• MDI
  • German version
  • Contact us
MDI Management Development
  • Agile leadership
  • Lateral Leadership
  • Leadership Impact
  • Leadership Development
Select Page
Virtual Reality for Leadership Development

Virtual Reality for Leadership Development

by Aline Depoorter | Jun 22, 2021 | International leadership development, Leadership Impact, learning effectiveness | 0 comments

Learning better with virtual reality

Virtual reality for leadership development on the rise

It’s high time we use VR learning in leadership development.

That’s why MDI Management Development International and Jenson8 are partnering to transform leadership development through virtual reality.

The new “VR for Leaders” portfolio includes solutions for recruiting, assessment and leadership development.

You learn better with VR

  • 4x faster training than in the seminar room.
  • 275% more confident to apply learned skills after training.
  • 375% more engaged with the content than learners in the seminar room.
  • 400% more focused than learning via e-learning.
Learn even more >

Using new technologies

The most important issue for L&D leaders right now is not just introducing new technologies to improve engagement and enable virtual delivery of programs, but rather using new technologies that will make a real difference for your teams.

Send leaders into space

Sending leaders into space may sound a bit like a stretch, but sending your teams into a completely foreign environment could be the best thing you’ve ever done for your talents.

Because it’s

  • the future,
  • it’s sustainable,
  • scalable
  • and can even be implemented solely virtually.

Immersive learning can help organizations address some of today’s key leadership challenges, such as identifying soft skills, retaining talent, and improving employee engagement.

VR learning can be 

  • anywhere,
  • at any time
  • and can be conducted in any country in the world.

The pandemic promotes new ways of learning

The pandemic has pushed HR to find ways to solve the problem of distance learning, as well as ways to still

  • Create closeness at a distance,
  • build trust,
  • improve communication
  • and improve collaboration.

These issues are not new, and long before COVID came along, HR and L&D leaders were wondering if it was really still necessary to get on a plane, take two to four days out of the office, stay in a hotel, and get everyone together to do a team-building exercise?”

New VR leadership training

The new leadership trainings offer an immersive environment that feels real to participants, as well as

  • Assessment,
  • Coaching,
  • Leadership,
  • Team building
  • and other L&D elements

Through machine learning, artificial intelligence and validated psychometrics, the multiple immersive applications enable leaders to learn by doing, not just seeing or hearing. So virtual reality makes content come alive, not just digital!

* PWC REPORT 2020

More Digital training formats for leadership development

We help make leadership development more agile with our digital training formats:

  • E-learnings
  • e-consulting
  • Blended Learning Journeys
  • Virtual Leadership
  • virtual reality
  • digital learning transfer

– we have just the right thing for your needs!

Explore some more now!

What serves you next?

How to strengthen social capital in the workplace

by Jana Wölfl | 26. January 2023 | Digital Transformation, Leadership Impact, Leadership Tips | 0 Comments

Why do you like your job? Is it the work, the salary, or perhaps the interaction with your colleagues?  The latter is being neglected in many companies, especially during the pandemic. Until then, people had lunch together from time to time, chatted briefly at the...
Read More

Dubai, Madrid and soon Bangkok – around the world with MDI

by Alina Helmlinger, Marina Begic, Nicole Altenberger | 7. July 2022 | Best Practice, International leadership development, Training Insights | 0 Comments

our L&D Consultants Marina Begic, Nicole Altenberger and Alina Helmlinger have experienced quite a bit over the past few months. Here they describe how it all came about, what exactly they did there, and what's awaiting next for them...Dubai, Madrid and soon...
Read More

Our journey of becoming CO2 neutral – reasons and tips

by Alexandra Eichler, Gunther Fürstberger | 10. December 2021 | Leadership Impact, MDI Inside | 0 Comments

MDI is CO2 neutral The pandemic has made us more thoughtful. Adult education in presence is connected with traveling. Often these are only short distances, but we also had seminar weeks where participants came together from all over the world. With the Pandemic...
Read More

How can VR help with leadership training?

by Anita Berger, Dominik Etzl | 11. October 2021 | Leadership Impact, Leadership in the digital transformation, Leadership Tips | 0 Comments

