The Problem

During peak season, leaders must collaborate across functions to maintain performance under pressure. However, many leaders struggle to influence peers when they don’t have direct authority.

In high-stakes situations, this often results in:

  • Escalation instead of collaboration
  • Over-reliance on data or positional authority
  • Breakdowns in trust between teams

As shown in the experience, leaders frequently default to pushing for outcomes rather than understanding constraints—which creates resistance and slows progress.

At the same time, opportunities to support associate development are missed. When leaders fail to model effective influence behaviors, they reinforce a culture of dependency, misalignment, and short-term problem-solving.

Solution: Scenario-Based Influence Simulation (“The Peak Season Bottleneck”)

To address this, I designed an immersive, decision-based eLearning simulation where leaders navigate a real-world operational challenge by influencing a peer leader.

In the experience, learners:

  • Step into a high-pressure distribution center scenario
  • Engage in multiple decision points with a peer leader (Marcus)
  • Practice different influence strategies in real time
  • See the impact of their choices on performance, relationships, and credibility

The experience is driven by an “Influence Meter”, which dynamically reflects how their behaviors affect trust and collaboration:

  • Collaborative, empathetic choices build influence
  • Directive, dismissive, or politically driven choices reduce it

Across three critical moments, learners must:

  1. Lower defenses and build initial alignment
  2. Co-create a solution that respects constraints
  3. Secure long-term partnership and sustained performance

This structure reinforces a core behavior shift: from “driving compliance” → to “building alignment and shared ownership.”

My Role

I designed this end-to-end simulation to build the competency of influence without authority in a high-pressure operational context.

Key Contributions:

  • Instructional Strategy: Defined the learning challenge as a behavior gap in peer influence and designed a branching simulation that requires learners to apply—not recall—skills.
  • Scenario & Interaction Design: Created a realistic, high-stakes narrative with progressive decision points that mirror real workplace tension (safety vs. speed, data vs. empathy, short-term vs. long-term thinking).
  • Content Development: Wrote dialogue, decision options, and feedback that clearly demonstrate ineffective vs. effective influence strategies, including why each approach succeeds or fails.
  • Behavioral Feedback System: Designed the Influence Meter and tiered feedback model to provide immediate, meaningful insight into how choices impact trust, alignment, and outcomes.
  • Experience Design: Structured the experience to be intuitive, fast-paced, and reflective of real operational decision-making, increasing relevance and engagement.