At HEC Lausanne, virtual reality (VR) lifts students high above their audience so that they can acclimatise to public speaking, whatever the conditions. This is just one way in which the school is seeking to enhance its learning environment and ability to prepare tomorrow’s leaders for what lies ahead, as dean Marianne Schmid Mast reveals. Interview by Tim Banerjee Dhoul Elevating the experience P icture yourself getting ready to deliver a presentation to a large audience from a TedX-style stage, with its large, dimly lit audience unfolding before you and imposing branding looming over you from
groups of students from cohorts of around 500 get to experience this approach as part of her bachelor’s‑level leadership class. Using technology to build interpersonal skills The technique offers an intriguing example of innovation at the school, as it seeks to build students’ interpersonal skills and highlight their importance to the successful modern leader. As Schmid Mast points out, the old stereotypical notion of a leader spending their time thinking through problems and drawing up strategies alone simply doesn’t match the reality. “The studies show that leaders spend about 80 per cent of their time in social interactions of some sort and there’s also research indicating that those who spend more time in social interactions have better leadership outcomes, measured as satisfaction and sometimes as efficiency. So, it seems to be a good thing if you have interpersonal skills and these might also be the most complicated attributes for artificial intelligence (AI) to replace.” However, the HEC Lausanne dean is keen to use AI technology to enhance students’ leadership development. One idea she has right now concerns
behind. Now imagine that, instead of the stage, you’re standing on a thin wooden plank over a precipice situated high above your audience. This is the setting devised by HEC Lausanne dean Marianne Schmid Mast to enhance students’ public speaking skills using immersive VR. “The trick is that we artificially increase the stress in an already stressful situation by inducing the fear of heights. We then train them in that situation to breathe and give their speech,” she explains. The idea is that by overcoming such adverse conditions, a normal public speaking requirement becomes “a piece of cake”. A psychologist by background and a professor of organisational behaviour at the wider University of Lausanne, Schmid Mast goes on to outline the science of exposure theory, how the body adapts physiologically to stressors and how this kind of training can yield good results in combatting social anxiety. She then shares how small
18 Business Impact • ISSUE 6 • 2025
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