Today Talespin announced ‘Leading Through Uncertainty,’ a series of learning modules that leverage virtual reality’s proven efficacy as one of the most impactful learning modalities to help organizations and their leaders navigate times of crisis and uncertainty. The training scenarios utilize role play with virtual human avatars to help leaders practice key communication skills like active listening, understanding and empathizing with employees, de-escalation, succinct communication, and self-awareness.
The impact of COVID-19 on the economy and workplace has put many leaders and managers in the most challenging situation of their careers and placed an even greater emphasis on the leadership and communication skills required to guide their teams through disruption. Ensuring organizations are able to use a people-first approach to leadership, adapting to the new normal, and communicating effectively in the COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 world is critical, but there are limited frameworks given that this is an entirely novel crisis.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has sent every organization into a period of self-reflection as we ask ourselves: what we can do right now to better take care of our people and customers,” said Talespin CEO and Co-Founder Kyle Jackson. “We saw ‘Leading Through Uncertainty’ as a way to help organizations take a people-first approach to their business operations, enabling them to leverage XR, one of the most impactful learning and empowerment technologies we’ve ever seen, to better prepare their leaders and teams. COVID-19 has forced us all to face workforce disruption on an accelerated timeline, with remote work, talent gaps, digital transformation, and other ‘future of work’ trends now present as mission-critical challenges, and we’ve designed our platform and our company from the beginning to answer these disruptions.”
Organizations face mounting challenges as automation and changing workforce dynamics increase skills gaps and escalate the need for new workforce practices. The World Economic Forum estimated that 1.1 billion jobs will be radically transformed by technology in the next decade - nearly half of the core skills are set to change by 2022 alone, and that was before COVID-19 accelerated workforce disruption and launched the world’s businesses into remote work. XR presents itself as a solution for helping the workforce adapt to change and disruption, as it is proven to accelerate learning for critical communication skills, to make learners more confident in subject matter, to increase knowledge retention, and to enable remote learning.
Talespin is focused on making the ‘Leading Through Uncertainty’ learning modules available to the world's largest organizations with ease, with content to be distributed in both VR and desktop formats through Talespin Runway, a skills mapping and knowledge transfer platform.
‘Leading Through Uncertainty’ learning modules will also be made available to organizations through Cornerstone, a leader in people development software. This collaboration comes on the back of Cornerstone’s strategic investment in Talespin as a part of the company’s recently announced Series B funding round.
“The current climate has created a renewed focus on workplace learning and has accelerated the need for leaders to develop new skills to help their organizations respond and adapt quickly to their new environment,” said Heidi Spirgi, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer, Cornerstone. “We are excited to offer Talespin’s ‘Leading Through Uncertainty’ modules to our clients as we believe VR is a powerful and effective tool for teaching leadership capabilities that will help organizations build long-term resiliency.”
Training Leaders to Lead Through Uncertainty
The ‘Leading Through Uncertainty’ VR content series tasks leaders with applying communication skills across five different scenarios, ranging from navigating a conversation with a distressed employee to discussing concerns over increased pressure to achieve business results.
The five ‘Leading Through Uncertainty’ Learning modules are:
“The ‘Leading Through Uncertainty’ series takes our immersive learning framework and applies it to immediate challenges currently faced by business leaders and managers,” said Stephen Fromkin, Chief Content Officer and Co-Founder of Talespin. “The learning content focuses on foundational leadership and communication skills and teaches us to utilize them amid workforce disruption that goes beyond even that which was predicted.”
For more information on the ‘Leading Through Uncertainty’ series, please visit: talespin.company/leading-through-uncertainty
About Talespin
Talespin is building the spatial computing platform to power talent development and skills alignment for the future of work. Founded in 2015, the company leverages its proprietary XR technology platform Runway to deliver XR-based learning and training applications, mixed reality field tools to support employee job performance, and to advance the collection and alignment of skills data. With offices in Los Angeles and Utrecht, The Netherlands, Talespin is building a future of work where the distance between learning and execution is collapsed, enabling people to explore unique career paths that meet the needs of both businesses and individuals.
Talespin’s investors include Cornerstone, Farmers Insurance Exchange, and HTC. Learn more at talespin.company.
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