How can VR help with leadership training? Our Virtual Reality & Leadership Development Experts Anita Berger & Dominik Etzl talk in this Interview about Leadership Impact through VR.can help organizations address some of today's key leadership challenges.Why is...
Read More

Redefining the workplace as a new area of impact

by Marina Begic | 28. July 2021 | Impuls series, Leadership Impact | 0 Comments

Part 4 with Marina Begic: Digital Business Development Expert and Senior L&D Consultant Our Digital Business Development Expert and Senior L&D Consultant Marina Begic is currently focusing intensively on "The Future of Workplace Learning". Fast and targeted...
Read More

Virtual Reality for Leadership Development

by Aline Depoorter | 22. June 2021 | International leadership development, Leadership Impact, learning effectiveness | 0 Comments

Virtual reality for leadership development on the riseIt's high time we use VR learning in leadership development. That's why MDI Management Development International and Jenson8 are partnering to transform leadership development through virtual reality. The new "VR...
Read More

Five Characteristics of Agile Leadership Development

by Gunther Fürstberger | 22. June 2021 | Agile Leadership, International leadership development, learning effectiveness | 0 Comments

What does the future of agile Leadership Development look like? MDI CEO Gunther Fürstberger has answers and shows you five helpful Characteristics. In the past, leadership development was mainly carried out in the classic mindset of project management. To achieve...
Read More

Personnel developers as trusted guides  

by Marina Begic, Stefan Diepolder | 21. June 2021 | Impuls series, International leadership development, learning effectiveness | 0 Comments

Part 3 with Marina Begic (Digital Business Development Expert and Senior L&D Consultant) and co-author Stefan Diepolder (Content Curator and Digital Learning Expert) Our Digital Business Development Expert and Senior L&D Consultant Marina Begic is currently...
Read More

Agile-based Competence Management – Learn and evolve with change

by Josef Wegenberger, Oliver Wegenberger | 18. June 2021 | Agile Leadership, International leadership development, learning effectiveness | 0 Comments

Authors: Josef Wegenberger, Oliver Wegenberger Society for Business Psychology and Organizational DynamicsLet's put ourselves in the shoes of a company from the 1980s. TECHNIK AG is a typical large company with several thousand employees. The order situation is...
Read More

Self-directed learning needs more than just an LMS!

by Marina Begic | 20. May 2021 | Impuls series, Leadership Impact, learning effectiveness | 0 Comments

Part 2 with Marina Begic: Digital Business Development Expert and Senior L&D ConsultantOur Digital Business Development Expert and Senior L&D Consultant Marina Begic is currently focusing intensively on "The Future of Workplace Learning". Fast and targeted...
Read More

How can I mix my own Resilience Cocktail as a leader?

How can I mix my own Resilience Cocktail as a leader?

by Aline Depoorter, Marilena Maris | Mar 25, 2021 | Impuls series, Leadership Impact, Leadership Tips | 0 comments

Interview about: "Why we all need our own resilience cocktail"

with Marilena Maris: economist, personnel developer and executive coach. 

Hello Marilena,

thank you so much for taking the time to answer our questions.

We are convinced that you, as an expert, can provide insightful answers!  

The increased virtual working, the constant availability, and the simultaneous coordinating of one’s own household nowadays is draining the energy resources of many people and especially those of individuals in leading positions.

So, you might assume that currently good resilience skills are more and more needed and building resilience is the key to a balanced work life.

Marilena, I know that you have been working with thousands of leaders and experts in the past year on resilience. Can I bluntly ask you if this is the next “trending” topic? 

This might even be true and honestly, it’s one of the trends I consider really useful 🙂 If we look around, we see that the past year has given us plenty of opportunities to deal with huge challenges. In these kind of moments, it is legitimate to look out for proven strategies and ideas on what to do next. Since resilience is backed both by science and experience, it’s pretty much bullet proof.

That’s why I am not surprised about the popularity of the topic. One thing I want to underline in this “hyped” conversation, though, is that resilience is not just coping with stress. Actually, resilience is the ability to deal with a critical situation in such a way that you generate success, growth and sometimes even joy. 

