My gut reaction is that you shouldn’t use gamification. (On a second thought, I would be curious what experience your audience had with “gamification” that made their appetite go away! )

Here’s what I would recommend: know your audience. Know their problems! Imagine yourself less of a learning content provider, and more like a problem solver. Use game thinking to approach problem solving. That means you don’t start with gamification, or building a game, or a game template to try. You start with the old-fashioned analysis: what is the business goal? what are the performance goals? what behaviors might lead to those goals? what should people be doing? what should people be not doing? why aren’t they doing it? Find the ACTIONS! Not the content.

THEN figure out what is the minimal effort to support those ACTIONS! Do they really need a gameplay? Playing some interactive game? A board game perhaps? While making meaningful decisions, they learn about leadership? Or is it opposite? They don’t need any gameplay at all? Or in between? Sometimes simple gameful design can help without any sophisticated efforts. Use Cathy Moore’s action mapping to find out what actions people need to do and reduce the pile of fluff.

Overall, think of yourself less of a sage on a stage than a conductor in a concert. Your goal is to get out of the way between the music and the audience while supporting each member of the audience.

The other challenge you have with people and gamification is that WE ARE MOTIVATED BY DIFFERENT THINGS!!!

“[…]certain motivational affordances (which otherwise received positive comments) were felt as negative (such as ones encouraging competition), lending credence to the idea that different player types experience the same affordances differently…”

Does Gamification Work? — A Literature… (PDF Download Available). Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256743509_Does_Gamification_Work_-_A_Literature_Review_of_Empirical_Studies_on_Gamification [accessed Mar 30 2018].

In other words, what game element might motivate you, may not motivate me. You might be a competitive person that turns all rocks and pebbles up just to get on top of the leaderboard, while I’m more like a social gamer who loves helping out others. You earn something rare, and you’re proud of it. I earn something rare and give it someone else. You can’t even imagine how someone would do that…

Think about gamification as a system of balance. If you pack your gamification with competitive elements only, you score big with part of the audience, but others might be completely alienated. Give something for everyone. Andrzej Marczewski has some guidance on game design elements and player/user type experiences: