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Serve to Lead Game Series

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British Army

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Serve to Lead is a bespoke digital training game developed for the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (RMAS) in partnership with CDS Defence & Security. Designed as a pick-your-own-adventure branching narrative, it immerses Officer Cadets in the role of a newly appointed Platoon Commander. Across a 45-minute online scenario, players confront real-world inspired situations spanning welfare, discipline, harassment reports, and human rights dilemmas, in both barracks and deployed environments. Each playthrough concludes with a face-to-face facilitated session, allowing Instructing Staff to consolidate lessons and tailor discussion according to the individual needs and performance of the players. By combining immersive digital play with structured reflection, Serve to Lead provides a scalable and innovative method of enhancing ethical decision-making, leadership competence, and officer development.

Game Overview

The game is explicitly aligned with the Army Leadership Doctrine (2021) and the Leader Competency Framework (LCF, AC 72279), which structures leadership into three dimensions: what leaders are (character), know (knowledge), and do (actions).

Learning objectives include:
– Demonstrate values-based leadership, moral courage, and inclusivity (ARE).
– Understand self, people, and profession; recognise heuristics and biases in decision-making (KNOW).
– Build teams, develop individuals, and achieve tasks under ethical and organisational constraints (DO).

The ongoing update of the Regular Commissioning Course (Reg CC) has identified that while traditional leadership behaviours training is strong on knowledge and formal instruction, gaps remain in areas such as empathy, emotional intelligence, and the practical application of inclusive behaviours. Serve to Lead directly addresses these deficits by providing Officer Cadets with realistic opportunities to practise difficult leadership decisions in a safe, repeatable environment.

At its core, Serve to Lead functions as a branching decision-tree simulation. Players are presented with dilemmas that mirror the complexity and ambiguity of officer leadership. Each decision carries immediate and longer-term consequences, revealed through narrative progression and feedback.

Key mechanics include:
– Player agency: Multiple pathways allow cadets to explore different leadership styles and observe consequences.
– Immediate feedback: In-game responses benchmark decisions against LCF competencies, generating a personalised development profile.
– Replayability: Players can revisit scenarios, test alternative approaches, and compare outcomes.
– Facilitated debrief: A 30-minute face-to-face session follows each playthrough, allowing instructors to discuss themes surfaced by the game, reinforced by aggregated analytics of platoon performance.

This combination of interactive immersion and guided reflection transforms abstract “values and standards” into lived decision-making practice.

Officer Cadets on the Regular Commissioning Course at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, preparing future leaders for the British Army.

Serve to Lead has already undergone a pilot evaluation at RMAS. Findings are captured in the Pilot Feedback Evaluation Report (Data Analysis Evaluation Feedback, 2025).

Key results include:
– Strong engagement: All cadets found the game accessible and technically reliable, reporting no barriers to play.
– Learning value: Quantitative survey data indicated that a majority felt the game both consolidated prior knowledge and introduced new perspectives.
– Confidence gains: Several cadets explicitly stated they felt more confident handling sensitive issues such as harassment and welfare after gameplay.
– Discussion catalyst: Facilitated post-game sessions were praised for surfacing diverse viewpoints and encouraging peer learning.
– Instructor insights: Aggregated analytics provided staff with clear visibility of cadet decision-making trends, highlighting strengths and areas for targeted development.

These outcomes validate the game’s ability to improve both individual leadership confidence and collective reflection on values and behaviours, while offering instructors actionable data to refine subsequent training. Importantly, this impact is directly contributing to the Regular Commissioning Course’s evolution, ensuring that officer training continues to meet the demands of contemporary leadership challenges.

Broader research further supports its value. U.S. Army trials of the SHARP ELITE programme demonstrated a 40% increase in knowledge and 32% boost in leadership confidence, while ADFA cadets using ethics simulations were twice as likely to recognise moral ambiguity compared with case-study learners. Early results at Sandhurst suggest Serve to Lead is achieving similar effects within a UK doctrinal framework.

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