If resilience is so popular and bullet proof, does this also mean it’s easy to achieve? If we look around, it seems like there still are many leaders and experts struggling. 

Fair point. Theoretically, resilience is simple: it’s about how we react to a stimulus, like a challenging situation. In this reaction, there is usually a key moment, some call it even a turning point. If we get that right, it all becomes so much easier. Practically, there is a beautiful and complex combination of what we think, how we feel and how we act under pressure. And that is really really challenging, especially when you are under pressure. 

Consider that daily we make between 20.000 and 60.000 decisions, hopefully the best ones. Those decisions rely on thinking and behavioral patterns and we are mostly not even aware of that, because we work quite a lot under pressure. So challenging how we “normally” do things is not really something which comes easy to many people, for sure not on a day full of back to back meetings and the whole saga. 

So for the ones who are still struggling, how can we break down the complexity and build up resilience?

Let’s use a simple analogy. If I would give you the best cocktail in the world, how would this cocktail be? 

It depends, right? It depends on what you think about cocktails, how you want to feel when you drink them and which ingredients are there available to create them. And then it depends on  the specific situation, sometimes a fresh non alcoholic smoothie is all we need … and sometimes we go for the Tequila Sunrise. Other times we are up for experiments like designing a totally new cocktail.

Bringing back this cocktail analogy to resilience,

you can make sure that you develop your “cocktail mixing” abilities (your thoughts, feelings and the sharp understanding of what is needed in every situation). More so, you also need to make sure that all the ingredients of the cocktail are available or easy to access. The “ingredients” we need for the resilience cocktail are key factors, like emotion regulation, impulse control, smart problem solving (“causal analysis”), empathy, positive thinking and proactively going for challenges as well as our self efficacy. In real life you might observe that some of these key factors are easy for you and others aren’t. Work on the ones you find more challenging, that’s what will bring you the best results.

Now the cocktail idea sounds good. But it also sounds like a lot of work and nobody really has the time these days.

That’s true, time is not always on our side. Yet we need to invest time and energy to get outcomes. In my work, I make a deal with all the leaders I work with. They commit to 10-15 minutes a day to build up resilience and if it’s not working for a few weeks, they can stop anytime. So far, nobody stopped this deal, quite on the opposite 🙂

The principle behind is simple: building up resilience is preparing for a marathon, not for a sprint. We need good habits and we build up those habits daily, until they become “no brainers”. So just imagine that for 10 minutes daily, you would challenge something which is not doing you a favor any longer. It may be a bad habit like smoking or it may be a big fear like the fear of change. It may be the decision to make a short walk versus allowing pandemic news to ruin your mood.  The catch is simple: instead of ignoring the issue, you focus and start actively dealing with it. Daily. For as long as it takes.

And the last question: is building up resilience only depending on what we do? What about the external factors? 

Honestly yes. We will always deal with external factors, some will be more useful than others. Yet how we handle them is totally up to us. This is a provocative remark, I am aware of that.

Let’s take the most famous example, Viktor Frankl. He was one of the most brilliant minds the world can get on psychotherapy and his work started to be really incredible while he was trying to survive several concentration camps of World War II. He had to fight for his life and survive the loss of his wife and parents. And he chose to find ways to turn this horrific externally triggered challenges into a work which became a legacy. 

Viktor Frankl sums it up quite well: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to chose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom”.

Marilena Maris

Marilena Maris

Business economist, personnel developer and executive coach

Marilena Maris has been working with leaders and experts, on-site or virtually, in over 30 countries since 2008. She passes on her knowledge in the form of workshops, key notes, international programmes, coaching and training. She is particularly concerned with productivity and sustainable performance, also known as achieving results and keeping our sanity. She is also a shareholder and partner at MDI, holds a Master of Science in Executive Coaching & Training from the University of Vienna, and a BA in Business Administration from the International University of Applied Sciences in Krems aswel as several international certifications. She loves travelling and lives both in Austria and Germany as part of a patchwork family of 5 kids.

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn

What serves you next?

