Talespin LLC, an enterprise training firm that uses virtual reality for teaching, today announced the release of its Leading Through Uncertainty curriculum designed to assist organizations and their leaders in times of crisis and uncertainty.

Talespin’s software creates lifelike scenarios using VR and virtual human avatars in an immersive context that help leaders practice key soft-skills for dealing with people in a compassionate manner. Skills taught by the company’s curriculum include active listening, understanding and empathizing, de-escalation, succinct communication and self-awareness.

The recent pandemic of COVID-19 has placed many businesses and organizations into bad positions, which also puts a great deal of stress on leadership to maintain cool heads during adversity. Talespin believes its new curriculum and the combination of immersive VR training will shorten the time needed for management and executives to adopt the skills needed in these uncertain times.

“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 co-founder and Chief Executive 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.”

The World Economic Forum estimated that 1.1. billion jobs will be transformed by technology within the next decade. Many of these jobs will be affected by automation and information technology that will change the core skills needed in every workforce, including how management interacts with workers. Remote work technology alone has come to the forefront of the discussion with COVID-19 and the need for social distancing and personal isolation.

“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,” said Jackson. “We’ve designed our platform and our company from the beginning to answer these disruptions.”

The new Leading through Uncertainty training modules seek to provide much-needed skills and understanding when it comes to handling the human impact of crises. These can include situations such as losing workforce to mass layoffs, managing expectations of staff looking at cut hours, or simply managing an uncertain company future.

The five modules of the curriculum are Part I: Creating Calmness Through Succinct Communication, Part II: Preventing the stressors of a high-level crisis from interfering with necessary, everyday business functions, Part III: Communicating Productively with a Distraught Employee, Part IV: De-Escalating an Emotionally Charged Situation and Part V: Disagreeing Productively During Challenging Times.

This new learning experience will be made available to large enterprise organizations through collaboration with Cornerstone, a talent management software company. This collaboration follows an investment in Talespin as 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 at Cornerstone. “We believe VR is a powerful and effective tool for teaching leadership capabilities that will help organizations build long-term resiliency.”

Talespin’s Leading Through Uncertainty immersive content will be available for VR headsets and desktop formats through Talespin Runway, a skills mapping and knowledge transfer program.

Image: Talespin