Leadership development doesn’t fail because leaders lack potential. It fails because most programs never show how leaders actually behave when it matters.
As organizations face faster transitions, flatter structures, and higher leadership risk, leading enterprise L&D teams are moving beyond workshops, self-reflection, and generic competency models. Instead, they are using immersive, next-level leadership simulations to bring the complexity, pace, and nuance of leadership roles to life—inside a controlled, observable, and development-focused environment.
Read more about the top trends defining leadership development this year.
That’s what makes the Pinsight experience different. It’s not a course, a test, or a questionnaire. It’s a 3-hours-in-the-role simulation of a real leadership position—designed to surface behavior, accelerate insight, and drive development that sticks.
Step Into the Next Role—Before the Transition
Pinsight places leaders into a simulated version of their next-level role, allowing them to experience—and respond to—the pressures they will face after promotion or role expansion.
Participants log into Pinsight’s secure virtual platform and step into a realistic leadership environment. Throughout the experience, they:
- Respond to emails and communications that reflect real-world time pressure and competing priorities
- Engage in live webcam meetings with trained role-players portraying peers, direct reports, and senior stakeholders
- Tackle challenges such as:
- Coaching an underperforming leader while maintaining results
- Navigating conflict across functions without direct authority
- Crafting and defending a strategic plan
- Making high-stakes decisions with incomplete or ambiguous data
Each exercise reflects the real demands of leadership at the Director and VP+ levels, allowing leaders to show how they lead, not just describe it.
For L&D, this creates something most programs lack: direct observation of leadership behavior in context.
The Development Center Method—Applied to Leadership Growth
Pinsight is grounded in the Development Center Method, a long-standing approach used by enterprises to develop leaders through realistic, role-based challenges. Rather than relying on self-report, reflection, or classroom learning alone, development centers generate direct behavioral evidence of how leaders operate under pressure.
Pinsight modernizes this method for today’s enterprise:
- Faster leadership cycles
- Distributed, global teams
- The need to personalize development without losing rigor
Throughout the simulation:
- Leadership behaviors are observed and captured across multiple interactions
- Trained assessors evaluate behavior with consistency and calibration
- Decision quality, prioritization, and responses to ambiguity are analyzed
These observations are combined with pre-work assessments to produce a clear, role-specific readiness profile—not a generic competency score.
For L&D leaders, this shifts development from:
“We believe this leader has potential”
to
“Here’s how this leader performs relative to next-role expectations—and where focused development will have the greatest impact.”
Learn more about the science behind Pinsight.
An Experience Leaders Take Seriously—and Learn From
Unlike traditional leadership development experiences that can feel abstract or theoretical, Pinsight’s simulations feel real—because they mirror real work.
Participant perceptions show:
- 95% are satisfied with the development experience
- 90% view the experience as fair and objective
- 94% feel motivated to further develop their skills afterward
- 97% would recommend the experience to others to improve performance
That seriousness matters. When leaders recognize themselves in the experience, development moves from abstract insight to real behavior change.
Turning Insight Into Development That Sticks
Pinsight doesn’t stop at insight. Every simulation produces hyper-personalized, coaching-ready development plans that focus on:
- A small number of high-impact behaviors
- Concrete examples drawn from observed actions
- Clear guidance managers and coaches can reinforce
This ensures leaders don’t just understand their development areas—they know exactly what to do differently on the job.
Over time, organizations can show impact through:
- Increased readiness for next-level roles
- Reduced risk ahead of promotions or transitions
- Stronger alignment between leaders, managers, and L&D
Why It Matters for Enterprise L&D Leaders
For enterprise L&D teams developing Directors, VPs, and senior leaders, Pinsight enables a shift from generic development to readiness-driven leadership growth.
You gain:
- Observable, defensible evidence of leadership behavior
- A scalable way to personalize development
- Early signals of readiness and risk—before roles change
- Development experiences leaders take seriously and act on
Behind the scenes, every element of the Pinsight simulation is designed to mirror reality—so leadership development is grounded in how leaders actually work, not how they describe themselves.
Leadership development that works isn’t about more content.
It’s about seeing real behavior—and building from there.