How to strengthen social capital in the workplace

by Jana Wölfl | 26. January 2023 | Digital Transformation, Leadership Impact, Leadership Tips | 0 Comments

Why do you like your job? Is it the work, the salary, or perhaps the interaction with your colleagues?  The latter is being neglected in many companies, especially during the pandemic. Until then, people had lunch together from time to time, chatted briefly at the...
Read More

Dubai, Madrid and soon Bangkok – around the world with MDI

by Alina Helmlinger, Marina Begic, Nicole Altenberger | 7. July 2022 | Best Practice, International leadership development, Training Insights | 0 Comments

our L&D Consultants Marina Begic, Nicole Altenberger and Alina Helmlinger have experienced quite a bit over the past few months. Here they describe how it all came about, what exactly they did there, and what's awaiting next for them...Dubai, Madrid and soon...
Read More

Our journey of becoming CO2 neutral – reasons and tips

by Alexandra Eichler, Gunther Fürstberger | 10. December 2021 | Leadership Impact, MDI Inside | 0 Comments

MDI is CO2 neutral The pandemic has made us more thoughtful. Adult education in presence is connected with traveling. Often these are only short distances, but we also had seminar weeks where participants came together from all over the world. With the Pandemic...
Read More

How can VR help with leadership training?

by Anita Berger, Dominik Etzl | 11. October 2021 | Leadership Impact, Leadership in the digital transformation, Leadership Tips | 0 Comments

How can VR help with leadership training? Our Virtual Reality & Leadership Development Experts Anita Berger & Dominik Etzl talk in this Interview about Leadership Impact through VR.can help organizations address some of today's key leadership challenges.Why is...
Read More

Redefining the workplace as a new area of impact

by Marina Begic | 28. July 2021 | Impuls series, Leadership Impact | 0 Comments

Part 4 with Marina Begic: Digital Business Development Expert and Senior L&D Consultant Our Digital Business Development Expert and Senior L&D Consultant Marina Begic is currently focusing intensively on "The Future of Workplace Learning". Fast and targeted...
Read More

Virtual Reality for Leadership Development

by Aline Depoorter | 22. June 2021 | International leadership development, Leadership Impact, learning effectiveness | 0 Comments

Virtual reality for leadership development on the riseIt's high time we use VR learning in leadership development. That's why MDI Management Development International and Jenson8 are partnering to transform leadership development through virtual reality. The new "VR...
Read More

Five Characteristics of Agile Leadership Development

by Gunther Fürstberger | 22. June 2021 | Agile Leadership, International leadership development, learning effectiveness | 0 Comments

What does the future of agile Leadership Development look like? MDI CEO Gunther Fürstberger has answers and shows you five helpful Characteristics. In the past, leadership development was mainly carried out in the classic mindset of project management. To achieve...
Read More

Personnel developers as trusted guides  

by Marina Begic, Stefan Diepolder | 21. June 2021 | Impuls series, International leadership development, learning effectiveness | 0 Comments

Part 3 with Marina Begic (Digital Business Development Expert and Senior L&D Consultant) and co-author Stefan Diepolder (Content Curator and Digital Learning Expert) Our Digital Business Development Expert and Senior L&D Consultant Marina Begic is currently...
Read More

Agile-based Competence Management – Learn and evolve with change

by Josef Wegenberger, Oliver Wegenberger | 18. June 2021 | Agile Leadership, International leadership development, learning effectiveness | 0 Comments

Authors: Josef Wegenberger, Oliver Wegenberger Society for Business Psychology and Organizational DynamicsLet's put ourselves in the shoes of a company from the 1980s. TECHNIK AG is a typical large company with several thousand employees. The order situation is...
Read More

Self-directed learning needs more than just an LMS!

by Marina Begic | 20. May 2021 | Impuls series, Leadership Impact, learning effectiveness | 0 Comments

Part 2 with Marina Begic: Digital Business Development Expert and Senior L&D ConsultantOur Digital Business Development Expert and Senior L&D Consultant Marina Begic is currently focusing intensively on "The Future of Workplace Learning". Fast and targeted...
Read More

Information

  • Imprint
  • MDI company website

Social Media

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn

© MDI Management Development Institute, 2020