Experiential learning for executive teams in 2026: what the research says works

Experiential learning develops leaders by having them do the work of leadership: solving real business problems, working through realistic simulations, and taking on structured challenges, then reflecting on what happened. In a study of two hundred seventy talent development professionals published by the Association for Talent Development (ATD) and the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), seventy-six percent of organizations used experiential learning to develop leaders. And the high-performance organizations in this study were almost three times more likely than lower performers to use it with both senior and frontline leaders.

That finding sits at the center of how Morrison Alley, a Boulder, Colorado firm that designs custom experiential leadership and team development programs for senior executive teams, approaches its work. This article breaks down what the research found, why it matters most at the executive level, and what separates programs that change behavior from programs that simply fill a calendar.

Why does leadership development need a different approach?

Most organizations already believe leadership development matters. Few believe they are good at it.

Research cited above found that seventy-eight percent of nearly seven hundred business executives said leadership development was critical to their companies, yet only twenty-eight percent said their organizations were highly effective at developing leaders. Even among market-leading organizations, only about one third said their firms excelled.

That fifty percent gap carries real cost. Without strong leaders, organizations struggle to execute strategy, sustain competitive advantage, and attract and keep talent. When the business environment shifts faster than a curriculum can be rewritten, classroom content ages quickly. Leaders need development that runs on current, real situations, and that is the promise experiential learning was built to deliver.

Great learning leaders will always be driving to close the gap between a development experience and real-life experience.

Susan Burnett, a leader in experiential learning and member of the i4cp Thought Leader Consortium, framed the goal that way in the study.

What counts as experiential learning?

The ATD and i4cp study defines experiential learning as an umbrella term for learning that happens through experience rather than instruction alone. It includes four main approaches.

Action learning. Leaders, individually or in small groups, learn while developing solutions to real business problems.

On-the-job learning. Structured experiences such as coaching, stretch assignments, job rotations, and leaders teaching leaders, along with informal experiences such as conversations and observation.

Simulations. Controlled-risk replicas of business situations, events, or processes, delivered live, virtually, or as a blend.

Serious games. Simulations that add game elements such as a story, goals, feedback, and play. We set out how a game-based approach differs from regular gamification separately.

Across all four, the common thread is that leaders practice the behavior the organization needs, in conditions close enough to reality that the practice transfers. Queene Mavor, then senior manager of learning and development at Cisco, interviewed for the study, put it plainly: leaders “learn more deeply, more quickly, and in a more meaningful way when they are doing and then reflecting.” For a practical checklist of what to look for, see experiential learning recommendations.

How widely do organizations use experiential learning for leaders?

Adoption is broad. According to the study:

• Seventy-six percent of organizations use experiential learning to develop leaders.
• Forty-five percent use it for both senior and frontline leaders.
• Twenty-two percent use it only for frontline leaders.
• Nine percent use it only for senior leaders.
• Twenty-four percent do not use it at all.

Using experiential learning at both leadership levels showed a strong correlation with learning effectiveness. Among highest-performing organizations, total use for senior leaders climbed above sixty percent.

What do high-performing organizations do differently?

The most useful part of the research is the comparison between organizations reporting strong market performance (revenue growth, market share, profitability, and customer satisfaction) and those reporting weaker results. Several patterns stand out.

They apply experiential learning at the top. High performers were nearly twice as likely to use experiential learning for senior leaders and almost three times more likely to use it at both leadership levels.

They use it for different reasons. High performers were four times more likely to name better retention of learning as a leading reason for using experiential learning, and more than three times more likely to name better performance under pressure. Both motivations showed very high correlations to market performance and learning effectiveness.

They invest in design. About half of organizations still focus instructional design on classroom and e-learning materials. In high-performance organizations, designers place significant focus on building experiential opportunities, and that design focus is highly correlated with learning effectiveness.

They measure what leaders apply. Well over half of top companies assess whether leaders actually use new knowledge and skills on the job. Only about one third of lower performers do. That measurement question is the same one we take up in how to vet a program when public case studies are scarce.

They use simulations. While fewer than twenty percent of companies overall use live simulations to develop leaders, among high performers, more than thirty percent do, and about one in four use virtual or blended simulations.

These are associations, not necessarily proof, but the pattern is consistent across every dimension measured: the organizations that perform best use experiential learning as a designed, measured discipline.

Why does experiential learning matter most for senior leaders?

Executives face a specific set of constraints that make experiential design more valuable at the top of the organization.

Their time is the scarcest resource in the company. Forty-one percent of respondents said senior leaders’ schedules do not allow time for experiential learning, the most cited barrier in the study. That barrier also showed an exceptionally high negative correlation with market performance. Christopher Schuller, then senior manager of learning at Boeing, interviewed for the study, explained why this argues for experiential formats: when leaders receive content passively, they must later figure out how to apply it, and senior leaders rarely get that time back. “When you have senior leaders in the room, that’s your opportunity, that’s your time,” he said.

