Leadership Transformation in Aviation:

How a Realistic Business Simulation Strengthened Leadership Capabilities 

Abstract

A major European aviation group sought to enhance its leadership pipeline by equipping emerging leaders with the skills to navigate complex decision-making, manage cross-functional collaboration, and drive strategic alignment. In partnership with a global organizational consulting firm and Insight Experience, the organization implemented an immersive leadership transformation simulation. The experience challenges participants with realistic, high-pressure scenarios designed to mirror the airline industry’s dynamic environment.

Challenge

The aviation group faced the dual challenge of sustaining operational excellence while fostering innovation in an increasingly competitive aviation landscape. Leaders needed to strengthen their ability to set strategic direction while managing competing priorities, communicate effectively to align diverse teams across regions and functions, and navigate stakeholder relationships to drive business success.

To address these challenges, the aviation group partnered with Korn Ferry, a global organizational consulting firm, and Insight Experience to design the Leadership Transformation Program, which includes a business simulation that provides a dynamic and realistic learning environment.

Solution

Insight Experience provided Korn Ferry with a three-day business simulation centered on the EnergyTrak project, an industry-relevant, fictional initiative designed to challenge participants in strategic decision-making. In this immersive experience, participants assume the role of a senior leader at IMCS, a fictional company, making critical choices that impact business performance.

The simulation serves as a metaphor for the challenges of leading in aviation, an industry defined by its global scale, tight operational standards, regulatory oversight, and relentless pressure to innovate while maintaining safety and performance. Although the simulated company operates in the monitoring technology space, the leadership scenarios and decision dynamics were intentionally designed to parallel the aviation environment.

Key elements of the simulation include:

• Navigating complexity and trade-offs: Participants must determine the scope and speed of a new product launch, balancing risk, customer expectations, and operational capacity. This mirrors aviation leaders’ need to align strategic initiatives, such as digital transformation or sustainability goals, with strict timelines, interdependent functions, and a steadfast commitment to safety and service excellence.

• Leading across boundaries: Much like leaders in aviation who must collaborate across departments—such as flight operations, maintenance, customer service, and regulatory affairs—simulation participants must influence senior stakeholders, manage direct reports with diverse work styles, and align dispersed teams. The experience emphasizes communication, collaboration, and decision-making in a matrixed, global organization.

• Scenario-based challenges: As in the aviation industry, conditions in the simulation evolve over time. Based on early decisions, participants encounter distinct leadership challenges—ranging from internal resistance to cross-functional breakdowns—requiring them to pivot strategies while maintaining alignment and momentum.

• Operational rigor and innovation: The simulation reflects the aviation industry's dual imperatives of operational excellence and continuous improvement. Participants grapple with how to maintain reliability while driving innovation, a tension familiar to leaders who must balance cost control, regulatory compliance, and competitive differentiation.

• Learning loops and debriefs: The program includes structured debriefs after each simulation round, creating space for participants to reflect on their leadership approach, understand the downstream impact of their decisions, and extract insights to apply to their real-world roles.

Ultimately, the simulation provides a realistic, high-impact development experience that aligns with the aviation group's leadership culture. It fosters a shared leadership language and offers an experiential platform to practice and strengthen the behaviors needed to lead effectively in a complex, highly regulated, and ever-evolving industry.

Learning Objectives

By engaging in the simulation, participants develop the ability to:

• Align decision-making with strategic priorities.

• Lead cross-functional teams effectively in a global, matrixed environment.

• Communicate with clarity and impact across hierarchical levels.

• Strengthen stakeholder relationships to drive business outcomes.

• Balance operational efficiency with long-term innovation.

Simulation Design Highlights

This leadership simulation is a customized version of Insight Experience’s Developing New Leaders offering. Originally designed to support first-time leaders, the simulation was tailored to the global carrier’s specific challenges, focusing on decision-making and innovation in a complex, highly regulated environment. The Developing New Leaders program builds core leadership skills such as delivering results through others, working across boundaries, developing people, and thinking strategically. The customized version for the client adapted these themes to the aviation industry, emphasizing the need for balancing operational efficiency with innovation, stakeholder engagement across a global organization, and leading within a dynamic, fast-paced industry.

Some customization highlights include:

• Interactive role-playing: Participants engage in two pivotal role-play exercises designed to reinforce key leadership behaviors:

  

  • Influencing senior stakeholders: Participants conduct a high-stakes conversation with a senior leader who is risk-averse and demands a strong business case before approving a new initiative. Leaders must use strategic framing and persuasion to gain buy-in.

  • Coaching and developing talent: Participants engage in a one-on-one coaching session with a direct report who is highly strategic but reserved in team settings. Leaders practice active listening and coaching techniques to unlock his full potential.

• Branched scenarios: Scenario variations allow teams to experience different leadership challenges based on their strategic choices. Depending on the decisions they make in early rounds, teams encounter distinct obstacles, including internal resistance to change, cross-functional collaboration breakdowns, or the need to adjust execution priorities due to shifting business conditions.

Train-the-Trainer Enablement

To ensure long-term scalability and internal ownership of the Leadership Transformation Program, Insight Experience collaborated closely with Korn Ferry to execute a Train-the-Trainer (TTT) process. This initiative enabled Korn Ferry to build a deep bench of certified internal facilitators, capable of delivering the simulation program independently to future cohorts of leaders across the aviation group.

The TTT process included:

• Live train-the-trainer sessions: Insight Experience led a series of interactive TTT sessions with Korn Ferry consultants and facilitators. These sessions provided hands-on exposure to the simulation experience, detailed walk-throughs of each program component, and opportunities to practice facilitating key segments, such as role plays, decision rounds, and learning debriefs.

• Facilitator skill-building: The TTT focused not only on content mastery but also on the unique facilitation skills required to debrief a simulation-based learning experience. Insight Experience shared best practices for fostering engagement, encouraging reflection, and helping participants connect simulation outcomes to their day-to-day leadership challenges.

• Robust facilitation toolkit: To support sustainable delivery, Insight Experience developed a comprehensive facilitator guide. This resource includes detailed scripts, timing guidelines, participant prompts, debrief questions, scoring instructions, and tips for adapting the program to different cohort needs and audience profiles.

• Ongoing partnership and support: Following the TTT sessions, Insight Experience remained a thought partner, supporting Korn Ferry’s internal facilitators as they began delivering the program. This included co-facilitation opportunities, calibration conversations, and updates to materials as the simulation evolved based on feedback.

This investment in internal capability-building positioned Korn Ferry to efficiently scale the program across the aviation group and sustain its impact over time—embedding the simulation as a core component of the leadership transformation journey.

Simulation Program Flow

The program begins on Day 1 with an introduction to the simulation, providing participants with the context and framework for the experience. Following the introduction, they engage in Round 1 decision-making, where they make strategic choices that set the course for the simulation.

On Day 2, participants take part in a learning discussion to reflect on their decisions from Round 1, analyzing outcomes and key takeaways. The simulation then advances to Round 2, introducing new challenges that require further strategic thinking. Later in the day, participants engage in Role Play #1, an interactive exercise designed to reinforce leadership behaviors in a real-world scenario.

Day 3 continues with Role Play #2, offering another opportunity for participants to practice critical leadership skills. The program concludes with a Round 2 learning discussion, where participants assess their overall performance, extract insights, and refine their approach to leadership. 

History and Results 

To date, the Leadership Transformation Program has been delivered to eight cohorts of 250+ leaders per cohort. The simulation consistently receives strong participant feedback and provides an important platform for making learning actionable.