Case studies / Aviation · Leadership development
Building leadership capability for a global airline’s Leadership Institute
Seven online Boardroom.Inc “Agility Lab” sessions, delivered with our partner Baker Communications, that count towards the airline’s leadership credential.
- Client
- A global airline’s Leadership Institute
- Partner
- Baker Communications Inc.
- Simulation
- Boardroom.Inc
- Format
- Online, 5.5-hour sessions
- Scale
- Seven sessions, 2024 to 2025
- Assessment
- Teams scored on eight competencies
At a glance
The airline’s new Leadership Institute lets employees direct their own development towards a credential. It needed an experiential element that could count towards it.
Seven “Agility Lab” sessions of Boardroom.Inc, run online. Teams were scored against eight competencies, and a written report followed each session.
Every team left with actions mapped from the simulation to their own roles. A pilot with the airline’s team in India followed, where all ten participants named two takeaways to put into practice.
The sessions provided ample opportunity for the airline’s staff to reflect upon the parallels with their real-world situations and work through actionable strategies that can help them succeed in their roles long after this simulation is completed.
The partnership
A delivery partner’s introduction
In 2022 Baker Communications Inc. (BCI), one of our delivery partners, began a conversation with our founder, Tim Dew, about using business simulations in a leadership development rollout at one of the largest global airlines based in the United States.
BCI had identified the opportunity through its ongoing work with the airline’s learning and development team. What followed was a collaborative approach to bringing experiential learning into the airline’s newly formed Leadership Institute, shaped by BCI, Immersive Edge and the airline’s own stakeholders.
The approach
Agility Lab inside the Leadership Institute
The airline’s Leadership Institute lets employees take charge of their own development: executive presence, innovation and agility, through instructor-led training, leadership programmes and eLearning electives. It is self-paced, and employees work towards a Leadership Institute credential.
The “Agility Lab” sessions, 5.5 hours online using our Boardroom.Inc simulation, counted towards that credential. The airline attended the sessions to observe participants and helped refine each one as the partnership grew.
- Facilitators scored each team against eight competencies, for a total out of 40.
- A full written report followed each session, with participant feedback and key learnings.
- Every session opened with an overview of experiential learning, the science behind the simulations and how business functions depend on each other.
- Teams then played three levels, with reflection and strategy between them, and a closing discussion to tie what happened back to their real roles.
Every Immersive Edge simulation runs over three levels of play for 5 to 15 people, with reflection between levels. Each level compresses 26 weeks of trading into 26 minutes. See how a day runs.
Sessions 1 to 3
What the first three teams took away
The first airline leadership team entered the online Agility Lab in October 2024, with two more teams following in the months after. These are the learnings they committed to taking back into the workplace.
Engage stakeholders through the channels and styles that produce the most productive project outcomes.
Participants talked openly about how much they had learned about the effect of their actions on others.
There are defined leadership roles, but leadership-based decision-making can be shared across every layer of an organisation.
Agreeing and implementing process improvements, and trying something new, had a demonstrable effect on performance.
Canvassing everyone’s view on strategic change increased buy-in and commitment.
It builds trust and a supportive culture of belonging, which showed up directly in results.
Consider every factor, and make sure everyone understands their role in making a risk pay off.
Session 4
A pilot with the airline’s team in India
On the strength of the first three sessions, the airline arranged a pilot with its team in India in February 2025. All ten participants mapped what happened in the simulation back to their own roles and named two takeaways to put into practice. Among them:
Productivity is greater when people at every level pull ideas down from leadership, rather than having them pushed onto them.
Understand your team’s capacity to deliver before committing to a client.
Where roles are clear and trust is built, the most effective communication can be fairly minimal.
A team that feels able both to ask for help and to offer it gets better outcomes.
Trust grows by working together rather than in silos, and productivity rises with it.
Small wins are what lead to the larger targets.
A flatter structure lets everyone demonstrate leadership.
There is as much to learn from what did not work as from what did.
Further sessions were put under consideration on the back of the pilot.
Sessions 5 to 7
Three more teams, three more sets of actions
Into early 2025, three more airline leadership teams played the Agility Lab online.
With talking, chat, breakout rooms and messaging all available, agree a method that works across the wider team.
When strategy is agreed and understood by all, and people understand each other’s roles, results follow.
Reaching across boundaries to help others builds a sense of team over individual.
Checking crucial information with colleagues beats quietly assuming.
Overtime to help a teammate is admirable; as a habit it risks burnout.
Teams kept trying new approaches and knew when to bring in a colleague.
Feedback
In their own words
I understand better the challenges of the upper management who authorize and prioritize the work for the delivery team.
Helped overcome the constraints and communication barriers to improve performance and efficiency.
Facilitator reflection
The experience of facilitating online business simulation sessions with this client, coupled with the opportunity to partner directly with Immersive Edge, has been extremely fulfilling as well as a great learning experience. When I began collaborating on this project in late 2024, I was warmly welcomed into a very collegial leadership group. As such, all team members helped ensure I was fully integrated into the needs analysis discussions and the evolving simulation delivery.
It’s also been very gratifying to work with the airline’s leadership cohorts. Throughout, I was impressed with the supportive and positive approach that their employees brought to the sessions, and in part because of that orientation, they were able to make great progress in the simulation and work together to overcome numerous challenges.
The sessions provided ample opportunity for the airline’s staff to reflect upon the parallels with their real-world situations and work through actionable strategies that can help them succeed in their roles long after this simulation is completed. These long-term lessons should serve them well as they continue to develop their careers at the airline.
Leadership development
If you are building a leadership programme and want an experiential element that people remember, we can show you how a session like this runs.
CONTACT US
A Case Study about your company?
Contact one of our facilitators and ask about the possibilities.