Adopting Change, Game-Based Learning and Self-Awareness

Cognicent | 29, January, 2024 | Newsletter

Welcome to the first edition of our 2025 Insights!

This year, we are taking a fresh approach to our newsletter to ensure every edition is packed with valuable insights tailored to our readers. Our aim is to make each Insight as informative, practical, and engaging as possible.

Here’s the plan: In every issue, we’ll share three concise summaries and key takeaways from the most compelling articles or research we have come across. These will focus on topics that we believe will help you with the people part of your business—so you can stay informed and inspired without spending hours digging through the details.

Organisational change is a complex challenge for many organisations, with research suggesting that up to 70% of change initiatives fail. However, a recent study found that by creating three conditions, Mastery, Meaning and Belonging, for your people, you can enhance change adoption. Researchers then identified four Leadership Behaviours that drive these three conditions simultaneously creating positive change outcomes; these are:

1. Enhancing the capability of those responsible for driving change at all levels so they can effectively lead and connect with others.

2. Effectively communicating the what, why, and how of change. This is critical as simply sharing adequate information enhances people’s feelings of relatedness with the organisation. Sharing the “how” satisfies people’s need for competence, and sharing the “what” and “why” satisfies their need for meaning.

3. Collaborating with employees around “what” changes are being made and “how” these changes will be implemented. By doing this they enhance employee sensemaking around the change, while creating a greater sense of ownership of the process.

4. Developing milestones and celebrating progress. Highlighting successes signals a commitment to the new way of doing things while also enhancing a sense of inclusion in the process.

Article Reference:

Kamarova, S., Gagné, M., Holtrop, D., & Dunlop, P. D. (2024). Integrating behavior and organizational change literatures to uncover crucial psychological mechanisms underlying the adoption and maintenance of organizational change. Journal of Organizational Behavior.

Motivating employees is critically important to individual and organisational success, yet it can be difficult to achieve. In this study researchers reviewed the impact of Business Simulation Games (BSGs) and whether they could enhance participants’ drive to perform (also known as Intrinsic Motivation).

BSGs are tools used to promote learning by creating scenarios with rules and competition in a low-risk setting to enhance learning. Intrinsic motivation on the other hand is achieved through the presence of Autonomy, Competence and Relatedness.

The findings suggested that:

1. Game-based learning has a favourable impact on people’s emotional interest, critical thinking and involvement in the task,

2. BSGs provide clear instructions and freedom to make decisions which enable feelings of autonomy,

3. The BSG experience creates learning which builds competence, and

4. BSGs satisfy relatedness by enabling people to connect and work together to make decisions.

Article Reference:

Velez, A., Alonso, R. K., & Rico-Gonzalez, M. (2023). Business Simulation Games for the Development of Intrinsic Motivation-Boosting Sustainability: Systematic Review. Sustainability, 15(21), 15483.

Leadership development is said to be a $366 billion global industry, and yet so many leaders don’t get it right. In this article, researchers explored how a leader’s awareness can enhance perceptions of their authentic leadership, significantly enhancing their success.

Authentic leadership is simply the ability to know one’s values and then act in alignment with them. The study found:

1. When a leader demonstrates self-awareness (they reflect on their values, identity, emotions, goals, knowledge and capabilities) they are viewed as more authentic.

2. When a leader has greater collective awareness (a deep understanding of the group that they lead) they too are seen as more authentic, and people are more likely to follow them.

3. The simultaneous presence of self and collective awareness in leaders helps to enhance perceptions of a person’s authentic leadership and makes them more likely to be endorsed by others.

4. It is important for leaders to demonstrate not only self-awareness but also collective-awareness, as without collective-awareness they restrict their ability to tune into the needs of the group.

Article Reference:

Steffens, N. K., Wolyniec, N., Okimoto, T. G., Mols, F., Haslam, S. A., & Kay, A. A. (2021). Knowing me, knowing us: Personal and collective self-awareness enhances authentic leadership and leader endorsement. The Leadership Quarterly, 32(6), 101498.

We hope that you have a safe, well and productive rest of your week.

– The Cognicent Team