Knowing a skill and having it are different things
Here's the thing nobody says out loud. Most leadership skills training is leadership skills explanation. A trainer describes what good delegation looks like, or good feedback, or good decision-making. The room agrees. Everybody claps. Monday comes. They do exactly what they did before, because they were told about a skill instead of made to use one.
You can nod along to "psychological safety" for an hour, or you can watch your own team ignore the quiet person with the answer, feel the cost of it, and never quite do it the same way again. One of those changes behaviour. Training only builds a skill when it gives people reps - and a slide deck has never given anyone a rep.
The skills this training actually builds
A serious game - a simulation, if that's the word your organisation uses - puts leaders inside a situation with real stakes and half the information missing, so the skill has to come out of them. Then the debrief names it:
- Deciding under uncertainty - making the call when the information is partial and the clock is running.
- Influencing without authority - getting people to move when you can't order them to.
- Reading a team as a system - seeing how your choices ripple through everyone else's.
- Coordinating across functions - sharing the piece someone else needs instead of guarding your patch.
- Staying steady under pressure - setting the tone instead of transmitting the panic.
- Adapting when the plan is wrong - the learning agility that every transformation actually runs on.
The game is chosen for the skill
I match the game to the behaviour you want to build, not to a theme.
- Sticky Fingers - emergent leadership, collaboration and information-sharing. 12-150 people.
- Bloom - influence without authority and stakeholder relationships.
- Ripple Effect - systems thinking and cross-functional trust. 16-60 people.
- Planetfall - learning agility and adapting under new evidence.
- Chaos in the Kitchen - decision-making when conditions keep shifting.
Why I run every session myself
The reps are only worth something if someone can read them back. That's why the person who designed the game runs it - watching how your leaders actually behave under the game's pressure, then debriefing the specific skill they showed or missed. No associate delivery, no licensed hand-off. Concrete and named, not a scripted lesson.
Proof
I've been designing and facilitating these sessions since 2019, for a Fortune-100 organisation and fast-growing companies, with leaders across five countries. One of those Fortune-100 programmes scored 8.82/10 average satisfaction across 113 respondents, then came back and commissioned a second, different programme.
Pricing
Sessions start at ₹50,000 for a group of 15-25 participants, with the final number set by group size, seniority, location and batch count. Send me a note and I'll quote within 24 hours of a discovery call. I only take 2-3 engagements a month, so the calendar fills.
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Frequently asked questions
Which leadership skills does this training build?
The behavioural ones a slide can't teach: deciding under uncertainty, influencing without authority, reading a team as a system, coordinating across functions, staying steady under pressure, and adapting when the plan is wrong. The game is chosen to surface the specific skill you want to develop.
Is leadership skills training different from a leadership development program?
They overlap. Skills training tends to target a specific behaviour in a single session; a program strings several sessions together for a population over time. Both use the same method here - a serious game plus a debrief that connects it to real work.
Can you run this for a large group?
Yes. Different games scale differently - Sticky Fingers has run for as many as 150 people with additional facilitators, while a team-simulation format like Ripple Effect works best in smaller cohorts. I match the format to your group size in the brief.
Related
- Leadership development programs
- Experiential leadership development
- Emotional intelligence leadership training
- The complete guide to serious games for leadership development
With love from Bengaluru, this is Arvindh saying over and out.