simulations have become standard in the packages offered by many training companies to ensure leaders develop the skills they need and advance the corporation’s bid for leadership development.

Business Training Simulations

One of the benefits of business training simulations as a mode of corporate training and leadership development is that they encompass all the factors discussed above as a single package. First of all, these leadership development simulations are carried out by seasoned professionals who can take an inefficient leadership team and transform it into a team of highly skilled individuals who are ready to tackle any leadership task.

Leadership development simulations and business training simulations provide learners with the opportunity to try out new skills and decisions and gain real insights into how they would affect a business “in the real world.” This approach to leadership development is a game-changer that helps trainees hone their skills, understand the decisions that would harm a corporation and ultimately boost their confidence.

Furthermore, leadership development simulations are far more accessible now than they were even a couple of years ago, and even small companies are using these valuable tools. Leaders who have gone through business simulations in corporate training will form part of a strong leadership bench, demonstrating the importance of including leadership development simulations in your corporate training.