Leadership Simulation Day for a Homebuilding and Development Group

The leadership team of a homebuilding and development group wanted its quarterly meeting to start with a day of team building and leadership development. About 20 leaders from across the group's businesses spent the day outdoors building a small town together, picking up practical tools for working together as they went.

THE DAY

We ran Leadership Under Construction, our building simulation. Mixed crews each built one building of the town in rounds. After each round, crews reflected on what they had just experienced, and we taught a practical skill connected to it.

• Roles: each crew agreed how it would work together with a Designed Team Alliance, then mapped the roles each person brought.
• Conflict: crews learned to spot team toxins and a practical response to each one.
• Change: a change arrived mid-build, and crews compared how they handled it with four approaches to leading change.
• Priorities: crews used the Eisenhower matrix to separate important work from urgent requests.

The day closed with the grand reveal of the finished town, and each leader wrote one commitment to carry back to work.

OUTCOMES ACHIEVED

• All 18 leaders who completed the exit survey agreed or strongly agreed with each of the four skill statements.
• Their average recommendation score was 8.8 out of 10.
• The most common commitments were protecting time for important work and asking more questions.