Larry Peppers’ SimSoc exercise has given a reality check to thousands of leaders in Greenville and beyond
If you’ve gone through Leadership Greenville, chances are you know Larry Peppers. The former Clemson University sociology professor spent 40 of the last 41 years administering a key part of the program – the simulated society, or SimSoc – to around 1,600 total participants in Greenville alone.
Now, Leadership Greenville is the sixth-oldest leadership program of its kind in the country and has been the model for dozens of others. Additionally, the program itself has had a profound effect on the area, according to Peppers.
“What I’ve seen happen since 1973 is we’ve had so much development in the Upstate,” said Peppers, who calls Greenville his home base. “The leadership program here has guided the development of these counties.”
Peppers works and travels full-time to administer SimSoc sessions for leadership programs across the country. He estimates he has traveled to more than 100 programs for his work, but says Leadership Greenville is one of the best due to its curriculum and the quality of participants it attracts.
While many leadership programs and initiatives have contributed to the Upstate’s growth, few have been around as long and have built as devoted an alumni base as Leadership Greenville, said Peppers. “Greenville has a strong alumni group, which is different from a lot of other cities.”
A need for leadership
Leadership initiatives similar to Leadership Greenville began popping up around the country in the mid-1960s, said Peppers, starting in Philadelphia and followed by Savannah, Minneapolis, Atlanta and Gainesville, Fla. The Greenville Chamber led the effort to begin Leadership Greenville, which held its first class in 1973 with 20 to 22 people, Peppers recalls.
Today, Leadership Greenville is a 10-month program that focuses on issues and needs affecting Greenville County. Each class leverages the diverse backgrounds and experiences of its around 40 participants to build a solution for a project or need in the area, Peppers said.
Before that, however, the class needs to “feel comfortable disagreeing with one another,” according to Peppers, which is where he steps in with SimSoc, the bedrock of the program. The ability to disagree but still work toward a solution is crucial to leadership, he said.
“At the end of the day, what I hope to establish in a group … is that despite various personalities and egos, we can break down barriers,” he said. “It’s community leaders that are going to have to deal with these issues.”
Tensions and inequalities
SimSoc itself incorporates elements of sociology, psychology, political science, economics and communications. Peppers divides a list of participants into four groups that represent four socioeconomic classes: the elite or upper class, the upper middle class, the lower middle class and the impoverished class. Each group begins with various levels of resources, which determine their ability to eat, to travel and to spend SimBucks on extra things.
Resource allocation has very real effects for participants, which becomes all too clear during lunch. While the elite are served anything from steak, potatoes, wine and bread, the impoverished class can often do nothing but watch with growling bellies, said Peppers.
In one instance, Peppers remembers when one of Greenville’s most successful restaurateurs, Vince Perone, was put in the lowest group and thus went without food during mealtime. Perone – who was a “staunch political conservative,” said Peppers – and the others in the impoverished group resorted to protests in the dining room, marching around and brandishing signs that read, “We need food,” and “Help us.”
“Invariably, the day starts with the participants thinking it’s a game, but by mid-morning, it’s not a game,” said Peppers, recalling a pair of good friends who went through the session and didn’t speak to each other for months afterward because of a disagreement.
One of the most memorable cohorts for Peppers was number 25, a hand-picked class full of established and rising Greenville leaders whose class project sowed the seeds for redevelopment in Greenville’s west side.
“They failed miserably,” according to Peppers, who said strong personalities and opinions led to one of the most conflict-ridden groups he’d seen. As a collective society, the class is required to maintain minimum scores on “national indicators,” and class 25 let all four indicators plummet.
The class collectively demanded that Peppers return so they could try again, as it meant that much to them, Peppers said. “Love the day or hate the day, the participants will remember the day.”
A new generation of leaders
SimSoc is aimed at helping leaders understand the complexities of collaboration and decision-making in modern societies, and much of what participants learn is empathy, he said.
“They go in wearing certain colored glasses, and what I see happen is they start looking at a community with different colored glasses, or they’ll take the glasses off entirely,” said Peppers, who said in the last 10 to 15 years of SimSoc in Greenville, he’s observed heightened collaboration, negotiation and sharing of food even when they don’t have to.
According to Peppers, SimSoc has both raised and rattled lifelong friendships, has formed lasting links between unconventional partners and, in some cases, has been a catalyst for regional development.
“Public-private partnerships, those didn’t used to happen,” Peppers said. “A community is very interdependent … economic development and community development go hand in hand.”
Peppers, now in his 60s, said he wants to continue leading SimSoc sessions for the next three years. He said has a vision for a regional leadership program that would span not only Greenville, but Spartanburg, Anderson and other Upstate counties.
“Greenville as we look at it today was developed by leaders from 25 years ago,” said Peppers. “The new generation of leaders, they’re the ones who are going to have the responsibility and the opportunity to create the Greenville of tomorrow.”