They need realism. “Senior leaders require more sophisticated and ‘real’ experiences,” Burnett observed. At the frontline level, a role play may be enough. At the executive level, the study describes complex business model and strategy execution simulations with leadership challenges built in, as they are in real life.

Their decisions carry the highest stakes. Burnett suggested executive teams rehearse strategy the way the military rehearses an engagement before deployment. Teams that run a mock execution can find and fix the missing pieces of a plan before it costs anything real. That approach, she noted, produces both learning and business value.

Generic content underperforms. Schuller has seen experiential learning work best when it targets a specific challenge. “When you make it about an actual business problem, you get the highest return,” he said.

Where do most programs fall short?

If adoption is so high, why do so many leaders still describe their development as ineffective? The study points to a gap between adoption and execution.

Only thirty-four percent of respondents said their organization’s use of experiential learning was effective. For senior leaders specifically, the figure was thirty-two percent. Meanwhile, instructional designers focused on traditional classroom and e-learning content far more than on experiential design: fifty-two percent versus thirty percent for senior leaders.

The most common barriers after time were a lack of internal expertise to create effective experiences (thirty-three percent), a lack of supporting technology (thirty percent), limited budget (twenty-nine percent), and no accountability for outcomes (twenty-nine percent). Twenty-two percent could not measure effectiveness at all, and that inability showed an extremely high negative correlation with market performance.

In other words, most organizations know experiential learning works. Far fewer have the design capacity to make it work for their own leaders, on their own problems. This is the work Morrison Alley has spent twenty-five years on: facilitating custom experiential executive leadership programs.

What does a well-designed executive experience include?

Drawing on the research, an effective experiential program for an executive team tends to share six characteristics. These are the principles Morrison Alley builds into every custom engagement.

1. It starts with a real business problem. The experience is built around a challenge the team actually faces, such as a strategic shift, a cross-functional breakdown, or a growth constraint. The study’s strongest results came from programs where leaders produced real solutions.

2. It develops the team as a unit. Executive performance depends on how leaders work together. Experiences that put the full team in the same scenario surface the gaps in communication, decision rights, and operating model that individual programs miss.

3. It creates realistic pressure. High performers use experiential learning to prepare leaders for high-stakes situations. Well-built simulations let teams feel that pressure in a setting where mistakes are lessons rather than losses.

4. It builds in reflection. The debrief is where experience turns into insight. Burnett stressed that the dialogue after an experience is where learning and development actually occur. We go further on that arc in how experiential learning creates lasting behavioral change.

5. It is measured against application. Programs define success at the start, then track whether leaders apply new behaviors and whether business indicators move.

6. It follows through. Reinforcement mechanisms such as action plans, follow-up sessions, peer accountability, and coaching keep new behavior in place after the experience ends.

Key takeaways

• Seventy-six percent of organizations use experiential learning to develop leaders.
• High-performance organizations are almost three times more likely to use it at both senior and frontline levels.
• Only thirty-four percent of organizations rate their own use as effective, which signals a design and execution gap.
• Senior leaders benefit most from realistic, problem-based experiences that respect their limited time.
• Simulations, action learning, measurement of applied skills, and structured follow-through are the practices most associated with strong results.

What is experiential learning for leaders?

Experiential learning for leaders is development built on doing. Leaders solve real business problems, work through simulations, or take on structured challenges, then reflect on the results. It includes action learning, on-the-job learning, simulations, and serious games.

Is experiential learning effective for executives?

Research from ATD and i4cp found that every experiential method studied for senior leaders was highly correlated with learning effectiveness, and that high-performance organizations were nearly twice as likely to use experiential learning with senior leaders as lower performers.

How is experiential learning different from traditional leadership training?

Traditional training delivers content that leaders must later apply on their own. Experiential learning has leaders apply skills during the program itself, in realistic conditions, so the practice and the learning happen together.

Bring the research to your executive team

Morrison Alley designs custom experiential leadership and team development programs for senior executive teams at large organizations. Every program is built around your team’s real challenges, so the time your leaders invest produces both stronger leadership and progress on the work itself. To explore what that could look like for your team, start a conversation with Morrison Alley.

Sources. Carol Morrison (i4cp), Experiential Learning for Leaders: Action Learning, On-the-Job Learning, Serious Games, and Simulations, Association for Talent Development and Institute for Corporate Productivity (Alexandria, VA: ATD Press, May 2016). Survey of two hundred seventy talent development professionals fielded January 2016. A public preview of the findings is also on the ATD research blog. The seventy-eight percent and twenty-eight percent executive figures come from the Institute for Corporate Productivity, 2015 Critical Human Capital Issues Survey (unpublished), as cited in the ATD report. Additional research on experiential learning and team performance is gathered on our Why It Works page.

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